The Hazon Meditation Retreat
Sliding scale beginning at $620
at Isabella Freedman Retreat Center
Falls Village, CT
More Info / Registration
The Hazon Meditation Retreat is a weeklong silent meditation retreat in a warm and supportive Jewish environment.
Participants are guided through a daily schedule that includes several hours of sitting and walking meditation, soulful Jewish prayer (davennen’), supportive interview sessions with teachers, and optional yoga.
The main form of meditation taught on this retreat is mindfulness, an approach originally derived from Buddhist traditions but now widespread in secular, Jewish, and other contexts. Mindfulness brings forth the natural capacity to notice whatever is happening in your experience with kind, non-judgmental presence. It can lead to profound insights into your personality, the causes (and relief) of stress in your life, even the fundamental facts of existence itself. On this retreat, we cultivate and deepen mindfulness in forty-five minute sitting meditations, periods of walking meditation, and throughout the day.
This is also a Jewish retreat. In addition to daily davennen’ sessions in the Jewish Renewal style, we infuse our teaching with Jewish mystical traditions, contextualize our insights in Jewish language of holiness and the Divine, and build an inclusive Jewish community together. We welcome people with all types of Jewish observance and none, Jews and non-Jews, those who connect with “God” language and those disillusioned with religion, new and experienced meditators, and a community that is diverse in age, race, background, and sexual and gender identities. Throughout the retreat, participants are invited to explore the sacred in the diverse ways that speak to them.
This retreat is conducted in the tradition of our teachers, Rabbi David Cooper z”l and Shoshana Cooper, as well as our beloved co-teacher, Beth Resnick, who cannot join us this year due to family responsibilities. We hope to hold Beth’s heartful presence with us on this year’s retreat.
Registration
Retreat fees – including lodging and kosher farm-to-table meals – begin at $620 per person. This does not include a program fee. The teachers offer this retreat on a donation (dana or trumah) basis. Donations for teachers will be collected at the conclusion of the retreat.
You will receive a confirmation email once you have registered and made a payment online or by phone. If you do not receive the confirmation email within 24 hours of registering, please call us at 860.824.5991 x0.
We strive to make our retreats affordable to everyone.
We believe retreats are important experiences to be shared. Inclusiveness is one of our core values. We strive to ensure that our retreats are as financially accessible as possible. The Tamar fund makes that aspiration possible. The Tamar Fund is in loving memory of Tamar Bittelman z’’l. Click here for the Tamar Fund Scholarship Application
2022 Teachers
Miriam Eisenberger, LCSW is a mindfulness and somatic-based therapist, reiki master, sacred song and Jewish ritual facilitator, meditation instructor, guide in integrating plant medicine and ceremony work (mindfulelement.com). Miriam centers on discovering ways to utilize innate untapped wisdom as an ally in healing. She integrates Somatic Experiencing® & NARM trauma-informed modalities, mindfulness-based psychotherapy, teachings from a variety of spiritual traditions, and meditation instruction in her work with others. She has been teaching on residential silent-meditation retreats since 2018.
Rabbi Shir Feit is a musician, meditator, mystic, and misfit. Shir founded Kol Hai: Hudson Valley Jewish Renewal and was the first full-time Music Director of Romemu. Shir has released six albums of original music and performed with The Epichorus and the Darshan Project. Shir’s rabbinical ordination is from Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi z”l and the ALEPH Ordination Program, was a Wexner Graduate Fellow, and is a member of the Zen Peacemakers, having attended five Bearing Witness Retreats in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson has taught meditation for twenty years in Buddhist, Jewish, and secular contexts. The author of ten books on spirituality and religion, Jay is an editor and podcast host at the Ten Percent Happier meditation startup, as well as a contributing writer to New York Magazine and the Daily Beast. Prior to that, Jay worked as an LGBTQ activist for ten years. An affiliated assistant professor at Chicago Theological Seminary, Jay holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Thought from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is authorized to teach in the lineage of Ayya Khema by his teacher, Leigh Brasington, and was ordained as a rabbi by Rabbi David Cooper.
Robert Pileggi, LCSW (he/him) is a psychotherapist, meditation teacher, Gestalt Psychotherapy instructor, Interfaith minister, spiritual director, and hatha yoga instructor. Bob hopes to support people with finding greater ease with life in the moment, to connect to inner wisdom and strength, and to connect authentically with others. His work is informed by thirty years of social justice work, LGBT community involvement, 2.5 years as an essential worker in a public health center engaged heavily in crisis and grief counseling, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) instruction, officiating hundreds of life cycle rituals as an Interfaith minister; and a love of mindfully crafted documentary photography.
More information is on the Hazon website.
