Please join us Saturday, June 13 at 10 am at Havurah House for Shabbat morning services.

We will also be welcoming our new Education Director, Sarit Katzew.  Please join us for a services and an “extended” Kiddush to follow.  We’ll meet Sarit, share thoughts and ideas, and schmooze.

This will be our last regular morning service before the summer break.

Everyone is welcome and encouraged to attend, including new members and those who have not previously attended our regular services.  All Hebrew school students and their families are especially encouraged to attend.

Those who can, please bring food, wine, etc.  Thank you!

Come join Ruth Gilbert for a Havurah Hangout

The Joy of Jewish Storytelling

Sunday, May 3 at 3:00 pm

Havurah House

56 N. Pleasant st.

 

From Ruth:

Something magical, and unexplainable, happens to me while I am telling a story.    My objective is to have my words form pictures in the mind’s eye of the listeners.  Together we are on a journey, but only one of us knows where the path will lead.  Jewish stories present an ethnic connection for us as Jews.  There is a familiarity that allows us to go deeper into the stories and characters. 

Stories find me. I might be reading an anthology or volume of short stories when I feel a connection or see some pictures in my mind of a particular story and know that is one I want to tell.  Then the process begins of finding what my connection is to the characters.  It is the work that storytellers go through.  Sometimes I don’t know until I am in the midst of telling it and then I have an ahh-haa moment. 

Mark Podwal, an artist, author, and physician best known for his drawings on the New York Times Op-Ed page, will visit Middlebury College on Thursday April 30. Podwal will present his art and screen and discuss a short documentary film about his recent work. A reception and exhibition of Podwal’s prints will begin at 4 p.m. in the Axinn Center Winter Garden at Middlebury, followed by the film screening and discussion at 4:30 in Axinn Room 232.

Learn more about Mark Podwal’s visit here.

 

Join us for a service of commemoration of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day, with candle lighting and memorial blessings. The program includes screening of the 2014 Frontline film “Memory of the Camps,” which includes disturbing images of concentration camps immediately following liberation in 1945 and is not suitable for young children.

Co-sponsored by Middlebury College Hillel, The Addison County Jewish Congregation: Havurah, The Middlebury Area Clergy Association, and the Chaplain’s Office.

Sunday, April 12, 2015, 4 – 6:30pm
Twilight Auditorium 101

The Havurah Community Passover Seder

Help us Save the Walls of the Havurah House.

Endorsed by a small art subcommittee, Havurah is launching a micro-fundraising campaign to purchase a framed print for the vestibule of the Havurah House. (Learn more about the proposed piece below.)

What’s this micro-fundraising business?

By Next Friday, April 3rd, the first night of Passover, we hope to raise $150 in small donations from Havurah members, families, grandparents, children, and friends.

Every donation of at least $5 will be honored on a descriptive label that will accompany the print.

To make your tax deductible donation, email Rebekah Irwin with the following details:

1. The dollar amount you would like to donate
2. Your name, or your designated honorees, as you would like them listed

And now, about the art itself:

Your donation will help bring an archival-quality framed reproduction (pictured below) of Mountains and Sea, painted in 1952 by Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011). Frankenthaler, an American Jewish artist born in New York City, attended Bennington College in Vermont. Mountains and Sea, considered one of her best known works, is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art and is over seven feet tall by 10 feet long (our framed print will be a cozy 18 x 26 inches). Read her New York Times obituary here.

 Helen Frankenthaler in 1956

The 27th Annual Hannah A. Quint Lecture in Jewish Studies

Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict

When Thursday, March 12, 2015
Speaker Prof. Maud Mandel, Brown University
Where McCardell Bicentennial Hall 220
When 4:30 PM

Maud Mandel is an associate professor of history and Director of the Program in Judaic Studies. Her research focuses primarily on the impact of policies and practices of inclusion and exclusion on ethnic and religious minorities in twentieth-century France, most notably Jews, Armenians, and Muslim North Africans.

Chanting with Rebecca Gould

Sunday, March 8, 3pm at Havurah

“The magic of chant is that just a few short words, simply repeated with sweet passion, deliberate intention, and refined beauty, can unlock treasure upon treasure of healing, wisdom, and love”

—Rabbi Shefa Gold, The Magic of Hebrew Chant

Have you heard Havurah’s chant group during High Holiday Services and wondered what chant was all about?  Are you drawn to chant, but not sure if you can carry a tune?  Do you think you need to know Hebrew to do it?

Chant is a sacred, contemplative practice that can be found in every religious tradition.  We are familiar with the ancient practice of leyning (chanting from the Torah scroll), but there are many contemporary Jewish chant modalities as well.

Now’s the time to give it a try!   Join Rebecca Gould (graduate of Kol Zimra — Rabbi Shefa Gold’s Chant Leadership Training Program), Emily Joselson and other members of our local chant group in exploring the practice of contemplative chant.  We will learn how chant “works” as a meditative, centering practice and we will learn some chants that often show up in Havurah services.  We will also explore some ways that you can bring chant into your own daily life, even if you don’t want to chant anywhere but in the shower!

You don’t need to be a “singer” or know how read to music.  Knowledge of Hebrew is also not necessary.  All you need is an open mind and heart and a willingness to try something new.  Come join us for an uplifting evening music, silence and renewal.

 

Israeli-American activist, writer and poet Moriel Rothman-Zecher ’11 will speak about conscientious objection from both a political and a personal lens (Moriel spent time in military prison in 2012 for refusing to enlist in the IDF) and about nonviolent activism and organizing against the occupation including a campaign to stop the demolition of Susiya, a village in the South Hebron Hills, another (successful) campaign to prevent the eviction of a Palestinian family from their home in Silwan in East Jerusalem, nonviolent demonstrations in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in places like Nabi Saleh, Sheikh Jarrah as well as recent demonstrations and organizing efforts in Tel Aviv against the recent war on Gaza, which were met with repression and violence, both from the police and from pro-war counter protestors.

WHEN: Wednesday, February 25, 2015, 4:30 – 6pm
WHERE: Dana Auditorium

Sponsored by the Education Studies Program, Wonnacott Commons, Arabic Department, Middle East Studies, and the Academic Enrichment Fund.

February 24, 2015

David Freidenreich, Colby College
Title: “Muslims Killed Christ?  A Preposterous Medieval Allegation and its Implications”
Venue: McCardell Bicentennial Hall 220
Time:  4:30 PM

Sponsored by the Program in Jewish Studies (Aquinnah fund) and Middle East Studies

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March 12, 2015

Hannah A. Quint Lecture in Jewish Studies
Maud Mandel, Brown University
Title: “Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict”
Venue: McCardell Bicentennial Hall 220
Time:  4:30 PM

Access the Jewish Studies calendar for these events and others.