Every spring since 1979, members of Kehila Chadasha unwind at a weekend retreat, spending time in nature and bonding with other families within the egalitarian Jewish congregation.
The retreat includes a Friday night dinner, Saturday morning Shabbat services, classes and workshops on Saturday afternoon, and a Saturday night dinner. While the community has hosted the retreat at various locations since its inception, in recent years, the group has gathered at Fox Haven Organic Farm, Ecological Retreat & Learning Center in the Catoctin Valley of Frederick County, Maryland.
They sing around a campfire with songleader Lev Axler, dine on communal vegetarian meals and engage in Jewish learning with Rabbi Ariel Tovlev.
“The idea that we have been able to maintain this tradition for our community, I think, is amazing,” said Lee Coykendall, a longtime Kehila Chadasha member who helps organize the annual retreat. “You see the minute people get out of their cars, they just surrender to the beauty of where we are and [the] community.”
She added that the tradition began with Kehila Chadasha’s founding members and “this idea to get away and to spend time with each other.”
Each year’s retreat follows a theme based on the week’s Torah portion. The theme of this year’s retreat, from May 15 to 16, is “Through the Wilderness,” based on the Torah portion, Bamidbar — “In the Wilderness” — during which Jewish ancestors began their trek through the desert. Rabbi Tovlev will teach the group how to navigate one’s spiritual and physical wildernesses, drawing upon environmental wisdom and Jewish tradition.
The rabbi also plans to introduce a concept known as spiritual mapping.
“The gist of it is that we each have a journey of where we start out and where we want to go, our goals for who we want to be, and each of us has different roadblocks depending on who we are,” Tovlev said. “We each have different personalities, strengths, weaknesses, challenges and struggles to work through, and our own ways in which navigation might be easy or difficult. Therefore, we each have our own maps.”
He will lead the group in creating individual “spiritual roadmaps.”
“We [will] take advantage of the fact that we are in the wilderness and … use the location to amplify and surround the themes that come up with the Torah section,” Coykendall said. “[Fox Haven is] this beautiful organic farm with lots of acres, the ability to get into the woods [and] the gardening world.”
This year, the community will embark on a foraging session led by an expert. Half of the group will forage in the woods while the other half does a slow looking activity, then they’ll swap places.
“There’s free time to just sit,” Coykendall said. “What I like is there’s something for everybody. The kids sort of have free rein because we’re out in the country — we have access to the whole property. … There’s place to run around, there’s place to play Frisbee, there’s a place to sit on the porch.”
At one point, some members used to play games of softball with Rabbi David Shneyer, one of the founders of Kehila Chadasha who has served the community for upwards of four decades.
Coykendall, her husband and their two sons have attended the retreat for 25 years, beginning when they were new members.
“What sealed it for me and what I found so special was that there was such a strong sense of community,” Coykendall said. “I couldn’t have felt more welcome.”
The retreat’s natural, outdoor surroundings are more conducive to connecting with fellow members than a Sunday school session or a lecture, she added.
“The weekend really provides a chance for us as a community to deepen our relationships with one another, and it really did that for me,” Coykendall said. “Our boys found the retreat magical … We have a lot of time to just be with each other as community members.”
This year’s retreat is Tovlev’s second annual retreat as the community’s rabbi. “I think when we are in nature, it is a really great opportunity to kind of relax, let go,” he said. “We’re far away from our responsibilities and our day-to-day lives.”
Attendees will connect in fun, traditional ways — 13-year-old Izzy Hillman’s favorite retreat memory is singing songs around the campfire and eating s’mores — but also get to know each other on a deeper level through the spiritual exploration activity, Tovlev said.
Hillman’s mom, Michelle Shefter, has taken her family to the annual retreat since Hillman was a toddler.
“It’s a really nice way to connect with other members of the community in a more relaxed setting,” Shefter wrote in a statement to Washington Jewish Week. “Over the years, the retreats are where I had the opportunity to get to know other members better.”
The first retreat in 1979 drew about 20 or 25 families, basically the entire congregation.
“Because it was so small, everybody got involved,” said founding member Gordon Fields, husband of the late Karen Fields after whom the retreat is named. “Virtually everybody felt the obligation to pitch in and get involved because it was such a small new group.”
Kehila Chadasha is still a relatively small community today, with about 100 families.
The retreat has evolved over time, adapting to members’ busier schedules.
In the early years, the Kehila Chadasha community drove out to Georgetown University’s retreat site. Then later, it was a Jewish summer camp in West Virginia or another rustic site for a full weekend — Friday evening through lunchtime on Sunday.
Longtime retreat chair Karen Fields, one of Kehila Chadasha’s founding members, and two co-organizers arrived before everyone else on Friday to prepare the food.
“The big event was turkey soup because we would have so many turkeys,” Gordon Fields recalled. “We would make … two types of turkey soup: a kosher turkey soup and a treyf turkey soup, and then we would sell it in large gallon jars for $1 a jar at the end of the retreat, on Sunday after lunch, and that would be a fundraiser for Kehila [Chadasha].”
Another hallmark of the retreat was a community talent show, according to Fields, where members with varying degrees of talent would perform for the group — some just for fun.
These days, the retreat no longer spans a full weekend, ending instead on Saturday night, due to youth sporting events or other conflicts. Gone are the days of “everybody working in the kitchen” most of the weekend in favor of catering more meals, Fields said — Coykendall still cooks on the first day.
“The retreat lost some of its rustic nature as parents started saying, ‘I can’t come because my kid has a soccer game,’” he said.
“But really, the essence of the retreat hasn’t changed,” Coykendall said.
She spoke to the Kehila Chadasha community’s “many wonderful” events. “This is one of them and because I felt so firmly about it, I love gifting my time to make sure it continues,” she said.
