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Checkout Pesach in the Berkshires 2025 at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in the Berkshires Watch Video

Passover Program in Connecticut

Spend Pesach in the Berkshires!

Celebrate Passover surrounded by the beautiful foothills of the Berkshire Mountains at Isabella Freedman. We are about 2 hours from New York City, 3 hours from Boston, and 1 hour from Hartford.

~ PROGRAMMING ~

Enjoy tours of our organic farm and guided trail hikes with extended excursion options. We offer pickling and cheese making workshops, boating, and many other perennial favorites.

While many of our activities are family-friendly, there will also be dedicated programming for kids throughout the week. These will use our farm and the natural environment of the retreat center.

Kids programming will be outdoors as much as possible, including in the rain; a raincoat, rain boots, hiking boots or sneakers, and a labeled water bottle are required. There will be gan for young children ages 2-5 and camp for kids 5-12.

A sample schedule is posted on our website to give you a flavor for the amazing programming options that we offer.

~ SEDERS ~

There are two options for each Seder. You can join a Communal Seder in our Dining Room or hold your own semi-private Seder as a family in our Library. Please indicate your preference in your registration. On the second day of Pesach, we also offer a kids seder (at an earlier time).

~ DINING ~

Our kitchen and dining room are under the supervision of the Hartford Kashrut Commission.

Our culinary team prepares three meals a day (starting with dinner on your arrival day, through breakfast on your departure day). On Yom Tov, we offer an earlier dinner option for children and a small snack for adults.

Our staff can accommodate most dietary restrictions with enough notice – please be sure to note these requirements on your registration forms. All meals are served buffet-style.

A self-service beverage bar featuring fair-trade organically grown coffee, hot tea, iced tea, and water is always available, along with snacks.

Our innovative chefs create farm-to-table magic. The ingredients we use reflect our values in the larger world. We purchase organic, local, and fair-trade products to promote environmental stewardship, vibrant local economies, good working conditions, and animal welfare. A significant amount of our produce is grown on campus and we employ traditional season-extending methods such as greenhouse and hoop-house growing, pickling, freezing, canning, drying, and root cellar-ing to bring farm food to our table year-round.

~ ACCOMMODATIONS ~

We invite you to enjoy the simplicity, comfort, and charm of our country lodging. Each of our nine lodges has its own unique character. Our accommodations are air-conditioned during the summer months and heated throughout the winter. Some buildings have rooms with private baths; others offer shared bathrooms for two or three rooms. Handicap-accessible rooms are also available upon request.

Standard Rooms

Most rooms have a queen-sized bed and one twin, with a few rooms having just a queen or two twins. These are our most spacious rooms.

Basic Rooms

Basic Rooms include a pair of rooms sharing a bathroom down the hall. Most of these rooms have a Queen and a Twin bed, while some only have a Queen or two twins.

Dorm Rooms

Dorm Rooms have bathrooms accessed through an interior hallway and have either two twins or a bunkbed and a twin.

~ DAVENING AND LEARNING ~

We will be offering an Orthodox minyan with lots of participatory singing and thoughtful words of Torah.

Guests can attend traditional-style classes by renowned teachers and scholars, in addition to outdoor experiential learning that connects Pesach with the land.

1 Review for Pesach in the Berkshires 2025 at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in the Berkshires

Joel Friedland

1 Reviews

Pleasant and warm experience with observant, liberal Jews

4.0/ 5

Isabella Freedman is a winterized Summer Camp for senior citizens. 160 guests or so are accommodated. I was there from Friday before Sabbath through Tuesday, April 15, the third day of Passover. There were about 15 couples with kids — toddlers to teens — and a gay couple with an infant. The day camp is well run and the kids were happy. About a third of the guests were over 65 and more than half were over 50. About a dozen guests were single men and women, mostly widows and widowers. Synagogue services were great. It seemed like everyone had gone to Ramah (or the equivalent of Orthodox camps), remembered all the melodies, and believed in singing, in tune, together. When everyone hit some chords just right, it felt like being swaddled in a blanket of sweet sound. The rabbis and guest speakers thought through their presentations and did NOT “phone it in”. Most everyone behaved like they were “Frum from Birth”, even if they were Baal Teshuvas. No one was pompous. or self righteous. No one discussed politics. Everyone was environmentally conscious. The food was tasty at every meal. Vegetarians who eat no meat, no dairy, and no fish were well fed. The vegetable side dishes and main dishes were superior to what’s served at vegetarian Indian and Chinese restaurants. Acorn squash with pepitas, asparagus slaw, bok choy with ginger, eggplant with garlic, chopped potatoes with garlic, braised swiss chard, scallion potato pancakes, glazed turnips, vegetable fritters, and quinoa were all very good. Lunch on the first day of Passover was cold poached salmon. Dinner on the second day was chunks of cold, rare roast beef. At $200 per day in a dorm room, this was very reasonable for going away for Passover and a great experience.

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