Everthing is God: A Jewish Spiritual Woodstock this hursday

Date:	Thursday, October 29, 2009
Time:	6:00pm - 10:00pm
Location:	Center for Jewish History

Join The Forward, YIVO, Zeek, and over 20 cosponsoring organizations for an unprecedented evening of celebration, conversation, and community marking the publication of author-activist Jay Michaelson's new book, "Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism."

There are three parts to this amazing event:

1. A panel discussion on "Is there a new Jewish spirituality?" featuring Rabbi Michael Paley (UJA Federation), Dr. Jonathan Brent (YIVO), Professor Caryn Aviv (Univ. of Denver, "New Jews"), Rabbi David Ingber (Romemu), and Jay Michaelson (Forward, Zeek). The panel will discuss the "new Jewish culture" and the new forms of Jewish spirituality emerging in the 21st century, how such forms resemble and differ from past ones, and what it means that Jews are post-denominationally, post-modernly, and cross-culturally creating their own religious and secular approaches to Jewish spirituality.

2. After the panel will be a "Spiritual Woodstock," a country fair featuring representatives from Altshul, AJWS-AVODAH Partnership, Brooklyn Jews, Eden Village, Hasoferet, Hazon, Institute for Jewish Spirituality, Isabella Freedman, Jewish Farm School, Jewish Meditation Center of Brooklyn, Jewschool, JewishPrayerDance, Kehilat Hadar, Kirtan Rabbi, Kohenet, Kol Zimrah, Limmud NY, Makom@the JCC, Mechon Hadar, Mimaamakim, Moishe House, Moving Traditions, Nehirim, New Shabbat Table, Romemu, Shemspeed, Tel Shemesh, Teva Learning Center,& Zeek.

Meet the people changing the Jewish world in person! Network! Eat hors d'oeuvres! Buy books! This is an unbelievable opportunity to interact one-on-one with some of the most exciting Jewish innovators on the planet. What's more, everyone you know is coming.

3. Finally, after an hour of shmoozing and cocktails, we will rock the house (or Center, as the case may be) to the sounds of Darshan (Ephryme+Shir), Matthue Roth, DJ Dreamkote, and other performers.

All this for $5 in advance or $7 at the door -- or FREE with purchase of Jay's book. (If you buy an advance ticket, you'll get a coupon for $5 off the price.)

Tickets are available online at:
http://www.smarttix.com/show.aspx?EID=&showCode=EVE124&GUID=2aa2ff9c-0ec9-4664-a8c8-13470cbce55c

Schedule of events:

6-7pm: Welcome, 'Spiritual Woodstock' organization fair part 1, mingle, book-signing, hang out, get a good seat for the panel

7-8pm: Panel (starts at 7pm sharp!)

8-9pm: 'Spiritual Woodstock' organization fair, kosher organic vegan yummy food by Sacred Chow, DJ Dreamkote, book-signing

9-930: Music performance by Darshan & performance by Matthue Roth

Presented by the Forward, Zeek, Romemu, and the YIVO Institute, together with cosponsoring organizations Altshul, AJWS-AVODAH Partnership, Brooklyn Jews, Bklyn Meditation Center, Eden Village, Hasoferet, Hazon, Institute for Jewish Spirituality, Isabella Freedman, Jewish Farm School, Jewish Meditation Center of Brooklyn, JewishPrayerDance, Jewschool, Kehilat Hadar, Kirtan Rabbi, Kohenet, Kol Zimrah, Limmud NY, Makom@the JCC, Mechon Hadar, Mimaamakim, Moishe House, Moving Traditions, Nehirim, New Shabbat Table, Park Slope Jewish Center, Romemu, Shemspeed, Tel Shemesh, Teva Learning Center, B'nai Jeshrun's Tzeirim (20's and 30's) & Zeek.

Visit our NEW Website and see our Rooster Special

We're thrilled to unveil a new version of our website, which features a fresh design, new logo and a $1,000 discount!

That's right, our Rooster Special entitles the first three registrations for a 3+ week session to a huge discount.

What are you waiting for... visit http://edenvillagecamp.org/ today!

Yoni & Viv sharing at Elyakeem's New Shabbat Table in NYC

September 11 Special Guest Speakers, Personal Torah by: Yoni Stadlin and Vivian Lehrer, the couple who Founded Eden Village Camp: www.edenvillagecamp.org, will give their own personal thoughts on the weekly Torah portion of Nitzavim/Vayelech.

Friday Night Dinner, September 11, 2009, 9:00PM (sharp)
Location: JCC in Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Avenue @ 76th St. NY, NY
To register, call the JCC: 646.505.5708 and ask for
the "NEW SHABBAT TABLE DINNER" or register online by going to:
http://www.jccmanhattan.org/category.aspx?catid=1978#20217

The food will be kosher vegetarian (pesco fish served) and the price is
$28 for JCC members and $30 for nonmembers
info: NewShabbatTable@gmail.com

If you would like to come visit camp, work or farm, we invite you to come up on Sundays in Aug.

Just email welcome@edenvillagecamp.org and we'll set you up!

Momentum... building.....

Folks are arriving from all over to help build the stage, make gorgeous signs, prepare the work projects, and much more.... we're so excited to expand our community a hundredfold on Sunday! The lineup of teachers and musicians is amazing, as are the projects we might accomplish.

Come on over!

Helping hands- Sunday June 28th

You are warmly invited to camp this Sunday, June 28th, from 10 AM till sunset, for a work-day in the woods of cleaning long-unused spaces and gathering/organizing gear from around camp... all in preparation for the big Festival on July 12th! To RSVP and for questions, please email Festival@EdenVillageCamp.org. Come whether it's sunny or liquid-y, and bring your lunch (we'll have drinks and snacks).

la chaim

Tomatoes and squash have popped out of the plants in camps garden! Ah-mazing And the apple tree is alive, green and thriving after we picked off all of the hundreds of caterpillars.

life at camp

Today, the goslings in the lake learned to fly and flew off with their parents! And we just learned a lesson in organic gardening from discovering, then picking, 100 slugs from the garden. This morning we woke up to a wild turkey grazing just outside in the back yard, and last week we saw the first firefly of the season... life at camp is so full! Yoni and Vivian

to CAMP!

Vivian and Yoni are moving up to camp today for the summer! It's a new day!

Advisory Circles (committees)

We had an incredible gathering last night and began 7 Advisory Circles and would like to invite you to join one or several.
To join a group, click on the topic(s) below, and then click on "join group" on the right side of the page.

Pluralism
Fundraising
Zero Waste Goal
Programming
Food
Recruitment
Site Planning

confirming meeting tonight

Just to confirm, yes, we are having a camp meeting tonight and everyone is invited!
It is at 7 pm on the upperwest side.
Email EdenVillageCamp@gmail.com for our address.

Permaculture

A group of about 18 of us are having a thriving time at our permaculture certification course. We are learning lots of tools, techniques and inspirations for promoting human and environmental needs. Our teachers are incredible!

And, this is one of the first, if not the first, course of this type to regularly compare, contrast and collaberate with Jewish teachings.

Here are some great quotes and pictures below to give you a taste of what this is about:

"Permaculture is the art of not pooping where you sleep"
"We want to do the greatest amount of good, for the largest number of beings/people, for the longest amount of time, with the least amount of work"
"Permaculture is prolonged and thoughtfull observation instead of protracted and thoughtless action"
"Permaculture meets human needs while increasing ecosystem health"
"The Garden grows the gardener"
"You don't have a slug problem, you have a frog deficiency"
"Take responsibility for your own existence"
"We are waxing our surfboards for the waves that are coming"
"All of Humanity lives off of a delicate two inch membrane called top soil!"
"Where is your bio-region?"
"Permaculture is a macro efficient regenerative life design system where the inputs are the outputs and the outputs are the inputs"
"You know when you find a great teacher because she'll have great students"

Pictures from Permaculture certification course

This camp is primarily about positively transforming individual campers.
On top of this, our particular camp is about playing an active role in making a sweeter world/community/ecosystem.

What has been blowing me away is all of your support and love towards this camp. I have been focusing so much on the campers and the mission and kind of forgot about the personal impact this would have on me. I am amazed with all new levels of inspiration from so many peoples willingness and dedication to make this dream thrive and am overflowing with gratitude!
Toda!
Yoni

past and future

From the 1940's to the '70's, the camp that ran on our site was called Camp Moonbeam. I just connected with an excited alumni-
Here is the website for Camp Moonbeam!
http://www.campmoonbeam.com/

April 22, 7 pm, Camp Visioning/sharing/updateing/singing

Come gather round people, wherever you roam..and lets make a camp!
You are invited to come over to our apartment on April 22 to hear the latest updates about camp making, share your ideas, and we'll be launching 5 advisory circles (committees).
They are: zero waste, pluralism, food, programing, and site-planning. After this gathering, the advisory circles will invite people to join online circling.

Email edenvillagecamp@gmail.com for directions.
We live on the upper west side of New York City, and we'll meet at 7:00 pm on Weds. April 22. Lots of good info so try to make it on time.
Feel free to bring food, friends and music makers. We already have a camp song!

We are shopping around for and hiring a marketing team in the next two weeks to co-create our webpage and brochure.

TeePee at camp

We just got a TeePee for camp this is 24 feet in diameter!

Camp Background Story

A couple of years ago, while doing the dishes, an idea was seeded~

The idea was to start a new Jewish overnight summer camp based on environmentalism, social justice and spirituality.

To start something new, to build something new, to conjure our ideals, best practices and passions and pour them into something that will dramatically and positively affect this world, our world.

With amazing help from friends and family (community), we (founders Yoni Stadlin and Vivian Lehrer) started writing down the dream. A few months later, we found out about a new generous grant from the Foundation for Jewish Camp. The FJC wanted to start 5 new specialty camps, and had the money to do so from a major funder called the Jim Joseph Foundation. We spent months and many nights working on the many elements of the proposal, and the day after our wedding found out that our camp was accepted!

The grant asks that we do not buy or build a new camp, and instead rent an empty camp. On a synchronistic Monday afternoon, both the New York Federation and Yoni called the same friend (angel). The Federation commented, as an aside, to this angel that they had an empty camp and were looking for a Jewish environmental leadership camp vision... minutes later, we called the angel to tell her about our camp!

Sooo, we have a home! The site is 248 acres, with an 8-acre lake, pool, hills, bunks, kitchen & cafeteria, fields, space; it is an hour and fifteen minutes north of New York City, near the town of Cold Spring. There was a camp running at the site up until a few years ago. The site could definitely use some love. Campers are not coming until the summer of 2010, so we have this summer to build the farm, build some trails, pop up some yurts and clean the place up (see D-tails section for more about this summer).

An amazing organization called the Jewish Farm School has joined with us and will be planting, harvesting and teaching from the land. The camp will have a zero waste goal, use renewable energies, have a working organic farm, and use green building practices. The camp will be for all genders and all kinds of Jewish kids. There is a whole lot to write about the camp, and we hope that you will join the conversation.

We feel an exceptionally humongous amount of gratitude, and are having an incredible time building this dream. And hey, if you know of any kids or counselors or families that you think may be interested, please let us know!

view of camp from the clouds

FYi

FYI-
Our temporary and awesome webpage is up- Thanks Shir!
EdenVillageCamp.org

and we have a facebook and youtube page~ Eden Village meets the internet.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Eden-Village-Camp/71388365086?ref=nf
and
http://www.youtube.com/user/edenvillagecamp

Here is where the farm will be!!!!

Camp Visit with Yakir

Went to visit and explore camp yesterday with Yakir Manela. It was a dream come true to go tromping and frolicking deep in the woods. We found the appalacian trail by following our noses and memories from maps. We experienced many hawks, including a nesting pair, and saw what looked like a baby beaver, but was probably some other kind of swimmy land/water creature, and saw HUUUGGGEEEE fish. I mean huge, and there was a team of them lounging just beneath the surface with some fins popping out. Here are some pics:

Welcome

Welcome to Eden Village Camps Blogumentary. The creation of this camp is a collaborative dream of many people, and we hope that this blog will share our past, keep ya in the loop for the present, and inspire our future!