Online registration for the National Havurah Committee Summer Institute 2010 is now OPEN! Please register for the Institute, choose courses and housing options, and order apparel in advance. Read about kids' camp, child care, work-study and scholarship and fellowship opportunities.
Register for the NHC Summer Institute 2010
Chesapeake Retreat
NHC Chesapeake Retreat!
March 12-14, 2010
Join the National Havurah Committee, havurot and minyanim from across the Mid-Atlantic region for the NHC Chesapeake Retreat.
At the beginning of parashat VaYakhel-Pekudei, the Israelites are told to set apart time and space for the holiness of Shabbat. By the end, they have used their community's possessions to create a shelter for the Divine to dwell along them "throughout all of their journeys."
Take a weekend to examine the tension between the holiness of distinction and the holiness of integration, while experiencing the holiness of a community in which everyone gives of themself. Individuals, families, and havurot of all ages will gather to sing, pray, eat, relax, dance, and learn together.
Download the 2010 brochure!
NHC Summer Institute 2010
August 2 - 8, 2010
Franklin Pierce University, Rindge, NH
The NHC’s flagship program, the week-long Summer Institute, is a unique opportunity for serious study, moving prayer, spirited conversation, late-night jam sessions, singing, dancing, swimming, meditation, and hiking – all in the company of more than 300 people from a wide range of backgrounds. Each year, participants leave the Institute reinvigorated and excited to return to their home communities to share new ideas, skills, and experiences.
The theme of this year's Institute is “D'ror Yikra: Freedom for All" . Read about this year's courses.
From the Havurah! Newsletter Blog...
Announcing the NHC Resources Site
Submitted by nhc on Fri, 01/29/2010 - 21:37If you want to know about the birth, feeding, and care of independent havurot or DIY minyanim there's no place better than http://resources.havurah.org, the resouroces website of the National Havurah Committee (NHC).
Report from the NHC Summer Institute 2009
Submitted by nhc on Sun, 12/27/2009 - 19:45
By Russ Agdern and Marisa Harford, Institute Co-chairs
Where in the world can you thresh wheat, learn about where electricity comes from and how to conserve it, sing the divine, practice mussar (Jewish ethical study), trade ideas about how to build a better Jewish community, discuss the Israel-Palestine conflict, and dance your tuches off, all in one week? The Summer Institute, of course!
Havurah Resources Site Sampler
The Havurah Resources Site contains practical advice about starting a new Havurah, governance, finance, leading worship, and other programming including a special section on social justice. Here's a sample:
About the NHC
The National Havurah Committee (NHC) is a network of diverse individuals and communities dedicated to Jewish living and learning, community building, and tikkun olam (repairing the world). Since the 1970s, the NHC Summer Institute has been bringing together Jews from across North America to envision a joyful grassroots Judaism and provide the tools to help them create empowered Jewish lives and communities. The NHC is a nondenominational, multigenerational, egalitarian, and volunteer-run organization.
Institute 2010: Featured Course
M07 - The Glass is Half Jewish: Mixed Heritage, Conversion, and Intermarriage
Rebecca Ennen
Description
Mixed-heritage Jews are the present and future of the Jewish community. Gentiles are inextricably woven into our communities and personal heritages. Does this trend represent enrichment or watering-down? In the past as today, Jews have been committed to maintaining our distinctiveness, even as we adopted ideas and practices from neighboring cultures. How have Jews created, transformed, and deconstructed the boundaries between others and ourselves? Is there any such thing as half-Jewish? In search of new ways of understanding mixed heritage, conversion, and interfaith families, we will study a wide range of traditional, contemporary, autobiographical, theoretical, and ethnographic texts. We will share personal reflections on mixed ethnicity, faith, culture, and lifestyle.
Rebecca Ennen is the complicated child of a complicated Jewish-Catholic union. As a dialogue facilitator for Jewish Dialogue Group in Philadelphia, she helps Jews engage gracefully in thorny conversations. Rebecca is a 2008 and 2009-10 Yeshivat Hadar Fellow, where she studied traditional Jewish sources on peoplehood, conversion, and intermarriage. She co-created a daylong workshop for mixed heritage Jews, including children of intermarriage and converts, in March 2009.
Notes
Prerequisites: None. Translations for all course materials will be provided, but we will be looking at a wide range of classical texts, so participants should be minimally interested in focusing on text!
Categories
- Contemporary Issues
- Intermediate Text
- Morning Course