I'm very pleased to invite you to my home in Manhattan for a benefit supporting the extraordinary work of Eden Village Camp, the innovative Jewish farm-to-table & arts camp an hour north of NYC.

Monday, April 30th

6:00 – 8:00pm

Near Columbus Circle in Manhattan, NYC

Local organic Kosher hors d'oeuvres & wine served

Click here to buy your ticket: http://peteryarrowedenvillage.eventbrite.com/

The happiness, excitement and heartfelt way in which the Eden Village campers and staff interact is moving and beautiful. As founding president of Operation Respect, a non-profit working to assure each youth a respectful & safe learning climate, I am delighted to know of Eden Village as a place where kindness is cool.

I plan to share some songs, and we'll auction off a guitar specially hand-painted for the occasion. I'm honored to host this gathering of music, connection, and building a world with more kindness and inspiration for our young people!

All proceeds from our fundraiser will support scholarships for the transformative Eden Village experience. Please register for the event right now. (And at latest by Tuesday, April 24th) Register here: http://peteryarrowedenvillage.eventbrite.com/

L'Shalom and off we go!

Peter

P.S. – If you can't make it, please consider making a donation to support the scholarship fund: https://eden.donortools.com/my/funds/11072-Camper-Scholarship-Fund

~

Eden Village is honored to be recognized by the "Slingshot Guide" as one of the 50 most innovative Jewish organizations in North America!

Note: This is full of jokes that will make most sense if you were here during Summer 2011, but it works either way.

On September 25, 2011, Eden Village Camp held our first annual Festival of Eden. The event was a tangible way for the community to experientially connect with principles of sustainability, environmentalism, and Jewish tradition.

Eden Village Camp nourishes the connections between self, community, earth, and spirit with socially and environmentally conscious programming that is firmly rooted in Jewish tradition. The Festival of Eden showcased this philosophy through hands-on workshops on organic cooking, fermenting, keeping backyard chickens, natural building and more. We planted a peace pole on our farm, enjoyed our petting zoo, delved into the Jewish agricultural cycles and how they relate to the holidays, made gourmet Fall soups and solar-baked cookies, embarked on a spiritual hike in the forest, enjoyed live music all day, browsed tables set up by partner organizations and a silent auction…. a smorgasbord of learning and fun!

Excellent food – harvesting, preparing and enjoying – is a major part of our ethic. The Eden Village kosher organic kitchen prepared Chimichurri Roasted Veggie Seitan Skewers with a choice of sides, as well as artisan pizza in the camp’s cob-oven, which we built last spring during the Jewish Farm School’s natural building intensive course.
The food and farm-to-table workshops at the Festival of Eden illustrate the ways in which Eden Village is redefining the conversation and practice of what is possible in institutional food. The menus are determined by what is seasonally available from local farmers, what is harvested from the Farm at Eden Village, and what available ingredients we have. All our food for summer camp and Spring/Fall programs are made from scratch, and even food staples like rolled oats, beans, and sugar are organic.

The Festival of Eden connected the broad vision of making the world a better place with the small, personal, practical steps each of us can take to live more sustainably. Participants of all ages experienced the power of creating change, and gained skills and insight: how to make kraut, how our local ecosystems and food system work, how to thrive in the outdoors, how to make fire. It was an amazing day that offered a glimpse into our deeper community – when our campers immerse themselves here for a week or more, we see their self-esteem growing in step with their awareness and awe for the organic oneness of creation.

We want to make the connective, transformative experience of Eden Village Camp possible for all kids, regardless of their ability to pay. The Festival of Eden was our first large-scale fundraiser aimed at raising money for our Scholarship Fund. We were happy that we raised about $15K! We received over $80,000 of scholarship requests last year and were not able to meet the demand by a long shot. This festival, sponsored primarily by the amazing Saul Schottenstein Foundation B, helped us tremendously in nearing our fundraising goal, and also allowed us to reach new families, campers and community partners. Wonderful all around!

We’re endlessly grateful to the many partners that make Eden Village a reality, and were glad to see, inside of the Festival, a microcosm of our camp community and vision in action. May we all be blessed with an exciting sense of purpose, resilient connections, meaningful relationships and creative fun!

Fun + Meaning == A Complete Life Compass.

Come get a big dose of both fun and meaning at the innovative Festival of Eden, this Sunday, Sept. 25th, 2011, 12-7p at Eden Village Camp!

392 Dennytown Road, Putnam Valley, NY 10579

Celebrate the Organic Oneness of Life, all People and the Earth:

farming and greening workshops
organic farm-to-table food
live music

ADULTS $30, YOUTH AND STUDENTS $20
CONTACT ELANA FOR GROUP RATES

WHAT IS EDEN VILLAGE CAMP?

Eden Village Camp will be hosting the first annual Festival of Eden, a day full of farming and greening workshops, local organic food from our own and neighboring farms, live music, art, and nature adventures on our gorgeous 248-acre site in the Hudson Valley. All of the proceeds from the day will go to the Eden Village Camp Scholarship Fund. This year, we had over $80,000 requested in scholarship funds. Find out more…

HANDS-ON FARMING AND GREENING WORKSHOPS

Natural Building

Kraut Making

Composting 101

Seed Saving

Cheese Making

Herbal Medicine

Rope/Saddle Tree Climbing

Sheikh It Baby: Arabic Music by Jewish Musicians

Super Sprowtz: Veggie Puppetry

Geology of Eden Village

Exploring the Holidays in the Calendar Garden

Experiential Hikes

Tye Die Revolution

Converting to Veggie Oil

Drumming

WHAT WILL I EAT?

Local, organic, sustainably grown food! We will be providing food cooked from scratch in our kosher, supervised kitchen. We will also have food vendors and farmers selling a variety of delicious food.

Eatin' Village Kosher Organic Cafe

Beacon Bagel

Eatin' Village Cob Oven Pizzas

Block Factory Tamales

Farmers' Market featuring Adamah Kosher Pickled Products, Negev Nectars, Sprout Creek Farm, Equal Exchange, and Ample Hills Bicycle Powered Ice Creamer

LIVE MUSIC

Soul Farm

Chana Rothman

Shir Yaakov Band

Ta Shma Orchestra

Benji Fox Rosen Trio

Pesach Stadlin and the Funkadelix

HOW DO I GET THERE?

Directions, including bus directions, are available here.

Those looking to carpool can organize a ride on our rideshare board.

If you are coming by train, sign up for our Train Shuttle.

Farm
• Make challah from scratch
• Learn to use a solar cooker
• Make a cob oven
• Experience a farm not just as a place of food but of food, fiber, fun, fuel, farmacy, beauty and community
• Leave camp with the confidence that if I want, I can create and maintain my own garden on some scale
• Discover the deep and juicy connections between Judaism and agriculture
• Learn basics of natural building, especially building with earth
• Be able to identify many common food crops when growing in the field
• Practice a Jewish harvest, which shares food with those in need
• Make grape juice from grapes
• Milk a goat
• Hold a baby lamb
• Collect eggs
• Hold a chicken
• Care for bunnies, sheep, goats, and chickens
• Put on a beekeeper’s suit and help with tending our honeybees!

Music
• Know five chords on the guitar
• Play 3 new songs on guitar
• Sing out loud in a group
• Find out how to make up harmonies
• Improvise for 30 seconds in a freestyle circle
• Sing/Perform in front of a group
• Lead a song
• Write a song
• Record a song (or 3!)
• Feel comfortable holding a drumbeat

Yachdut (Judaism)
• Find something in Judaism that I care about
• Expand my relationship with my ancestral traditions
• Learn new angles to things I might already be familiar with
• Find a personal and unique connection to prayer. The outer world has no expectation of what that might look or feel like!
• Keep a journal
• Celebrate our community’s diversity and see it as an exciting adventure
• Feel that I’m part of a family here
• Lead the community – in saying the Shma or other prayer, a skit, a song
• Share words of wisdom or a story with the community
• Go up near the Torah during services
• Read Torah

Art
• Learn how something I use every day is made
• Find my “inner” artist
• Use art as a new way to express myself
• Make something I’ll be able to use in my Shabbas celebration (challah cover, candlestick holders, candles, etc.)
• Make an art piece to enhance the camp: a mural, decorate a room, make colorful signs for the farm
• Keep an art journal or sketchbook
• Learn to sew or crochet
• Make an art project entirely out of recycled materials
• Learn to see all the art “hidden” in the world
• Make 3 significant works of art during my session (of my choice)
• Make an art piece that expresses my view of the world
• Use art to educate others about injustices
• Use art to express my hope for the world
• Learn to fix my clothes
• Make pottery on a spinning wheel
• Learn how to felt a pouch or hat

Science of Nature
• Identify five trees
• Create a bug collection
• Survey the fish in the lake
• Learn owl calls
• Observe bird nests
• Find out what’s really going on with soil
• Use a field guide to track down mysteries (for example, “what kind of flower is this?”)
• Set up an experiment
• Use a microscope to see what you don’t normally see
• See the interconnection/interdependence of humans with other organisms

Pulse
• Create my own yoga pose
• Invent my own yoga sequence of poses
• Teach the sun salutation to others
• Do an advanced yoga pose that was hard for me at the beginning of camp
• Do a full split
• Make 5, 10 baskets in a row in basketball
• Invent a new way to play a familiar game
• Pass a basketball, soccer ball or frisbee firmly to a partner
• Run around the perimeter of camp
• Feel strong, healthy and powerful
• Feel happy about my body and the space it inhabits
• Care for my body

Waterfront
• Swim around the entire lake
• Build canoe & kayak skills and strokes: portage, sweep, C-stroke, J-stroke, draw/pry
• Build row-boating skills
• Sail a Sunfish
• Build my swim strokes and feel more comfortable swimming

Wilderness

Explorer:
• Light fire in the woods
• Cook a whole meal on fire in the forest
• Learn local history and stories of the native people of this land
• Build a modern shelter
• Learn a new knot
• Play games in the forest
• Sleep out overnight in a tent
• Discover three new animals in the forest
• Filter water in the forest

Pioneer:
• Create art in the forest
• Light a 1-match fire
• Find the North Star
• Tie 3 different knots
• Create a primitive shelter
• Camp overnight without a tent

Coyote:
• Make a bow drill set
• Set up own shelter
• Know “lost-proofing”
• Carve a spoon
• Practice “leave no trace” camping and hiking
• Learn map and compass skills
• Create a solar water still
• Know 7 different knots
• Make a primitive water filter
• Do trail work
• Feel at home in the woods
• Experience a moment of connection with all of creation

Herbalism:
• Learn the healing properties of familiar and new plants
• Make tinctures, salves, lotions and potions and use them to support your own and other people’s vibrant health!
• Sit silently in the woods for an hour (we call this “sit spot”)

As Eden Village Camp expands – 231 campers this year as of now, up from 134 in our first summer last year! — we have renovated new cabins, which of course need inspiring names. The theme is Jewish environmental heroes who memory we want to bless. For example, we have bunks named Heschel, Besht, Noach and Miriam.

Your suggestions invited!

Arriving onsite as a farm apprentice just a few weeks ago, I was beyond excited to get my hands dirty again growing the food that will feed us this season, and helping create programs to energize and educate people of all ages through the Spring, Summer and Fall.

It was inspiring noticing which perennials survived the winter, the daffodils piercing the brown forest with color, and the wild garlic chives that for so many signify the first life of Spring. (For this reason, some folks use chives as karpas, the vegetable found on the seder plate.)

In our first Homeschooling session of the season, we welcomed Pesach with a group of learners and enacted some of the story of Pesach! Together we journeyed into the wilderness (the woods surrounding our camp) en route to the Holy Land (the farm). We paused at times to notice creatures and colors we otherwise might have missed if not eager to spot them: luminous lichen (“i’ma lichen it!), new shoots, bird feathers. We listened to sounds we would miss if we were not silent: flapping wings of geese, the rustling of squirrels searching for food, creaking branches of the bare trees. We finally made it through this land of subtle beauties and arrived on the abundant, fertile farm, complete with a Hebrew Calendar Garden, in which there is a special plot of land to represent each month of the Hebrew calendar. In Nissan, the month that contains Pesach, we grow barley – because during this time of Nissan, the first harvest of barley took place. With our homeschoolers group, we planted parsley into the Nissan bed as well to evoke one of the items on the seder plate.

There is nothing like seeing the wonder in a learner’s eyes when experiencing the jewels of the natural world anew or really for the first time. There is nothing like expanding my own relationship with the land and her cycles. I feel so grateful to be part of this work to reconnect people to sustainable methods of growing food and living in harmony with the environment, through a lens that enhances Jewish values and re-explores Jewish traditions.

We drink four cups of wine at our seder and I think it is beautiful to remember that we also celebrate four seasons, work with four cardinal directions, and honor four elements. It is easy to connect the simcha of the seder with the natural world around us that calls to us to play with her.

We're thrilled to present our first-ever Eden Village Camp video!! We hope you get a sense of camp from it, and emerge smiling.

Please share this with anyone who might like to know that there is a Jewish organic farm, wilderness and arts camp!

Also, please visit our Spring events page! Tons of exciting family programming coming up, including Sugar Mapling this Sunday, Beekeeping 101, Family Farm & Picnic days, and more. http://www.jewishfarmschool.org/edenvillage/

Warmly,
Vivian, Yoni and the Eden Village family