We hope you are healthy and doing okay at this time.  We are thinking about our Beth El community and hoping we can be together in person soon.  As you can imagine, it will not be realistic to hold an in-person retreat in May.  We’ve been in frequent contact with the camp to explore our next steps and will communicate with you as soon as we have clear information.

Last year, Beth El dreamt of building community and celebrating Shabbat together outside of the walls of our building. Our first

Congregation Beth El retreat was such a success, so we are once again celebrating Shabbat “off the grid”. We hope you will join us Memorial Day Weekend, May 22-24, at Camp Nah-Jee-Wah, located at 570 Sawkill Road in Millford, Pennsylvania in the Poconos. The drive to camp can be as short as 90 minutes, but as we learned last year, please keep in mind that there may be additional traffic on the Friday afternoon of Memorial Day Weekend. Our retreat schedule will take this into consideration. We will welcome in Shabbat with Kabbalat Shabbat services at 6:00pm so please arrive by 5:00pm so that we can welcome Shabbat together at the appropriate time.

The camp facility is fully kosher and we will take advantage of their outdoor amphitheater, athletic fields, swimming pools, high and low ropes courses, and the lakefront. All families will have a cabin for themselves. Please make us aware if you’d prefer to share a cabin with another family (Please note: there is no change in price in doing so).

The cost for the retreat is $285 per adult. All children under the age of 18 years old are FREE. 
Your stay at Camp Nah-Jee-Wah, a fully Kosher facility, includes:

• Stay from May 22 – 24 2020
• A cabin with enough twin beds for your whole family, a bathroom, and a shower.
• Six Kosher meals (Friday night Shabbat dinner through Sunday lunch)
• Plenty of snacks
• Access to all Nah-Jee-Wah fields, pools, lake, and activities
• Pillows and Linens

Please keep in mind that this is a campsite, not a retreat facility. Each cabin has twin beds and their own bathrooms and showers. Families needing a portable crib will need to bring that themselves. The facility provides pillows and linens, but you may want to bring additional blankets as it may get cool at night in the Poconos. Each individual is also responsible for bringing their own towels.

We can begin taking advantage of the facilities at 3:00pm on Friday afternoon. Our first meal will be Shabbat dinner on Friday evening. Then, the final meal provided by camp will be lunch on Sunday. Following lunch on Sunday, we are welcome to continue using the camp facilities until 3:30pm.

Finances should never be a barrier to participation in any Beth El program, especially a retreat. If you would like to attend, but need financial assistance, please contact Rabbi Olitzky for a confidential conversation.

Thank you to One Happy Camper NJ and the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest NJ for a generous grant towards programming for our retreat.

For questions about the retreat, please contact Retreat committee chairs Dayna Weintraub and Miri Wexler.

We are excited to build upon last year’s incredibly successful retreat. We see this upcoming retreat as an opportunity to continue to build our broader community while starting to differentiate for the unique needs of different groups (young families, teens, etc.) Our retreat committee is currently discussing and research various options for childcare arrangements as well as starting to discuss differentiated programming for parts of the weekend. More information will be sent to young families including any additional childcare fees.