Pass/Age Weekend Retreat
April 4 - April 6
Pass/Age Weekend Retreat
April 4-6, 2025
NYC
What does it look like to embody Jewish identity on your own terms? How might you marshal the tools of Jewish text, ritual, and practice to make authentic meaning in your life now? Join us for an immersive weekend retreat in NYC in community with other Seekers in their 20s and 30s.
Pricing:
Angel assisted ($250) — for artists, educators, and those that really needed
Standard ($350) — covers the true cost of the program
I’m an Angel ($450) — helps to subsidize someone else’s participation
Pass/Age is Lab/Shul’s re-imagined rite of passage program for Jewish adults seeking to make more meaning in their lives — perhaps those looking to reinvestigate and reinvigorate an existing Jewish practice or those looking to make sense of a milestone or shift currently underway in their lives by calling on Jewish wisdom. Over the course of an immersive experiential weekend in a cohort of other adults, using the form and content of the Passover Seder as a frame for our learning, participants will engage deeply with our inherited legacy of texts and traditions, explore personal paths of meaning-making, and co-create a communal ritual utilizing Lab/Shul’s signature Storahtelling methodology.
Register for the Retreat here >
Schedule
Friday, April 4th – Lower Manhattan
From 3pm – Check-in
5-6:30pm – Special Pass/Age Happy Hour
7-8:30pm – Sabbath Queen Ritual
8:30-10pm – Community Dinner
Saturday, April 5th – Brooklyn
9-10am – Coffee and breakfast hour
10am-noon – Morning learning session
12-1:30pm – Lunch
1:30-3pm – Afternoon session
3-3:30pm – Break
3:30-5pm – Afternoon session
5-6:30pm – Dinner + Havdallah
TBD – Optional Evening Activity (e.g., show, exhibit, other cultural event)
Sunday, April 6th – Brooklyn
9-10am – Coffee and breakfast hour
10am-noon – Morning learning/work session
12-2:30pm – Lunch + closing ritual
2:30-3pm – Final circle
Register for the Retreat here >
Facilitators
The weekend will be co-facilitated by Ben Freeman & Rhona Silverbush. We invite you to explore their backgrounds here:
- BEN FREEMAN
Ben Freeman is a multi-disciplinary artist, educator, and spiritual care provider. He is excited to be back in New York City and deeply honored to join the ritual team at Lab/Shul. His prior work includes designing and facilitating an intergenerational storytelling program with LGBTQ+ elders and “youngers,” facilitating sections for a course on critical media literacy at Lucasfilm, and working in the spiritual care departments of Hebrew SeniorLife and Boston Children’s Hospital. He’s currently developing a chaplaincy practice for theater, film, and TV, the vision of which is to meet growing demands for mental health support and safe, caring, and culturally responsive working conditions through design and facilitation of creative process with deep attention to the spiritual needs and wellbeing of artists, audiences, and technicians. Ben is a graduate of Brown University, Harvard Divinity School, and the Spiritual Direction Practicum at Still Harbor, as well as a founding member of the Glitter Goddess Collective. You can find his music on Spotify, Apple Music and Soundcloud.
- RHONA SILVERBUSH
Putting her eclectic background to good use, Rhona Silverbush wears many hats throughout the course of any given day. She studied psychology and theater at Brandeis University and holds a Juris Doctor from Boston College Law School. After practicing immigration law, primarily representing asylum seekers, she returned to her first loves, writing and theater. Rhona is the co-author of Speak the Speech! Shakespeare’s Monologues Illuminated (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002) and has taught theater to all age groups from tots to adults, currently coaching professional actors in Shakespeare. She is the co-author of the Terrific Toddlers series of nine picture books for toddlers, published by the American Psychological Association’s Magination Press. She wrote ‘wichcraft: craft a sandwich into a meal–and a meal into a sandwich with chefs Tom Colicchio and Sisha Ortuzar (Clarkson Potter, 2009). And she has taught at Columbia University Teachers College. Throughout it all, from college onward, she has also tutored and prepped young people and adults for their Bar/Bat/B Mitzvahs, working with students with learning challenges and special needs as well as with typical learners, and helping ensure that each rite of passage is imbued with meaning for the person undergoing it. She has devised curricula for Lab/Shul’s Raising the Bar program and, with Ben Freeman, co-created and co-led the first Pass/Age program. Rhona is a freelance writer and editor, a consultant for families of children and teens with learning differences and special needs, and a smitten parent, step-parent and dog-parent.
