Community members celebrate at the Fall Shabbaton, which was held Nov. 8-9 at Colby College in Waterville by the Center for Small Town Jewish Life. Photo courtesy of the Center for Small Town Jewish Life

WATERVILLE — The Center for Small Town Jewish Life attracted 250 people for a weekend of singing, learning and community building at the group’s annual Fall Shabbaton earlier this month at Colby College.

Attendees Nov. 8-9 included nearly 100 students from seven colleges across Maine, the highest number since the first Fall Shabbaton 11 years ago.

Some colleges, like Bar Harbor’s College of the Atlantic and Southern Maine Community College in South Portland, had students present for the first time.

Mollie Block, a second-year at Colby College and the Shabbaton Fellow for the Center for Small Town Jewish Life, said the weekend gave her the opportunity to meet other Jewish college students.

“It’s just a really unique experience to be meeting with all these people from across the state who you have this thing in common with,” Block said. “It’s like, why else would we be together?”

Alongside student attendees were generations of Jewish people from across Maine, hailing from Presque Isle to Biddeford, and from Wilton to Belfast.

The Center for Small Town Jewish Life, with its mission to cultivate “vibrant, socially equitable communities rooted in their own sense of place, nourished by transformational learning, and intertwined with the broader Jewish world,” intentionally tries to make its convenings as diverse and vibrant as possible, said Rabbi Rachel Isaacs, of Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville.

“We try and bring every stream of Judaism and increasingly to bring different voices from the diaspora to Colby to celebrate Jewish music and bring people together across the state for a celebration of Jewish life and learning,” Isaacs said.

The weekend is centered around Shabbat, a Jewish day of rest that happens from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday each week. At the Friday night service Nov. 8, guest leaders Rabbi Ben Spratt and Cantor Shayna De Lowe of New York City joined Isaacs, student fellows and rabbinical apprentices in song and prayer. 

One special prayer, the “Prayer of Mothers for Life and Peace,” was recited in Hebrew, Arabic and English by community members of different faiths and backgrounds. In a time of heightened turmoil in the country and ongoing violence in the Middle East, the moment highlighted the importance of strengthening community across differences, Isaacs said.

“Outside of maybe Jerusalem, I can’t think of many places where we would see that kind of diversity coming together in a common spirit, community and mutual respect, and I’m really proud that Waterville can be one of those places,” Isaacs said.

Throughout the weekend, guests were encouraged to attend programs for children, teens, college students and adults, including Torah study, meditation sessions and a midday hike. This year, activities and services stretched across multiple buildings on campus to fit everyone, Block said.

College students gather for dinner Nov. 8 at the Fall Shabbaton at Colby College in Waterville. Photo courtesy of the Center for Small Town Jewish Life

“Even if I didn’t get to talk to everybody — because there were so many people there, it was impossible to talk to everyone — it was so cool to just be in a room and be like, ‘We all are carving time out of our busy college schedules to be here meeting each other and talking about Jewish identity,'” Block said. “I think that’s cool, and not necessarily something I thought that I was going to have in college.”

The Fall Shabbaton was founded in 2013 to create a space for the celebration of Jewish music in central Maine. Less than 100 people attended that first year, and the event was mostly targeted at bringing college students together.

Since then, the annual event has expanded to include all ages and backgrounds, celebrating music like Jewish bluegrass, chanting, traditional Jewish music with a gospel choir, and both reform and conservative services. Next year, Iraqi-Jewish musician Yoni Avi Battat is slated to perform at the Fall Shabbaton.

Isaacs said events like the Fall Shabbaton set the stage for encounters that might not happen otherwise.

“When you are in a state with a small Jewish population, you need to find ways for Jews of every religious type, every political stripe, and of every generation and every geographical location — you need to bring people together to a common place to do something ambitious, in order for the community to thrive,” Isaacs said.