PHOTO: BB360 Chief Community and Jewish Life Officer Kim Schneiderman leads a song for participants in a Divorce and Discovey retreat at Camp Tawonga in California. Schneiderman, along with retreat founder Rabbi Deborah Newbrun, will be offering the experience at BB Camp later this year. (Courtesy BB360)

By ROCKNE ROLL
The Jewish Review
Jewish tradition provides guidance and rituals for so much for the lifecycle, but very little when it comes to divorce. There’s been work afoot to change that, however, and it’s coming to Oregon.
Divorce and Discovery, a weekend retreat for those going through, or already divorced, is coming to BB Camp in Lincoln City from Oct. 17-20. It’s the brainchild of Rabbi Deborah Newbrun, the Director Emeritus of Camp Tawonga in California, who went through a painful divorce in the mid-90s and sought advice and support from rabbis she knew.
“I reached out and said, ‘My heart is broken. What does Judaism have for me?’” Rabbi Newbrun recalled. “And they said, ‘Nothing, really.’”
Scripture lays out how to dissolve a marriage, most notably through the issuance of a get, a written divorce document. There are many emotional facets of divorce, however, that are left wholly unaddressed. 
“It’s not transformational and it’s not spiritual,” Rabbi Newbrun said of a get. “It’s legal.”
She eventually undertook rabbinical training of her own at the Pluralistic Rabbinical Seminary, receiving her ordination in 2021. One of the graduation requirements was the creation of “something new in the Jewish space; something that didn’t exist before.” The pieces started to come together for Rabbi Newbrun.
“Maybe we could do divorce better in the 21st century,” she recalls thinking. “Basically, my goal was to create a sea change for how the Jewish community responds to divorce.”
The first retreat was in 2022 at Camp Tawonga and has attracted a growing number of participants – as well as support from the Covenant Foundation. With this support, the program is broadening its geographic reach beyond Northern California. 
The weekend-long program begins with the staff – rabbis, cantors, Jewish educators, and other professionals – all telling the story of their divorces or break-ups in long-term partner relationships. All the professionals leading the event have gone through divorce or long-term relationship breakup to help show participants that divorce can – and does- happen to people regardless of status.
One of those leaders is Kim Schneiderman, BB360’s Chief Community and Jewish Life Officer. Now 12 years removed from her own divorce, Schneiderman immediately connected with what Rabbi Newbrun was building and served as a song leader for the second session at Tawonga. When she joined BB360’s staff with the goal of building community, bringing Divorce and Discovery to Oregon seemed natural.
“It was so moving to hear what she was putting together for people who are in waves of grief,” Schneiderman said, referencing the ups and downs of divorce and its aftermath. “I feel like it’s a huge gift to offer it here to our community.”
The program is centered on small groups of six to eight participants, based on age cohorts, with one of the leadership staff facilitating conversation and the sharing of experiences. There is also an array of elective programs that help address the spectrum of feelings that come with divorce through a Jewish lens or provide experiences that help process what’s happened to them.
“We have a morning of electives that have to do with Judaism and grief, or Judaism and divorce or Judaism and something pertinent to what they’re going through,’ Rabbi Newbrun said. Afternoon activities include hiking, arts and crafts – including repurposing one’s ketubah (marriage contract) into something else of meaning - or sitting shiva for one’s marriage, an adaptation of the morning ritual following the death of a loved one. Another adapted ritual is a divorce-centered tashlich; the symbolic High Holy Days act of casting sins into a body of water is used to cast off the remnants of a former relationship which no longer serve. The small groups have Shabbat dinner together on Friday night, followed by a social hour, with Shabbat services on Saturday morning and Havdalah Saturday night – the ritual of separation from Shabbat taking on a unique significance for those who have separated from marriage. 
“[Havdalah] separates one thing that’s holy from another thing that’s holy,” Rabbi Newbrun said. “The Shabbat, which is holy, is perhaps the marriage; the ordinary days is perhaps you as single.”
BB360’s edition will have its own ritual adaptations, as it’s occurring over the first days of Sukkot – a schedule that was not by accident, Schneiderman explained.
“We’re going to bring that meaning into this whole weekend,” she said. “It’s purposeful that we are doing this during this festival.”
After a Saturday night talent show and silent dance party – participants don headphones which let them choose their own music while still getting a group dance experience – Sunday morning concludes with opportunities to discuss unresolved questions or concerns with the broader group, tapping on the collective experience and expertise of participants. 
There’s also some downtime, and in addition to the facilities that BB Camp has built in, other professionals will be available to aid the experience during those downtimes. 
“We’ll bring in a yoga specialist, we bring in massage therapists so people can sign up during some of that downtime if they just need to get some body work done,” Schneiderman said. “People can sign up for times to sit with a therapist and talk about things that they need to talk about.”
The retreat is $640, which includes all the programming plus lodging and meals at BB Camp. Financial aid is available through BB360, as well as through some synagogues for members. Making sure the experience is affordable for those who need it has been an emphasis for Schneiderman.
“Coming from someone who experienced a huge financial change once I got divorced,” she said, “I know how stressful and overwhelming it might feel for people to say, ‘I don’t even know if I can do this right now because I can’t afford it.’”
Rabbi Newbrun described Divorce and Discovery’s presence in Oregon as a gift to the community, as it gives spiritual leaders here an answer to questions like the ones she found no answers to back in the 90s. 
“Now they don’t have to say, ‘I’ve got nothing for you,’” Rabbi Newbrun said. “They can say, ‘Actually there’s a divorce camp, Divorce and Discovery. It’s the Jewish healing camp and I think you can go. We even have some scholarship money for you.’”