Giving it up - to the members, that is

Wow. Yesterday Moishe House Boston had our first ever membership meeting, and it was awesome.

To backtrack, last summer, we held a leadership retreat where we asked our leaders which direction they wanted Moishe House Boston to go. We heard a lot of feedback that while people loved the programs and the community, they wanted a sense of deeper ownership and decision making power.

So we embarked on a membership drive (led by Aaron, who did an amazing job), got people to sign up as members, and then invited people to a membership meeting that was attended by over 40 people. At the meeting, we told the story of our house and how our leadership expanded from me (pre-moishe house funding) to the four Moishe House housemates to our program teams to our community leadership team, and now to the members. New and veteran participants shared their stories about what is working in our community and could work better, and we set up working groups to a) create a more empowered leadership board and b) to explore and address the issues raised at the meeting, like how to deal with diversity of religious styles, how to be welcoming even when we have huge crowds, how to create more opportunities for connection and relationship building in the community. It was just really exciting to see people get it that Moishe House is THEIR community and to realize that they are invested in making it even stronger.

If that had been the only Moishe House event of the day, dayeinu, it would have been enough. But as the vibrancy of our community would have it, after the membership meeting, the tubishvat (Jewish environmental holiday) seder planning team and the shabbat/holidays team each got together for meetings in various parts of the house, and then everyone congregated in Ben's room to watch the superbowl. It was a full day that really reminded me why I love our house.