travel and networks

thoughts on a pre-shabbes afternoon:

i just got back from a 2-week stint to portland, seattle and vancouver with my fiance. sure enough, i worked any connections i had to stay with friends and comrades both to get a more local flavor and to be a tad more economical. in portland, i stayed at the kayam house, a house of jews that aim to provide a safe space for disenfranchised jews or people that have only recently begun to identify as jewish. they knew of moishe house, and said they worked together to some degree, but that there were entirely different memberships in general. shoshanna, julie, justin and claire were all provided incredible comradeship and hospitality.

in a city the small size of portland, it got me thinking, "what does it mean that so many of these small jewish communities exist for the most part in sovereignty and without partnership to other groups?" "what does it mean for the most powerful implementation of MH mission that, to some degree, another place is working fulfilling the mission of moishe house?"" for the most effective utilization of resources?"

its a questions i think a lot about in boston, a city with perhaps the largest number of shuls, shtibels, minyans and synagogues per jew capita anywhere ive been. to some degree this is a relic of the style of these communities--small, tight-knot and similar to the town-style planning that so resonates in new england. but my questions is about meeting goals--how can we consider the local flavor of place, such as new england, and provide the community that people are looking for, while still being thoughtful and measurable towards our goals? what criteria and systems should funders put into place to meet these goals?

in a time of limited financing and entreprenurs really honing in on their goals, these questions seem particularly relevant to help MH continue to meet its goals. it seems that dave and his team have found some way to resonate the MH message with potential funders given the large amount of funding theyve managed to come by recently. but the next step, and the step relevant to our communities in a very real way, is how we stay relevant, provide what people are looking for, and continue to improve as community entities. as young adults without much metrics for our work outside of numbers and numbers of attendance and cost, i get the sense that such lack of attention to measurement that will inhibit the growth of the houses and not allow MH's to become as powerful and relevant as they could be. such a need needs to emerge both from houses and from national leadership if it were to be enacted. until then, MH's will remain a loosely knit group of fun houses (partially resembling the AEPi of my college years) without working towards a larger mission.