Our vision issues

There are six of us living in a house, we share everything in public spaces and organise at least seven events a month – there are going to be issues! It is surprising there are not more. By meeting frequently (short weekly meetings and longer ones each month) we ensure that no issues gets out of hand and that everything is dealt with.

Aside from the day to day running of our house there is, however, an underlying issue behind everything that we are doing: we each have different answers to the question of why we are doing it.

The aims of MoHoLo can be either of the following options for each of the residents: to challenge British Jewish institutions and their definitions of who is a Jew or to supplement synagogue life; to forge a distinct approach to Judaism by bringing together ideas from different Jewish traditions or to provide a space for all Jews to feel comfortable in each of their own approaches to Jewish life; to create a stable, continuous institution in MoHoLo or to spend a few years inspiring other London Jews to run their own grass roots Jewish events like a ripple on effect; to provide a space for events for the local community or only for the Jewish community.

Often smaller disagreements can be seen to reflect on one of these underlying issues of our whole purpose. The tension between these different positions was not clear until February when we ran a “blue sky thinking” session, taking a step back from our logistical weekly and monthly meetings in a special and strictly non-tachles meeting. There each of us spelt out her/his idea of what the house is all about. We did this again a few months later after Brett and Lianna had joined the house. The more it was discussed the clearer any tensions became and the easier it has become to create a shared vision. Ultimately it is clear that the tensions are a healthy part of what we are doing, with each of us bringing something different to the MoHoLo project. Bringing these differences into the open by continuing to have these separate “visioning” meetings is really important, ensuring that we all understand where each other is coming from.

Recently, realising that only half the house residents are Moishe House London founders, we have begun thinking about how the vision of the founders can be preserved for future house members to take forward. This might involve bringing these underlying and creative tensions even further into the light.