This is only my second blog for the Moishe House, but it feels like I've been here forever. The meetings, the phone calls, the constant planning it takes to make a communal house run smoothly have become so natural. I no longer have to remind myself to check our calendar foe the Moishe events we have planned for the week because I do it without thinking. That's what I'm loving most right now - the feeling that in this moment, the work that we do, couldn't be any other way.

And now that we've found our rhythm, we can play within the structure we've developed. We know we need to have two Shabbats and a happy hour every month, but we're getting more creative and exploring outside of ourselves. We choose events that we aren't sure how our community will react to - trial and error each month, so we continue to grow and improve.

In addition, from the beginning, as we are all driven by social justice, we've wanted to incorporate that into our house. What I once thought might not work with our community and its needs has become an intrinsic part of our house's mission statement. Adding a short discussion about modern slavery to our kosher for Passover Shabbat was natural, and for me, deepened the experience.

So we have found our way, and we must continue to push ourselves, but it is really our house now.

MH Chicago's Outreach Efforts

We have been surprised by the number of new people that show up to our Shabbat dinners every time. It seems that people hear about them through our email list, and we have gotten many newcomers to our Shabbats that way. Those are the events where we have the most turnout, probably because Friday nights are when young Jews most want to celebrate their faith, but do not have another space to practice. For events that we hold during the week, like happy hours, we get fewer people. We have discussed why that is, and we believe that people are shyer about coming to smaller events and are also busier in the middle of the week. However, we are developing a solid group of repeat attendees—people who came to one event, such as Shabbat, and have come to lots of other events after. We have found that these people are often new to the city or had been actively looking for a Jewish community, so that when we reached out to them, they felt welcomed and excited to come back again.

While our email list, our Facebook events, and other technological forms of communication have brought us new people, we have found that word of mouth is the most powerful tool for getting people to become a part of Moishe House. People have repeatedly told us that a friend told them about the last house, and they decided to check it out. And the people who we draw in come back with friends who in turn come to another event. Our friends from around Chicago, coworkers, and acquaintances make up a big part of all our events, too, which just reinforces to us how our chatting about our positive experience with the Moishe House can lead to new participants. We are going to try in the coming months to mimic some of the other houses’ expansive Facebook groups, but we will continue to rely on good, old-fashioned people-to-people networks that have, so far, produced the best results.

LA Moishe Has big huvos

After a long but quite enjoyable month, I would like to sit back open a lambic and spill my guts to you bloggers out there. I wanted to write something off the wall but I think Morris said it all. This month was filled with celeb sightings, parties and raising toys for tots along with a threepeat for good old me at poker. That's right I won three times in a row and lets just say rent was on moishe this month. All in all we had a well rounded month for those of you keeping tally not to name names. (Isaac, Morris, Dave, Levi) It looks like thats just things to come. As the new year comes so too continues debauchery, so stay tuned for the next events to come and for your enjoyment hannah gets it on with nate and the gang.

Love ya all a little,

Lee Levin

Da Visioning Meeting...

Thought I'd post the agenda of the house visioning meeting we're having with about 20 key leaders from our community here in Boston tomorrow. Not as much fun as Borat, I admit, but with smoothies beforehand and kosher Chinese food for dinner afterwards (sandwiching a solid meeting of big ideas), we should still have some fun.

Any feedback on the agenda we've got planned...?

MEETING GOALS: not process but substance-oriented; not committee-building but team-building; articulating shared vision & concrete objectives...

4pm -- warm-up & smoothie time
4:15 -- intros
4:25 -- a bit of learning
4:35 -- different visions for the house (a few individuals' perspectives)
4:45 -- initial "dreamstorming" session: what's the kind of community we want to build? what's an ideal month with the moishe/kavod house community look like? where would we want to be at this time next year?
5:05 -- "world cafes" {the "world cafe" is a unique form of small group break-out/rotation that allows for increased dialogue with a broader group of participants that Ben will introduce} around various core themes
5:45 -- reconvene, focus in on core themes, discuss team creation
6pm -- eat dinner/discuss next steps informally

For us, the internal goals are to develop new leaders, expand the number of those involved in planning/organizing events, lessen our own workload over time, and give more people ownership over the sort of community we're building.

Feel free to comment with any thoughts on this, and I'll definitely report back to let everyone know how this baby goes down...!