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.

Raychel's First Quarter at MoHoCle!

As the newest resident of Moishe House Cleveland and having only lived in the house for three months, I have to say that every day is a learning experience filled with both surprises and challenges!

I came to be a member of Moishe House Cleveland after being turned on to the idea of "intentional communities" last summer. I've been an active participant of this community since it began developing. Over this past summer I visited communities that were income sharing and economically self-supporting with a self governing form of democracy and a model that emphasizes personal responsibility and a good work ethic. The piece that was most lacking for me in these communities was the Judaic aspect. As a Jewish intentional community I believed Moishe House to be the best of both worlds.

While I didn't expect that living at Moishe House would be like living in either of the communities I visited, I've found it quite different from what I had expected. It's been quite an adjustment learning to live with three other people, and sometimes I feel like I'm still in the adjustment period. I've learned, through both my research on communities and through first hand experience at Moishe House that some of the most important things for a community of this nature to be cohesive are organization, communication and respect. May we all be so lucky as to have cohesive, and organized homes, filled with communication and respect. May we all have shalom bayit!