Jewish education, astrology, and Love

Three days ago, Nathaniel – my boyfriend and co-host of the Providence Moishe House – surprised me with an early birthday present: a 2-hour session with a fabulous astrologer. While discussing my chart, naturally we landed on the topic of Nathaniel and my relationship. Although our overlapping charts make 5 trines (three planets within the same element together forming an equilateral triangle), which indicates incredible romantic compatibility, we both have Mars in Scorpio, which makes us very competitive, manifesting itself as a difficulty engaging in intellectual discussions together. (Don't worry, this is gonna relate back to Moishe in a sec.) The astrologer suggested something Nathaniel and I had already been considering, namely reading a book, watching a movie series, taking a class, or doing some other intellectual activity together about a topic that is not too asymmetrically situated on either of our 'intellectual turf.' Meanwhile, as mentioned in my house post for this month, Nathaniel and I are recently looking to expand our programming into more Jewish learning. So when the astrologer gave his advice, of course I thought of Moishe, and of doing an intellectual activity oriented towards Judaism. As a Moishe House hosted by only two people in a romantic relationship, Nathaniel and I are well aware of our sensitive situation and the fact that it's the last of its kind. But in this case, our Moishe House goals and our relationship are beautifully aligned. So.....yo Moishe community, do you have any books, online classes, or other activities to recommend? We're thinking Kabbalah, but open to other possibilities.

Moishe House PVD: dreaming out loud

The goal of the Providence Moishe House is to build and maintain the young adult Jewish community in Providence, and to act as ambassadors of Judaism for the local young adult community in general. Within this overarching goal, Nathaniel and I have recently elaborated two sub-goals: 1) to expand our programming more into Jewish and Tikkun Olam events, and 2) to grow our community, which currently includes primarily students and alumni of Brown University. With regards to #1, we'd like to take advantage of Moishe's new Rabbi in Residence, Rabbi Scott Perlo, to better educate ourselves and our community about Judaism, and take advantage of our community to more actively contribute to the broader Providence community. Our programming for the month of October manifests our commitment to this goal: we're building a sukkah and celebrating Sukkot at a local organic farm, at which we'll teach participants about the holiday of Sukkot and the importance of sustainable food systems, and support the mission of the farm. We're also hosting a singing shabbatluck chez Moishe, i.e. with the explicit intention of teaching and singing songs, and we’ll be sending out song sheets in advance. With regards to #2, we'd like to grow our community beyond its current scope. This involves reaching out to other local pillars of the Jewish community, including Gesher City RI, the young adult social committees of the local synagogues, and the Jewish Federation of Rhode Island. As a starting point, we've already gotten our October events posted to the Jewish Federation’s calendar. By next year, we'd Love to see more of our community members able to explain the meanings of Jewish rituals and traditions to new guests, and hear much louder singing at our Shabbats! We'd also Love to see a more diverse Jewish community – both geographically, beyond Providence, and demographically, e.g. including more folks in their late 20's and early 30's. We hope that these trends continue for the next 3 and 5 years, and ultimately support our overarching goal of local Jewish community organizing and ambassadorship.

Sunday was SO. GOOD.

In thinking about what makes a Moishe House event successful, there are two questions to consider: what makes an event in general successful, and – embedded within that – what makes a Moishe House event in particular successful. What makes an event in general successful naturally depends on the goal of the event; but as a self-proclaimed experience designer, I gravitate towards a metric based on the quality of experience. In other words, if without solicitation, attendees express having had a new, spectacular, comforting, delightful, or otherwise enjoyable experience, I’d consider the event successful. And all of the above we’ve proudly heard in response to events at the Moishe House in Providence! I think my favorite feedback has been from our blind events – the blind feast and dancers in the dark – in response to which I heard, “Wow, I’ve never experienced anything like this before” (blind feast) and got the above message written on my Facebook wall (dancers in the dark).

As for a Moishe House event, besides being a successful event in general which gives its attendees a high-quality experience, it should somehow further Moishe’s mission as I understand it, to cultivate and maintain the young adult Jewish community, and act as somewhat of an ambassador of the young adult Jewish community to the young adult community in general. During the month of June, as Nathaniel (my co-host) and many other members of our community have been traveling, I thought we’d get higher attendance if I hosted events out in the community, rather than invite the community into our home. So I hosted a climbing night at the Rhode Island rock gym, Kabbalasana (yoga with a Jewish spirituality twist – pun intended) at the Motion Center, and salsa dancing at Olives. As a result, attendees ended up being mostly new and mostly non-Jewish, and as a further result, I gave them an introduction to what Moishe is all about. Attendees were intrigued with this model of cultivating and maintaining community, and at each event, my monolog evolved into more of a dialogue. So, besides the high quality of the events themselves, I’d consider our June events successful in the sense of furthering the Moishe mission, by introducing newbies and non-Jews to Moishe in an engaging way, and ending up with a few new friend requests! Oh and this definitely makes me wanna do a little Moishe sphiel at the beginning of all our events in the future…

multi-city tele-Shabbat!

This past Friday, May 15th 2009, witnessed the first ever multi-Moishe House tele-Shabbat! But lemme rewind for a sec...

As the proud Moishe hosts and hostesses that we are, we all host Shabbats, oftentimes on the same nights and – if we're in the same time zone – at the same time. Meanwhile, we go about our Moishe activities independently, oftentimes with little more than Jeremy's mentions of each other to cultivate a sense of connection between us. So the intention here was to use videochat as a medium for multiple houses to celebrate Shabbat together. And thus, Providence, Hoboken, DC, and Philly got together and planned a simultaneous Shabbat, using iChat to transform videochatting screens into portals connecting our houses; hence a multi-Moishe House tele-Shabbat.

Ah, but technology has a temperament of its own: at T minus almost zero, our network went down (NOTE: FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER) and was unable to even connect to the internet, so we had to hop onto another weaker one. Jeremy was having difficulties tuning in. There wasn't sufficient bandwidth for the four houses to iChat together. People in cities across the country were getting hungry and impatient (ok fine, only four cities, and our guests were not only forgiving but amused). So at T minus slightly past zero, I made the executive decision to split up into pairs – DC with Philly, and Hoboken with us (Providence). Hoboken and us did a communal Kiddush, led by Nathaniel in Providence (captured in the video above and also posted on YouTube), and Hamotzi over the bread, led by David in Hoboken. Then it looked like Philly had gone offline, so we hooked back up with DC for a 3-way videochat to enjoy our meals together. We'd been nervous about the screens feeling supremely un-Shabbatish (un-Shabbish?) and people in remote houses not interacting with each other, but at least this aspect of the evening worked out absolutely impeccably. Our laptop was sitting at the end of our table, so we had our own conversation going while being able to see Hoboken and DC at the other end of the table, and people would periodically leave our conversation to interact folks in other houses. But because it was difficult to hear each other, interaction evolved into something more playful, visual, theatrical – the fellows at our table modeled our colorful wigs, Hoboken showed off their pet ferret (confirmed Jew), all three houses spontaneously broke into Redemption Song by Bob Marley. It was adorable and hilarious and precisely what we were hoping for. And although there were tech glitches at the actual event (profuse apologies, Philly), the planning process itself was precisely what we were hoping for – as I discussed in my previous post, it became its own way to connect more intimately with other Moishe Houses.

So voila: I'd definitely be down for an encore, and encourage other houses in the same time zone to consider the possibility...

tele-tech run for the tele-meeting for the tele-shabbat

Oy. That’s a lotta tele! What the title refers to is today's tech run between Brian (MH Philly) and Nathaniel and I (MH Providence) for the tele-meeting tomorrow night between all the MH folks in Philly, Providence, DC, and Hoboken for the tele-shabbat we're hosting on May 15th. Whoa, lemme try that again. Today, Brian, Nathaniel, and I tested out multi-channel videochat (vchat between more than two people), to make sure it works for tomorrow, when we’re gonna have a four-house tele-meeting about our upcoming four-house tele-shabbat. Nathaniel and I got to see Brian's room, he got to see our home (where Nathaniel was) and my office (where I was), Brian learned a little about my job, we got to see him on a roller-coaster (those visual effects iChat offers are awesome)....all this to say: planning a joint event is already bringing Moishe houses together meta-moishe style, before the official meeting for the event, and before the event itself. Even the email Jeremy sent out describing what different houses were up to this month and including the tele-shabbat inspired Rachael from MH Silver Spring to get in touch. (And for the record: I profusely apologize if any east coast houses felt left out! The intention was to go for houses that would allow for videochatting on the Sabbath, but all houses are more than welcome to ‘tune in,’ of course.) So, because of an email about a joint event that hasn't even happened yet, I had a mini-exchange with Rachael and Alan of MH Silver Spring. It's like the adage about the process versus the product. You know, the journey instead of the destination. Anyways. Check these visual souvenirs from today, a mere aperitif of what's to come...