It's getting, it's getting, it's getting kinda hectic

Friday night: shabbat services and dinner...delicious
Sunday night: labor seder planning...Oscar-ific
Monday night: house trip to event hosted by the Alliance for Healthy Tomorrow about how basically everything in the world is toxic...maybe not so sweet
Tuesday night: sit on a panel at Temple Isaiah, plan interfaith work with the Islamic Society of Boston...exhausting
Wednesday night: what, nothing to do? oh, man that's nice
Thursday night: Jewish Labor Committee fundraiser...solid
Friday night: watch Scrubs with the lady-friend...relaxing
Saturday night: Purim...dance-off

That's my week, kids. Kinda Jewed up to the max. As my brother might say, "Ridonc-u-lous." True, Josh. True.

The house has great energy, we're doing tons of good work, and we're definitely showing up all around the Jewish community. But the continuing question of balance -- like, how do we live sane lives when we all work way too hard anyway and then do this stuff on top? -- is still percolating around constantly.

On the plus side, I always fall asleep as soon as I get into bed.

Also, I'm posting right after all the South Africa kids. When do we take a group trip to visit them???

Peace and love, hermanos y hermanas. Hasta later.

Captain's Log

Finally the South africans have arrived.

It's been a long road, from finding a house to mivng in, to deciding how we would allocate the rooms, the five of us have finally settled in. So for my first blog i'll just let everyone in on a little bit og info on the five house dwellers.

So first we have Strauss, he's a weird fella who takes his shirt of and runsn out of roomsn when he gets excited. He's also an exceptioanlly intelligent 'oke' (Cape Townian for dude). Then there's Dan Varnett, who I like to call 'the Dragon of Deception.' The Dragon is an organisational guru, and one of the most humourous guys I know. He's also a pretty talented DJ. Our female contingent is mad eup of Emma, The simple red haired gem has a oddly special relationship with her computer, yto the point that she sings to it when she arrives home from University. Finally there's Kev, who studies physics and maths, which is just weird. He's also really funny and a bit whacky.

And then ofcourse there's me. I study polictics and economics and I'm a bit of a dreamer, always with the old head in the clouds. I have a great passion for playing, coaching and watching the great game of rugby, which is a massive part of South African culture.

So here we are, five young Jews at the Southern tip of africa looking forward to alot of fun and inspiring times in the house. \We've already had a series of events which I'm sure we will update you on very soon.

With the stress and hard work of moving in behind us, the year is really settilign down. Strauss has put his shirt on and we're all geared up to make the SA Moishe house as good as it gets.

Cheers (South african for see yu later)
Daniel

From the (outskirts) of Africa...

shit.
the little african lad just uploaded a blank page for the world to see - oh well.

so, you must be shocked silly to realize that their are Jews in Africa (we like to differenciate countries and thus, we're from SOUTH Africa) - in fact a good 50 000 of them (they like to say its 70 000, so they can get minority rights, but its not)/

We're living in the beautiful city of Cape Town, on the south-western tip of the continent. Quite an amazing place, i might add. An intellectual bunch, we all study at the excellent Uni of Cape Town, which happens to be five mins drive (yes, we have cars and roads - tarred roads!) from our wonderful new MOISHE HOUSE.

I'm studying Law and politics, an interesting combo that i enjoy most of the time. Daanie, Strauss and Em also do similar courses, and Kevin does science - loser.

So will regularly update with all the latest events - we've had a good ten or more events so far in our first 2.5 weeks! Despite being quite far from the free world that is the US, we seem to be doing ok at attracting cool people like you all do - now arnt we just special.

OK so it's getting late and i'm just writing rubbish - come back soon for more.

Ahoy Isaac and Levi you yankee bastards:)

Finally, just so you know - we all love each other, and plan to live together forever - go Moishe house!

Strauss's Log - Blogging and Logging In

Ha ha ho ho its off to another Moishe House Cape Town (CT) blog we go.

( Editors note: Strauss's Log will contain 2 elements to it. Standard, yet interesting Moishe House thoughts and feelings and general thoughts on the world, Ct, Jew's, Middle East, America etc. Its not too often that one has the chance to engage in dialogue with Jews from around the world)

With the above in mind Cape Town, for those of you who might be confused does not have elephants roaming the streets nor "indigenous people" walking around in loin cloth. Instead it has 5 o clock traffic and street children begging for money. Other highlights include AIDS denialists, great all you can eat sushi, about 15-20,000 Jews and now *Drum roll* Moishe House!

Our House has seen a floury of events, too many for the photo programme and our calendar to keep up with. Our creamy Mushroom Wednesday night "invite a guest nights" are a big hit with the recipe now being refined to a delicate art.
Our next batch of 'victims' will be the 2,000 plus American exchange students studying at UCT and other out of towners, who happen to be Jewish and are are dying for either A. a social life with people who are from a different nationality or town to them or B. a Jewish community to which they can go to for social and intellectual occurances.
I'm a massive fan of communal living and living again with others in this setting is reminding me why. You learn about yourself in such a unique way when it is through others. Dealing with issues, developing a sense of group identity - all things that will come to the fore the more time the House spends together are what can make a shit day seem a lot brighter or a mundane day seem a lot more fun.

A small question that I would like to hear other Moishe Houseniks thoughts on (in the vein of connectng with other Moishe houses) is if they think Moishe house has had any effect on the wider , i.e. non-Jewish community, and if it in fact should?

Finally, I call this blog Strauss's log because I find the toilet a time for great contemplation and relaxation. Hence at the end of every e-mail I will give you Strauss's thoughts from the Log.

Strauss's thoughts from the log this week are: ' I hope that living in a Moishe house doesnt turn me off canned chick-peas."

Nightey nite

and it begins

Woohoo! so we've finally got internet that's working and hasn't cut out on us - it kinda feels like my world is complete again :)

And of course the first thing i decided to do when connected to the amazing world wide web was write my very first Moishe House blog.

Hmm, where to begin? Let's see, we moved in here just under two weeks ago, and already it feels like I've been living here for ages! It was a bit stressful at first I guess, just cos I had to keep going back to my parents to pick up things that I'd forgotten, but I think that now I've got basically everything I need: bed, cupboard, clothes, toothbrush, computer (that was an important one - i really can't survive without my computer! In fact the guys were actually teasing me the other day, cos they heard me singing to my computer when i got home. It's just very special to me...)

Anyway, things have been going great so far. We've had some really fun events, and people have been coming round to chill and hang out most nights. And after a rough day at varsity it's really nice to have friends to come home to who'll listen (or at least pretend to listen) to me complain about my annoying lecturers, or the fact that I couldn't find parking and ended up having to walk all the way from lower to upper campus (it's pretty far, especially when you're already running like 20 minutes late!)

And living with four guys really isn't as bad as I thought it would be. They've been surprisingly hygenic so far, and they're all really easy going. And Strauss' cooking is definitely one of the highlights; tonight was mushroom pasta which was delicious! And it looked like there were some leftovers, so I might even be sorted for lunch tomorrow, yay!

Ok, well it's getting quite late, so I should probably go and get back to my studies, got some french homework for tomorrow which is due pretty early, so I can't afford to oversleep :(

Till my next update on Moishe House, Southern Hemisphere,

keep it real bru
em

A South African Revolution

Well, well well...the South Africans have arrvied.

For those of you that haven't heard the news, Moishe House has launched a house in Cape Town, South Africa. The dwellers/inhabitants/housemates/moishehouseians are:
Kevin (Sack)
Daniel (Daanie)
Emma (Em)
Daniel (Barnett)
Ilan (Strauss)
The names in brackets are what we call each other, and will most likely sign off as.

So it's been a crazy couple of months to get this started... but it finally hapened. So what is it that finally happened?

We found a house that we're renting. That itself was many hours of searching the newspapers, cruising the streets and bribing real estate agents. Then we had to convince this harsh german landlord lady (froulin Unter) that these 4 nice Jewish lads and one fine Jewish lass are
a) good for a monthly rent
b) respectable, decent people...(not too easy)

Then came the drama of sorting out the rooms: after a week of discussion, we finally had a decision meeting where we decided through consensus (and straw polling) on our rooms. Then we had a week of fast-paced moving- organising trucks, couches, table tennis tables, beds and kitchen utensils...what a mission.

And with that glorious climax in the tale of "MH South Africa" I will have to leave, and Strauss will pick up from where i left.

In peace
Sack

DARFUR - Be a Warrior for Justice!

Friends,

Last weekend we had a house concert and raised almost $800 for the Sudan Relief Effort spearheaded by American Jewish World Service. With some extra bucks from The Forest Foundation we brought in an awesome singer song-writer and sang the night away for justice. I wanted to share this because I think our houses have a tremendous opportunity and responsibility to not just throw great parties and have fun, but also the potential to raise awareness about important issues and really create warriors for JUSTICE. Darfur is a genocide happening in our lives and we each can do more to affect change. I encourage you all to check out: http://www.ajws.org/index.cfm?section_id=2&sub_section_id=2&page_id=296 and make a donation, throw a house benefit, print out an info sheet and put it on your fridge, etc. Just cause Darfur is not on the front page, doesn't mean that 450,000 people have not been killed since 2003!

Purim is about turning suffering into joy and Pesach is about liberation and freeing the captives. I encourage us each to ACT for Darfur... from our HOMES and beyond.

Shalom, Alyson


PS. A charge offered by one of my heroes, Rabbi Harold Schulweis.

Sudan and Our Response

Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis, August 26, 2005

What have we to do with a people we do not know, in a land we have not visited? What have we to do with people of another faith, another culture, another civilization? Have we Jews not sufficient burdens of our own? Is the struggle against anti-Semitism not enough for
us? Are we so numerous that we can take on the suffering of others not our kinsmen?

We Jews see with ancient eyes. We have seen the torture, the starvation, the death by disease, the rapes, the abandonment by the civilized world before.

We Jews possess a terrible knowledge, an awesome wisdom we gained not out of books,but out of our own bodies. A knowledge out of the testimony of numbers seared into the skin of living human beings and the stench of burned flesh.

We see with ancient eyes: We are eye witnesses to the consequences of the callousness of lethal silence. We offer testimony to the morbid symptoms of apathy, the moral laryngitis that strangles the voice of protest.

We see with ancient eyes: Embassies shut down, visa denied, borders sealed off, refugee ships returned to the ports that transported the persecuted into the furnaces of hell. And we know what happens when churches are complicit with the killers of the dream.

With ancient eyes we see Darfur with a shock of recognition. We experience a collective deja vu even as we speak. More than two million frightened souls fleeing homes in Darfur/400,000 helpless people murdered/the terror of the Janjaweed, which in Arabic is derived from “jan”—which means “evil”, and “jawed”—which means “horsemen,” soldiers on horses with swords, whips and truncheons, beating down a people and trampling them.

We heard before the treacherous excuses, the lying alibis, the rationalizations from church and state and international bodies. We count six million alibis. They said: What can we do? We are too few, too weak, too exhausted, the enemy too implacable. Do we not have a prior responsibility to our own church, to our own parish, to our own congregants?
Are these reports really genocide or just propaganda?

We Jews remember what we expected sixty years ago. We prayed and hoped for a cry/ a protest from out of the basilica, from out of the nave, from out of the cathedral, some proclamation of a fast, some decision to march in public, some demonstration on to the streets and marketplaces, some sob of conscience that could pierce the hardness of the heart:

Can we do less? Like the Psalmist we cry to God into the ears of man:
“Rouse Yourself—why do You sleep?
Awaken—why do You hide Your face and ignore our affliction?”