hello from Joe in Chicago

november was a big month here is chicago. we had a lot of events, and a lot of different kind of events, including, of course, a visit from the wonderful summer shapiro (but this event is not on the calendar, as it was double twice top secret, and summer has all the pictures on her camera). we also had our first snow here in chicity, but that's not what i'm going to write about. instead this post is dedicated to everyone's favorite miracle diet... kashrut.

No, but seriously, this is an issue that came up during a meeting in our house this month and became a much larger issue than i think any of us anticipated. and it's tricky. none of us in the house are extremely kosher; some vegetarian, some don't eat pork or seafood, some totally unrestrained, but we also recognize that our house is also the center for the community we are building, and that, at minimum, during events we have to be respectful of our guests. At the same time, it is our house, we shouldn't be ashamed of the decisions we make or pretend to live a different life than we do. so the issue sort of comes down to the classic secular/pluralist debate. do we cater to the most observant person who enters our house (which, realistically we can't do--not with our dishes and pots at least), or is that one or two people forcing all the rest to change prepare and eat food in way we don't normally do, know how to do, or want to do. Obviously the answer is somewhere in between: make guest feel welcome without making our own lives so difficult we don't feel like hosting anymore. but then there is the question of where to draw the line. is serving a vegetarian option enough, or should we also make sure not to cook a dairy/veggie dish in the same oven as a meat dish, or just not serve the two together? and what about kosher meat? eventually we decided that for now we will just have vegetarian shabbats and leave the in between events as case-by-case. this is easy enough, and we don't even eat too much meat, but what if someone brings a meat dish to a potluck? i have no idea, maybe meat eaters just have to hide in my room and eat the whole thing under my bed.
This issue is interesting because it is relevant for the Jewish community at large. at one point it is likely that all jews were kosher, and had similar if not identical interpretations of what these meant. so then you could go to each other's houses, it was easy. no problem. now some people, some jews, they don't do that kashrut no more, and almost no two do it quite the same. so this is interesting because the decision is bigger than any family's own home, it is about how they are then going to be able to interact with their community. the opposite motivation acts on the K observant jew who has to decide whether or not to relax his/her rules in order to be a guest somewhere. i grew up not kosher in a town without a whole lot of jews, and much less kosher ones, so for me this is interesting. I'm sure this is old news to many...

also, did you know that wrought used to be the correct past particle for work (and "worked" didn't exist) and now it is only remembered because of wrought iron? i heard that scientist burying radioactivity with 50,000 year half-lives struggle with what to write on the container, becuase 50,000 years from now "danger" or "don't touch" etc probably won't mean everything because of the natural evolution of language. so they put a picture of spikes on it. if you had a box of spikes in your basement, would you open it? i probably would, but i guess if i had a box with some weird letters or symbols on it, i would probably open it sooner. just a thought.
good night and shabbat shalom.

11-29-07 MoishePVD Jesse Stout

My favorite event this month was, Brady came to visit! I made a new friend :-) When Mr. Gill showed up in my doorway, I was mid-workday, cell glued to ear as usual. I hope my refusal to fully detach the phone from my head until 5 o'clock made Brady feel unimposing and welcome as opposed to jilted and ignored. I'm leaning the former because he was sufficiently comfortable to take a satisfying-looking nap on our ginormous couch. Then I put work away and sat down to greet my guest properly (mario kart 64). I learned that he had just come from a 70-person event in Boston. Damn, you guys have gotta cool it, you're making the rest of us look bad. By the time 100% of our guests had gathered for our event later in the evening, we had 7, not 70 (not including Brady... does that make 70??) After a scrumptious dinner, we settled down in a circle around the coffee table and warmed up with a couple of travel stories before the main event: tell us about the MoishMaster himself, Morris B. Squire. Brady had quite a few interesting stories about the life and times of the infamous Morris B., including several with good overlap in the travel category. Like that one time they left the cameraman behind while they went to a brothel (his word not mine). Or the time Brady tried to throw Morris a party in Mexico City but succeeded only in bribing some dominoes players in a park to be his friends.

Getting real with the Boston Jewish Federation

In Boston, the Federation is known as the CJP (Combined Jewish Philanthropies). Earlier this month, the CJP's Young Adult Task Force asked Margie and me to present at their young leadership conference. We did, it was cool, the folks dug us. Good to know that the mainstream Jewish community -- at least at the young adult level -- recognizes some of the rocking out we're doing at the Moishe/Kavod House.

But later in the month, we took on a bigger challenge: trying to convince Barry Shrage, head of the CJP and a major mover-and-shaker in not only Boston's Jewish community but the Federation movement nationally, to support our interfaith work with Boston's Muslim community. Not to go into the gritty details, suffice it to say that our interfaith work is in direct opposition to The David Project, a conservative Jewish group with a lot more power in town than us. The bottom line is that they think our friends in the Muslim American Society are preaching hate and preparing to kill us, while we think they're pretty nice folks worth having over for Shabbat.

So anyway, Joe and Margie and me, along with a bunch of other community members, met with Barry the other day. He was very nice, but definitely noncommittal about our request to get on board with our efforts publicly. Nonetheless, it says something about what we've built here at the house that he was willing to meet with us at all, and we definitely felt that the meeting was a success in that we are at the very least helping to build a political pole diametrically opposite from what The David Project is pushing. And Barry said he'd come to one of our interfaith events...although he definitely said that cautiously. Going forward we shall see what happens, I suppose, but regardless we're gonna keep pushing for dialogue and relationship-building rather than demonizing and fear!

MH Silver Spring

Man, as usual, another month has flown by so fast I can hardly catch my breath. I think my favorite event this month was our collaboration with Gesher crafts to make beaded pals for hospitalized children. I'm a bead freak and after a stressful day at school, it was just really nice to come home to a quiet circle of beading. Very therapeutic I have to say. Beyond that, it will be interesting in the next few weeks juggling events and my last few weeks of school (gah graduation!) and all the work that entails. Best of luck to those in a similar situation as myself! That's all for now, be well.

Moishinspiration from Rae at MHP

I constantly find myself getting inspired with ideas for new Moishe events, and Thanksgiving was no exception. We had a small quite Thanksgiving this year, which left us with way more left overs than ever (for some reason we cooked for the usual 20-ish guests even though there were only going to be around 10 of us this year), and the opportunity to actually sit down and all talk to each other. Every year for the past five or so years a Cambodian family, friends of my mom, spend Thanksgiving with us. Since they're first visit I discovered the mother and daughter make rocking spring rolls, but at our bigger Thanksgiving meals, I hadn't really gotten to learn much more about them. I vaguely realized that the mother and father had both come to America as refugees, but I hadn't really taken the time to think about what that implied about the type of things they had experienced. This year though, after dinner as I wandered into the living room after finishing the dishes, I heard my mother's friend talk about what he had gone through under the Khymer Rouge. He talked about occasions in which there is no explanation for his not being killed. He told us about how devastating it was to hear that the Americans were not going to help the Cambodians, and to be turned away at the Thai border and sent back to the killing fields. I had read a book about life under the Khymer Rouge by a doctor who had escaped Cambodia and later starred in the movie "In the Killing Fields," so I was not unfamiliar with what had gone on, but it was so different to be in the presence of someone who had been through it. And that made me think, what if my mother's friend came to speak at MHP? We've all heard so much about the Holocaust, but many of us are unfamiliar with other genocides. How can we say "never again" when it has happened again, just not to us. So from Thanksgiving, came the seed of what I would like to be a series of "No More" lectures.

On a less somber note, a shout out: Thanks for visiting us Brady! We had a blast. Can't wait to see you and the rest of team Moishe USA in Jan!

Natasha of Moishe House Minsk

Привет, Друзья!

Вот и подошел к концу ноябрь – 2-ой месяц существования Moishe House в Минске.
Хотелось бы поделиться с Вами своими впечатлениями о проделанной «работе» с одной стороны и «прекрасным временем препровождения» с другой.
Самым, на мой взгляд, суперским событием в Доме Мойше был Rosh Chodesh Kislev (начало месяца Кислев). Собравшиеся за накрытым столом 8 прекрасных девушек очень замечательно провели время за женскими разговорчиками на разные темы. Нами были затронуты такие вопросы как: какой я вижу настоящую еврейскую женщину? Что бы я хотела изменить в себе, чтобы быть лучше. Все это происходило в очень уютной атмосфере при свечах.
Могу сказать, что было ЗДОРОВО не только от своего имени, но и от имени всех девушек, которые в будущем будут собираться на каждый Rosh Chodesh.
Кстати, следующее наше женское собрание в сауне ☺ Мы все ждем этого с большим нетерпением.
И в завершение, хочу, чтобы все порадовались за нас. Следующее мероприятие Дома Мойше – катание на коньках в Ледовом Дворце (Ice Skating at Ice Palace). Уже сейчас я знаю, что это будет очень весело и смешно, потому что практически все из нашей компании не умеют кататься на коньках ☺. Но, тем не менее, я думаю, у нас все получится!
Целую всех! ☺

Aliyah of Moishe House Minsk

Brr...It's Cold in Here! It must be Rosh Chodesh Kislev in the Atmosphere!







Well, friends, winter has definitely arrived here in Minsk. The cold hard truth (pun intended) really hit me when my wet bathing suit, inside my gym bag, froze (!!!) on the 10 minute walk home from the local pool.
Seriously. It's cold.

Our Street!

But what better way to combat the plummeting temperature than to celebrate the beginning of a new Jewish month so filled with warmth and light! On the evening of Sunday, November 11th, Moishe House Minsk celebrated its first women's Rosh Chodesh gathering*, in honor of Rosh Chodesh Kislev.
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Eight of us sat together in our living room, ate dinner, discussed what it means to each of us to be a Jewish woman, learned about Rosh Chodesh and its meaning as a woman's holiday, and shared our hopes for personal character improvement in the coming month. Light being a key theme for the month of Kislev, we each lit small candles as we shared our thoughts. Though I feared that my friends might find this aspect of our activity just a tad kitschy, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it created an atmosphere of warmth and sharing.

It was so interesting to hear how my lovely lady friends here in Minsk interpret the role of the Jewish woman. One idea that seemed to resonate with nearly all women present was that it's difficult to think about a Jewish woman as a single person; her role seems to always depend upon others: her children, her partner, her parents, etc... We discussed the challenges of being a single, modern, Jewish woman and how complicated this identity truly is. I couldn't help but marvel at how paradigmatic our discussion was.

It was an informative and enjoyable evening of learning and sharing.

Warmth abound, for a short while I even forgot how cold it was outside!

*Click HERE to read about starting your very own Rosh Chodesh group!