Blog prompt:
Please describe an instance where your house has had an issue (e.g. trouble with events, house dynamics, logisitics etc.) and discuss how the house resolved the issue, and what was learned.
As one of the few outposts of Jewish community in Beijing, at Moishe House Beijing's inception we announced our presence to the two local minyanim, one lay-led egalitarian and the other being Chabad. It has always been our challenge how much we want to integrate ourselves with these more established community hubs. We had one learning event with a young Chabad rabbi in his 20s about kashrut, which went well, and he and his family even attended some of our other activities as participants.
The second time we invited him to lead a study session, though, we allowed him to pick the topic- love and sex. We quickly observed that his point of view was not reflective of our own, and his manner of engaging it was at times offensive to most of our participants. We then had to talk out the issue together- should we continue to invite him on the grounds of pluralism, or do we disagree enough with some of his points and his speaking style that we do not want him back?
We continue to dialogue with him about Moishe House events, and take each instance on its own merits. However, we decided not to invite him to lead any more events because, although we support pluralism, we also have a vision of the safe space we want to create in our home that befits the makeup of our Beijing Jewish community.
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