In 1 year…
MHBA has been very successful at drawing in young Jews for social, fun events like parties and dinners. Getting people to come to charitable and Jewish learning events has been more of a challenge. So in a year’s time we would like to see MHBA having experimented with a variety of tzedaka and Jewish learning activities to find out what works and what doesn’t and to fix the workable events / activities into a regular spot in our calendar.
Currently we celebrate / commemorate most of the Jewish festivals at MHBA, but to make MHBA more of a focal point in the Jewish life of our community, in a year’s time we would like the Moishe House to be a space where every Jewish festival is celebrated and commemorated at least once, ie a seder on Pesach, a meal in the succah on Succot, a party on Purim, Chanukiah lighting on Chanukah, etc.
Within the next year we would like to have a Shabbat / weekend away out of Buenos Aires in the beautiful Argentinian countryside. This would help to bring together our community, for regulars and new people to get to know each other better and for all to have a positive, enjoyable and inspiring Jewish experience. If it works well, we would like to make this an annual event.
In 3 years…
Currently most of our events are one-off events. This has allowed us to be creative, flexible and try out different types of activities, attracting different people to the different types of events. However, without repeated events of a particular type, those people may not come back. So we would like to have events that take place regularly so that we can develop and deepen a certain aspect of our lives. Whether the regular event is tzedaka / Shabbat / Tango or cookery lessons, it does not matter, but having the events regularly would serve to strengthen connections to each other, to the cause of that event and in developing a community. But as well as having a set of core fixed events that people come to regularly, we would also like to have some events every month that are new, interesting and innovative.
In three years’ time, we would like to have regular Friday night services in our House. Many Moishe House participants did not grow up in synagogues or Jewish youth groups and do not know traditional tunes or how to read Hebrew. In three years time hopefully many Moishe House participants will have experienced Shabbat songs enough to be able to be participate in Friday night services and Shabbat niggunim (tunes).
In 5 years…
In five year’s time we would like MHBA to be a focal point of the Buenos Aires young Jewish community, a place where young Jews can enjoy a party together, but where they also come to be Jewish in the way that they want to be.
We would hope that the MH residents in five year’s time would learn from the successes and failures of the previous five years and to provide successful events, which enrich the lives of our community, deepening their connection to Judaism and to other Jews of their age and the wider community.
In five year’s time we would like MHBA participants to feel so comfortable here that they use the space to put on their own events, a space where they can express their own Judaism, creativity and ideas. We want participants to be part of creating their own community here rather than passively receiving it.
We would also like to go on retreats on some of the Jewish festivals – having our version of holidays on the Jewish holidays!
We also predict that in 5 year’s time, Elana Rosenbaum will have opened a Moishe House in Sydney, Barcelona and Kazakhstan.
No comments:
Post a Comment