The Hunt for Ready Rommates-MH Oakland-Joshua Walters

I was explaining recently to someone about my very interesting living situation. I told them I was looking for roommates, but that statement had to come with a lot of added information. "The situation is financially attractive but requires a time commitment and very special individual," I said. It's like a job with many finely tuned and ridiculously exclusive requirements. Once you narrow the population down to just Jews (probably at best 4% of the Bay Area), they have to be in their 20s (probably 15% of that 4%), out of college no less (maybe half of that 15% of 4%), but most of all a community organizer (...just plain rare...). "Wow," the person exclaimed, "that is exclusive...j.exclusive."

I recently found myself this month in need of not one but 2 two roommates, which had me out of the house on a sort of play date/audition/hang out evening extravaganza. The big room in our house is big enough for a couple so I headed to the other side of the neighborhood for a dinner date of burritos with a cozy couple I knew through spoken word. These folks were dream roommates, social, adult, intelligent, funny, they were already involved in their community and they even had "shabbatlucks" at there house once a month....if only. But before I could even ask, the guy said, "we both lived in co-ops for 5 years, were done with roommates." At least the burrito was good: a supper chicken burrito is the size of small child, bless that Oakland taco truck...more salsa please.

building power and building leaders around food

Dearest-

As a JOI fellow and organizer-in-training last year I really internalized the notion of building power and building leaders. But I hadn't really had the opportunity to run a campaign or work with a community of folks wanting to make this notion a reality.

February 8 Moishe/Kavod House Boston organized an incredible, 200+ person seder. Folks from different Jewish communities and congregations across Boston came together to learn about, discuss and reflect on the connection between food and Judaism through the lens of the Tu B'shevat (New year of the trees) seder. Within two weeks, three Jewish Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs launched in the Boston-area Jewish community (and we're launching one in 2010 in Brookline/Brighton). What we're learning in our community is that there's a HUGE need for this, both for 20/30-somethings and for everyone. And in the Jewish community, where challah, matzoh ball soup and paprikosh are held in such high esteem, food's status as deeply-engrained cultural ritual makes it all the more relevant. The leaders on this campaign, totalling more than two dozen, did an incredible job preparing the presentation and discussion questions, recruiting local farmers, and finding and preparing local/organic/sustainably produced food. But we also found an issue that really resonates with people, and there's incredible energy to move forward on the project.

Next week we're launching the beta test for our educational workshop. Originally, we decided that the best venue to educate and empower folks around local foods in the Jewish community is to develop fun, engaging workshops with folks of different ages and to do these workshops in communities around Boston. This was also our vision for the seder. And our vision for starting a Jewish CSA in Brookline/Brighton was limited to getting Brookline/Brighton community members to join.

But at our most recent planning meeting, a shift occurred--we decided that we could most effectively leverage our skills (organizers, educators), networks and political capital by training leaders in communities across Boston to deliver these workshops and to be the CSA Connector helping connect these commnuities to local CSAs. It's a paradigm shift from local grassroots power-building to building the larger network of communities and being the intersection of resources, tools and networks to do local foods education and advocacy in their communities. We're pretty excited about this paradigm shift, and are excited about the upcoming workshops to continue to move forward with our project.

Be in touch (kavodlocalfoodeducation@gmail.com).


B'hatzlacha,

~ Aaron

Check out the event on Google Calendar:

building community and changing the food system: off to monterey for a conference on the day

so im off to the hazon food conference in monterey, ca on thursday (a jewish conference on christmas--brilliant except for folks who celebrate both!) to connect/learn/share about moishe house boston's food justice campaign in the context of the larger jewish food movement. crazy that there are 600 people passionate enough about this issue/challenge to make their way out to california, and im one of them.

as context, mh boston has recently embarked on our food justice campaign, a project aimed to educate/organize/build excitement about the importance of supporting local, sustainable agriculture given the negative consequences of conventional ag on the environment, but more pressingly on people (see info on agriprocessors and discussion about kashruth and jewish ethics). in particular, we'll be running a local farm/jewish community tu b'shevat seder as well as educational seminars at congregations around the greater boston area (and beyond?). we've joined together to watch king corn, and have built amazing community and connections on the way folks connect to and around food, justice work and jewish values/culture. weve started conversations with mh providence regarding sukkoth activities and would love buy-in/brainstorming with other houses about local food/food justice-related work youve been a part of.

a marvelous handful of folks from our community will be off to monterey this thursday for this 4-day, intensive and community-building conference in monterey. we plan to build excitement around our campaign, learn what other communities have done, build relationships, and have a great time. aliza wasserman, an organizer and community leader at mh boston, will be doing a seminar around the farm bill and work done around the country to organize for more equitable distribution of funds away from conventional subsidies. and we'll come back pumped for our campaign and to the scores of amazing people that want to work on building our jewish community via this project.

while ive only officially resided in mh boston for a bit over three months, its been incredible to see how a community group like ourselves can really do exciting and engaging work in a way that a c3 non-profit tends not to--and i find the root of that in the relationship being built, the deeper motivations around wanting to build a community together and the respect we all share with each other. a much different experience than my day job, where community building, relationship building and a sense of belonging is much more sparse. here here to community.

sounding off.