Renewing your MH

It may happen to you - usually mhers are open people who always find new opportunites. Such is that, come 2009 I found myself an only roommate at mhba. My roommates were off to NYU, BCI and all sorts of other glamourous acronyms. So 3 roommates needed to be found asap.

Mhba is known for it's expat / local vibe, so I needed to keep it balanced that way. A massive search was conducted, mainly through facebook. First came Jordan, who was simply the most enthusiastic out of the dozens of candidates. He really, really wanted it, and it seems made for him. Jordan's sidekick, Sebastián, is very high on the cool and cleverness factor. He hasn't moved in yet but he exudes the nice-to-have-around vibe which will obviously be infectious to our crowd. And to complete our new mh is Julia, she frequents MH London and is currently packing her bags to make the move to Argentina. She is even asking me technical questions about our installations I really have no idea how to answer (sorry Julia, I'll try to find out).

House will be 100% full come March. It's been a joy putting it back together and we're looking forward to the new crowd it'll bring. And still I'm not sure new fancy acronyms won't come along; though still faithful mhba will keep us and our frequentees hooked for a while longer.

Giving it up - to the members, that is

Wow. Yesterday Moishe House Boston had our first ever membership meeting, and it was awesome.

To backtrack, last summer, we held a leadership retreat where we asked our leaders which direction they wanted Moishe House Boston to go. We heard a lot of feedback that while people loved the programs and the community, they wanted a sense of deeper ownership and decision making power.

So we embarked on a membership drive (led by Aaron, who did an amazing job), got people to sign up as members, and then invited people to a membership meeting that was attended by over 40 people. At the meeting, we told the story of our house and how our leadership expanded from me (pre-moishe house funding) to the four Moishe House housemates to our program teams to our community leadership team, and now to the members. New and veteran participants shared their stories about what is working in our community and could work better, and we set up working groups to a) create a more empowered leadership board and b) to explore and address the issues raised at the meeting, like how to deal with diversity of religious styles, how to be welcoming even when we have huge crowds, how to create more opportunities for connection and relationship building in the community. It was just really exciting to see people get it that Moishe House is THEIR community and to realize that they are invested in making it even stronger.

If that had been the only Moishe House event of the day, dayeinu, it would have been enough. But as the vibrancy of our community would have it, after the membership meeting, the tubishvat (Jewish environmental holiday) seder planning team and the shabbat/holidays team each got together for meetings in various parts of the house, and then everyone congregated in Ben's room to watch the superbowl. It was a full day that really reminded me why I love our house.

Zvi MHSS

Happy New Year, Great Moishe World.

On a personal note... Life in Silver Spring is going well. I have started writing my dissertation and it is crazy to start something that I know I will not finish for at least 1.5 years. So, I have jumped into that project because every moment I spend now gets me closer to my goal of finishing. And I love to finish things. Don't you?

Well .... My topic is meaning in life and yes, it is an undertaking. I am close to figuring out how I will be looking at this subject. But I know that I will be interviewing people about the meaning in their life and how they go about maintaining it. So I am sure you will be solicited to partake in my study.

Moishe House newz ... The silver spring Jewish community is much sweeter thanks to the Moishe House Foundation. Last year, community member Yael Kornfeld introduced us to International Ice Cream for Breakfast Day. Her grandparents started it and it is happening all over the world. The Moishniks celebrated a bit early, but the folks came out to make ice cream sundaes and waffles with ice cream. 'Twas a tasty morning. Other then that , the Moishe House mussar group has resumed but in a more focused fashion. The mussar group has 8 members that are committed to bimonthly meetings discussing specific attributes and working on personal growth through Torah. Can we be more excited!?!

Till next month.

Zvi

Steven "Amazing" Kleinman 2.2.09

What's up Moisheland.  I was having an amazingly hard time getting around to blogging this month for a couple of reasons.  The first and most not so amazing is that it's been a tough month for me.  I was in a bicycle accident followed by a bad bout with the flu.  The second reason I've been slow to post this month is that I won my fantasy league and just don't have as much to talk about.  

Luckily for all of us there were also a huge number of amazing things that happened in my life this month.  The most obvious was Barak Obama becoming the 44th president.  There were an amazing amount of people in D.C. for the weekend of inauguration.  We (the moishe D.C. fam) stood in the amazingly freezing cold next to a hilarious group of Obama supporters who shouted any number of things including that Obama could definitely find a woman more attractive than Monica.  In addition to the fun of freezing and cheering with all of Washington D.C., the inauguration brought to me one of my best friends from college.  With him came the wonderful story of accidently wondering into a leather convention at one of D.C.'s 5 star hotels.  The specifics were a little vague but i am going to work tirelessly to find this monthly gathering so that I too can accidently stumble into what sounds like one of the most uncomfortable places on earth.  

January was also the month of the Philadelphia Eagles almost amazing run to the super bowl.  Of course Arizona beat us.  The major problem with the 08-09 eagles was that they weren't all that good.  Of course, the Cardinals are downright bad.  But they rode their home crowd through the first half, and even an amazing comeback by the eagles in the third and fourth quarters could not get the birds into the Super bowl.  Bummer, but there is some residual solace to be taken from the phillies amazing world series win.  I think the eagles will be back in the thick of things next season.  I hope we give McAmazing some money over the winter so he comes back happy.  He might not be the best qb in the league but he is better than anything else the birds have.

So we as we look back at a forgetful january, we also look forward to a wonderful february in which i will be out of town two weeks out of four and my birthday February 16th.

Until next time...

Moishe House takes on YPD

The Young Professional's Division's big event is generally seen as the once-a-year place to be, even for those more 'ish' than Jewish. This year was no let down, as the Tribe came out strong and looking good.

A quick recap of the different pieces of the event; The Karaoke was kind of a joke. I mean, this little screen was hooked into Dell laptop speakers, and it was right by the entrance... did anyone sing? At all?

The open bar, on the other hand, was a hotbed of activity all night. The themed food and drinks seemed to go over well, and, while I didn't have any time to eat it myself, I heard the tempura was fantastic. The dance floor was empty early, but after a Tango demonstration by Tal Stein, the man who holds down Atomic Cowboy's Thursday night Swing dancing sessions, people started moving in, and eventually, booty shaking ensued.

After going 'around the world with YPD' on Saturday night, my own journey to become a part of the post-college Jewish community in St. Louis came full circle.

A year ago, I walked into YPD's kick-off knowing a handful of people, with my only claim to fame being that I had connected YPD with 30 cases of beer, thanks to my former position with a beer company.

Saturday night was a wholly different experience. To me, the evidence that we have started to succeed in building this young Yid community was present in the sheer number of people that I knew at the event, and who now know each other.

As the night wore on, the sake bombs took effect, and the dance party took off. One friend remarked that you could, "totally tell who the Moishe House kids were, we were the ones dancing and having a great time."

While it was certainly true that we held down the dance floor, we weren't the only ones having a good time.

Actually, there were so many new people to try to meet, it was a bit overwhelming.

In fact, I may have to reassess my claim that there aren't any young Jews in St. Louis. There clearly are, the question now is, what do we have to do to ensure that I don't have to wait another whole year to try to meet them.

Israel is Amazing...Rachael, MHSS

Israel is & was fabulous & amazing.
I had a hiatus from MHSS while being a staff member for Taglit-Birthright Israel Outdoors group 225 -- and it was amazing. :)

I have had trouble shifting myself back to USA life. I think my mind stayed in Israel.

A lot of great pictures are posted at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=52020287463 (our group's page).

Returning to the States brought me to MH Hoboken (thanks, Dave, for picking me up from the airport, and thanks to all MH Hobo for hosting me and being awesome!), the Inauguration, delicious chai masala that I made (first time!) for our Indian Shabbat, and enjoying the left-overs of our Ice Cream Breakfast (which of course I missed b/c I teach Sunday School).

My Sunday School lessons have centered on Israel since returning. I've had a lot of fun with my class -- and I like these new lessons we're doing. :)

And that's all I've got. Oh, and if you get a chance, buy some sparkly chocolate next time you're in Israel. :) (Most important: Don't chew! Let it sit on your tongue.)

MHLA 2/2/09 Last Blog for Lee Levin

So that's it our last month. I wish all of you the best in your future work. It has been a pleasure creating a real community here in Los Angeles. Stay in touch.

Lee Levin