Sunday was SO. GOOD.

In thinking about what makes a Moishe House event successful, there are two questions to consider: what makes an event in general successful, and – embedded within that – what makes a Moishe House event in particular successful. What makes an event in general successful naturally depends on the goal of the event; but as a self-proclaimed experience designer, I gravitate towards a metric based on the quality of experience. In other words, if without solicitation, attendees express having had a new, spectacular, comforting, delightful, or otherwise enjoyable experience, I’d consider the event successful. And all of the above we’ve proudly heard in response to events at the Moishe House in Providence! I think my favorite feedback has been from our blind events – the blind feast and dancers in the dark – in response to which I heard, “Wow, I’ve never experienced anything like this before” (blind feast) and got the above message written on my Facebook wall (dancers in the dark).

As for a Moishe House event, besides being a successful event in general which gives its attendees a high-quality experience, it should somehow further Moishe’s mission as I understand it, to cultivate and maintain the young adult Jewish community, and act as somewhat of an ambassador of the young adult Jewish community to the young adult community in general. During the month of June, as Nathaniel (my co-host) and many other members of our community have been traveling, I thought we’d get higher attendance if I hosted events out in the community, rather than invite the community into our home. So I hosted a climbing night at the Rhode Island rock gym, Kabbalasana (yoga with a Jewish spirituality twist – pun intended) at the Motion Center, and salsa dancing at Olives. As a result, attendees ended up being mostly new and mostly non-Jewish, and as a further result, I gave them an introduction to what Moishe is all about. Attendees were intrigued with this model of cultivating and maintaining community, and at each event, my monolog evolved into more of a dialogue. So, besides the high quality of the events themselves, I’d consider our June events successful in the sense of furthering the Moishe mission, by introducing newbies and non-Jews to Moishe in an engaging way, and ending up with a few new friend requests! Oh and this definitely makes me wanna do a little Moishe sphiel at the beginning of all our events in the future…

MH Boston -- A Successful Event

Jeremy has asked us to recount a recent event that we consider successful, and to describe what we think made it so.

Zvi of MHSS mentioned in his post that he thinks a good measure of success is, "Does the event add to the sustainability of this particular MH?" I like this line of thought, and I want to try and elaborate on Zvi's sustainability concept a little bit more.

For us here in Boston, sustainability has to do with a number of key points:

1. Are we facilitating relationships between members of our community such that the success of our community is not dependent upon any one housemate (or, really, even upon any of the housemates in the long run)?

2. Are we creating structures that give people real ownership over the community so that they feel like it reflects their values and that they can make change within it?

3. Are we responding to the energy of our community members so that we shift and grow as we develop together, rather than staying static? Are we ensuring that the community remains a fun, warm, and welcoming place through our willingness to avoid putting form before function, or -- to put it another way -- are we adopting to new people and new energy in a dynamic way?

We are building community in an intentional way, and even though that is work, it needs to be fun work that makes our community members feel engaged and positive from start to finish.

Thus, for us a perfect example of a successful event is the community retreat we went on this past weekend (June 19-21) up in the southern New Hampshire woods. We had about 50 community members join us for the weekend, and key to our success was the investment our community members had in the weekend.

Four non-housemates worked with me to plan the weekend. About a dozen non-housemates led workshops, ranging from spiritual ecology to learning Shabbat zmirot to network organizing. And just as much as we planned workshops, we made sure to give people the opportunity for both formal and informal fun. We did a ropes course as a group and had organized games, but neither were required, and there was plenty of relaxed time for boating, swimming, hanging out, etc.

We came out of the weekend with a bunch of amazing feedback for our Transition Team, as well as our current and new housemates, and plenty of community members committed (or re-committed) themselves to ongoing projects, too. Beyond that, people strengthened their relationships to one another and envisioned, together, a collective future for our growing community.

So in the end, I offer this lesson from the weekend: while it was productive and capacity-building through the actual work we did, that was not the most important piece. The most important piece, rather, was simply giving people the opportunity to do that fun work together in a safe, meaningful, and joyous place.

It turns out that the journey itself was, in fact, the destination.

What makes a successful Moishe House event?

A successful event is more than just a headcount. Good events leave lasting impressions, build relationships and help engage participants in a Jewish community. One example of this kind of event was our Shavuot Sundaes on Sunday event. Attendees had varying levels of knowledge about Shavuot- some knew exactly what it was, and others had never heard of it before.

Our event was centered around something accessible, and that most people enjoy: Eating ice cream. We bought several flavors of ice cream and toppings, and let people create their own sundae. People who were unfamiliar with Shavuot were immediately curious about a holiday that involved eating ice cream, which gave those who knew an opportunity to briefly explain its significance, and why people eat dairy on Shavuot. Those who were interested in talking more about Shavuot had the opportunity to do so; those who were not interested ate ice cream and talked about whatever they wanted. Everyone enjoyed themselves, and even those who were not really interested in Shavuot left with a basic understanding of its significance.

Because this event was centered around a holiday, the planning process was very simply: We checked our calendar for a date that we thought would be convenient for everyone, and then bought ice cream. We made sure not to make it sound "religious," because that seems to make non-practicing Jews hesitant about attending.

June Blog MHSS

ala Zvi Bellin

We are writing about successful events.

Each event has a success meter of its own. A wild party should be measured in wildness and a mussar group in intimacy and personal reflection. Focusing on numbers all the time is missing the point of community building. More people does not mean more community. Perhaps we should measure in sustainability, does the event add to sustainability of this particular MH and maybe even the larger MH Universe. I like this measuring stick for now. Feels very green. It does feel nice to get a large group over for shabbat or to have a full house for a party, and who wouldn't feel kind of silly throwing a party for 2 people. I guess we do what we can and put in the energy that makes sense for each event. If an event is iffy we try to get 5 people committed first and then say we will do the event. That gives us some assurance that the event will begin with a bit of momentum.

A recent successful event was a Shabbat morning egal minyan that we held in the house. The community was invested in the planning at the start. We had a perfect amount of people, we filled the space, but it was comfortable for people to pray. We made excellent food and guests brought some things to eat too. We sang, we drank a bit, we had young couple with a child, and I think we provided a space for people to really dig into their Jewish experience. Halleluyah!

Peace to all!

Zvi

RRR MoHoLo - 9 June 2009

The scent of the undergrowth after rain makes me look forward to our discussion on the possibility of a rural community.
I am a bit torn. I know that it would be healthy to join such an adventure, but I can't help feeling also that secluding one's self in cut off community might be a cop-out. Towns and cities need change, need people re-energising community on every strata. It's not just poorer communities (who everyone seems to point at and focus on). In order for it to work, everyone, even the people who don't financially 'need' community need to see why they might just need community. That their mistrust of other people, or insistence on going to the superstore instead of the local shop is just as detrimental to the fabric of society as the teenage yobs they complain about. And the steps to this are so small, so small. Talking to the people who live on your street. If you have a front porch or front garden, sit in it or garden in it and talk to the people passing by. Give them a carrot, and ask them how their day's been.
Reaching out, not hiding away is the simplest step to make a change.

Shavuot and more Shavuot

As tends to be our custom, Moishe House Silver Spring celebrated the holidays in style. After a successful Passover/Birkat Ha'Chamah (blessing of the sun) combo in April, we decided to open our house up to an all night learning session (Tikkun) over Shavuot. I loved this event because it was so community driven: one of our community members spearheaded the food preparation (including 4 homemade cheesecakes!), a good 15 people came prepared to teach something, and everyone came prepared to learn and share. We divided the night into 20 or 30 minute intervals and studied an incredible range of topics, from "reproductive justice and Judaism" to a poem about the Holocaust; "apotheistic Judaism" to hearing stories from one of our community member's recent travels in Southeast Asia, and everything in between. At around 4:30am, a few brave souls ventured out to local synagogues to pray with our greater community, and then we all crashed for a few hours. As always, it was such an honor to be able to provide a safe space for so many people to learn and teach, and I'm so proud that we were able to do it so successfully. And of course, special shout out to Einstein, who came all the way from MH Hoboken to grace us with his presence and knowledge - I hope that marks the beginning of even more MH collaboration...

Happy (Almost) Summer!!!

Aaron, MH Silver Spring

MHSeattle, 6/6/2009: Introducing the new Moisheniks!

As summer comes to Seattle in the form of 80- and even 90-degree days, we at Moishe House mourn the upcoming departure of Joel Rothschild, one of the house's founders and a reliable source of original music, delicious stir fries, and illuminating insights about the day's news. Joel is moving to House Bet, which is a block away from Moishe House and hosts all-ages events under the Ravenna Kibbutz banner. By the end of June, Masha and Neal will be joined by Steven Blum and Nicole Guidry, two wonderful additions to the house and the Moishe House program.

Steven is a writer whose work appears regularly online and in print; he's written for The Stranger, one of Seattle's weekly newspapers, as well as Seattle Metblogs. He has a blog of his own, too, and is knowledgeable and opinionated (in a good way) on subjects cultural and political.

Nicole is an adventurous person who recently skydived and wants to do it again in August, possibly as a Moishe House event. She has boundless energy and tons of ideas for future events, which is great to see in a new member.

We MH "elders" anticipate great things from these promising newbies, and it'll be fun to report on the doings of the "rebooted" Moishe House Seattle during the coming months. Shabbat Shalom!