The do-it-yourself communities for Jews in their 20s are getting local backing.
by David Holzel
Senior Writer
Washington Jewish Week
12/26/2012 9:40:00 AM
A roomful of people conversing by American Sign Language isn’t so silent. Signing is a physical, energetic act. It sometimes needs a grunt for emphasis. It can lead to an eruption of laughter. But in calling this Friday night gathering of hearing and hearing-impaired Jews in their 20s “Silent Shabbat,” the organizers had two things in mind: They wanted to connect everyone through the use of a common language, and they wanted the hearing to experience a Shabbat where meaning did not come from sound.
Photo: Game night at Moishe House Montgomery County: A home is a more comfortable place to be yourself, says resident Jordanna Snyder.Photos by Harvey Levine
“It’s visually chaotic,” says Rachael Freedman, who hosted the event in her home. “But it’s so peaceful and it’s very cool.”
Her home happens to be a Moishe House, where Freedman and four other young adults live. Tucked into a residential neighborhood in Rockville, it is part of a 7-year-old experiment in giving Jews in their 20s a Jewish community that fits their lives and speaks their language. There are 50 Moishe Houses in 14 countries, hosting events that draw 50,000 attendees a year. In the Washington area, there is a Moishe House in Adams Morgan, in addition to the Rockville house, known as Moishe House Montgomery County.
Moishe House was invented to answer some crucial questions: How do Jews who are out of college but haven’t gotten married or started a family get their Jewish needs met? Where can these networked, word-of-mouth, post-denominational, don’t-make-me-commit 20-somethings find a Jewish home? Judging by the demand to open new Moishe Houses, many find it in this funky mixing bowl of Jewish exploration and hanging out that is run by peers and lacks an institutional odor.
“People are transient,” says Jordanna Snyder, 25, another member of the Rockville house. “They’re trying to figure out who they are and what their place is in the world. A home is a more comfortable place to be yourself.”
Photo: Moishe Housemates, clockwise from top left, Rachael Freedman, Rich Goldman, Eran Sharon and Jordanna Snyder offer their peers a mixture of Jewish exploration and hanging out.
And so Moishe House, each a home to three-to-five residents. They receive a rent subsidy of 25 to 75 percent and a small program stipend from the parent organization. In return, they roll out a Jewish welcome mat and offer programs to their friends.
Last year, Washington-area Moishe Houses together held 200 events for more than 3,000 attendees, according to Moishe House founder and chief executive David Cygielman.
He and others say the Jewish community never found an answer to the changes society began to undergo a generation ago, when young adults began to get married later, and single Jews began to avoid the family-centric synagogue and other major Jewish institutions. What counterculture chavurot were a generation ago, Moishe House is today.
“The organization came into being because there’s this big gap of opportunity for people who were scrambling to create a community or were scrambling and not finding anything,” says Freedman, 31, one of the founders of the Montgomery County house, which was originally in Silver Spring.
“It’s a bottom-up approach,” says resident Rich Goldman, 28. “People who are noncommittal come to the events.”
Goldman moved into Moishe House last December. He had finished his Ph.D. and was looking for a place to live. “I wanted a young Jewish community,” he says. On Craigslist, under “kosher housing,” he saw that Moishe House had an opening. “It was what I needed,” he says.
It can be difficult for young Jews in the suburbs to find their place, Snyder says. “They may not have a community, or a young community where they can go, make friends and connect to their roots.”
Snyder is studying for a master’s degree in public health at George Washington University. All Moishe House residents work or are in school. “The good and the bad of the organization is that people work,” says Goldman, a self-employed computer programmer. “We are professionals and this isn’t our day job. In some ways it tends to be a volunteer organization.”
The common areas of Moishe House in Rockville are sparsely furnished. The style is college castoff. But there’s a kitchen where they can connect to Judaism gastronomically. And the dining room is large and can handle big events. Here and there are signs of organization branding, like the Moishe House doormat. But with the average resident’s stay of two years, the overall message is: welcome to a place that is exceedingly transient.
“Every house in some ways runs itself, but in other ways goes through the organization,” Goldman says.
There are weekly teleconferences with the regional office in Charlotte, N.C., to discuss administration. And there are workshops and retreats where residents from around the country can meet and learn more about Judaism, which they can inject into their programs.
But the residents follow their own muses when they plan programs. The Montgomery County house has a long-running series on Mussar, a Jewish tradition focusing on self-development and ethical practice. There are Shabbat dinners, silent and not, and holiday celebrations, game nights, hikes, meals at kosher restaurants and community service activities.
“The idea,” Goldman says, “is to build the Jewish community that you want.”
It was the kind of ideayou get when you’re 24 and you’re over at your friends’ house, talking half the night, and you say, why don’t we turn this house into a Jewish gathering place, and your friends sort of think, why not?
That’s how David Cygielman started the first Moishe House in Oakland, Calif., in 2006. He and his friends within the house organized a communal Shabbat dinner and 73 people came. Then he heard from other young Jews in the Bay area who wanted to do the same thing. Cygielman had stumbled onto something.
He turned to his employer, artist and philanthropist Morris (nickname Moishe) Squire, and convinced him to underwrite the project.
“We didn’t make a business plan,” says Cygielman, now 31. “We were just trying to follow demand.”
Squire’s Forest Foundation supported Moishe House until 2008, when Squire and Cygielman parted ways. So Cygielman incorporated Moishe House as a 501(c)3 charity and turned to large foundations. His funders now include the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and the Jim Joseph Foundation.
“The model here is peer to peer,” Cygielman says. “The two big benefits are, it’s easier to invite someone over to your house, and it brings the cost down quite a bit. You eliminate a line item in the budget.”
There are Moishe Houses in London, Buenos Aires and Beijing. In the United States, there are Russian-speaking Moishe Houses and single-sex Moishe Houses. In 2011, 11 houses opened. It costs $40,000-$55,000 to run a house, according to Jen Kraus Rosen, 31, chief operating officer of Moishe House and a Virginia native.
Houses open where there’s interest and where funding can be secured, she says. “If we receive an application from a young adult to open a Moishe House, we’ll look to see local funding support. We can do it very quickly. There are no capital costs – we don’t own the houses and there are no employees. [The residents] don’t work for Moishe House, they take on Moishe House in their spare time, and it’s quite a responsibility.
“Because the houses thrive off the personal networks of the individuals, they take on a personality of their own,” she adds.
And the personality is a creation of the residents, who are the ones to approve new housemates. There’s a lot to consider, because living in a Moishe House can be tricky. “Living with housemates, you have housemate issues,” Freedman says. “There are Jewish issues – how Jewish are we? And there are co-worker-colleague issues – having meetings and conference calls.”
And if you live in a Moishe House, you must live for playing host.
“I love it,” Freedman says. “I love connecting people and sharing opportunities. This stuff doesn’t happen in other contexts. I like the energy involved, including hosting people.”
Sarah Waxman certainly possesses that outgoing, forthright personality. For the last year she’s been a resident of the tan stucco townhouse in Adams Morgan that is Moishe House D.C.
“I have this opportunity to do really cool stuff,” she says, sitting in the living room, with pictures of the ruins of a Hittite temple hanging on the wall, remnants of a program about Syria that drew Arabs and Jews to the house. Moishe House events are free to all comers. You just show up.
Waxman, 26, grew up in Cleveland Park, in a home that was serious about Judaism. Her family belonged to Conservative Adas Israel Congregation. There was Jewish summer camp. At the University of Pennsylvania, she was “one or two classes away from getting a Jewish studies minor.”
But the core of her Judaism was in the closeness of her family, especially when they gathered to eat.
“Judaism is the connection in that closeness,” she says. “The dinner table is where we discussed things that were important to us. My Judaism was all about my house.”
Moishe House is a recreation of her upbringing, she says, and has returned Judaism to the center of her life. “Being in Moishe House has ramped up my Jewishness.”
But being a Jewish community doesn’t mean putting up Jewish walls, she says. In addition to Waxman, Moishe House D.C. has three other Jewish residents. And they have a fifth housemate who isn’t Jewish. There are practical and symbolic reasons for this, she says.
“It’s a way of keeping our rent even cheaper. I consider my house to be a Jewish home. It is for young professional Jews to come hang out, celebrate holidays and gather in a home space. But we open our doors to our non-Jewish friends as well, and think it is very important that they get to experience a Jewish home just the same. We are a totally welcoming place for all those who wish to step into our Jewish community.”
She plans two or three events a month. “Mine tend to be more Jewishly themed. I’ve taught a Shabbat yoga class” – Waxman is a professional yoga teacher. – “I’ve led a Passover detox.”
The house had just hosted a program about “Taboo topics in the Torah,” led by Rabbi Dan Horwitz, Moishe House’s director of immersive learning.
Moishe House promoted the event on Facebook this way: “The Torah says some pretty raunchy and interesting stuff about sex. Come learn with Moishe house rabbi Dan Horwitz tomorrow night! 8 pm.”
Asked what she thought Moishe House D.C.’s personality is, she says, “I’ve heard people describe us as an alternative Jewish experience. But labeling is something that Moishe House is against.”
She says Moishe House has been an opportunity and a gift. “An opportunity to be a community organizer. To do whatever event I can dream of. To think critically about what it means to be Jewish. To live in subsidized rent. People are investing in me to build community.”
And if there are strings attached, they are good strings. “They treat you like you’re 26,” she says. “They remind you to post your receipts, but they don’t tell you what events to run.”
Behind this funky settingis an organization with a $2.7 million budget that plans, monitors, trains and mentors residents, tests and assesses the product, and markets it to donors. And if Moishe House is hailed for hitting the right chord for Jews in their 20s, the question being asked by the organization’s leadership is, who is going to pay for it? Increasingly, Moishe House the institution is asking local Jewish communities to make nearby Moishe Houses their own.
The shift to locally designated funding accelerated after an outside evaluation by the TCC
