Moishe's Kavod House

Margie continues to be able to drum up great media coverage for Moishe's House/Kavod. It's a great endeavour that borrows some outreach ideas from Habad, de-creep-ifies them, and
applies them to social justice inspired, egalitarian judaism. Basically get a bunch of cool people living together, make it clear that the door is always open, and create an intimate heymishe place for jewish/activist/spiritual life to flourish. It is a fantastic model, taking what is good about hillel and leaving behind the problems. It takes the multi-entry-point method that includes art, davening, study, eating, cooking, socializing, and doing activisty. It eschews the feeling of impersonal institutional dryness by concentrating the space in a home.

The impetus came right after the 2004 presidential election, when she sat up all night with some other friends equally despondent over the Democratic Party’s defeat.

As one of the unnamed friends I corroborate this account completely. We cloister ourselves motzei shabbat at a JITW post-election. We talked through ideas over several hours. One guy took a suspiciously long power nap but mostly we were keyed in to the topic at hand, how to create a network of progressive religious folks who would bring their values to their work and commit to making a difference. Of the people in the room, one is in Rabbinical student, one works for a labor union, one is in the last semester of undrgrad, one is in a grad program at Brandeis, and the last is in Egypt working on human rights issues. The brainstorm was interrupted when someone knocked on the door and told us it was time to say shema. Luckily, the romans had not come.

PS now that Ari Johnson is living at Moishe's Kavod House, i am 95% jealous rather than my previous 70-80% jealous.