Beginning solely as the Kavod House, our house was founded in 2005 created by Rabbi Margie Klein and other leaders of Jews in the Woods, an inclusive gathering of creative Jews from across the Northeast. Our founders felt a gap in Jewish engagement between college and family-oriented synagogue life, and felt that there were too few spaces for young Jews to be both religious and progressive. We were inspired by Chabad outreach houses as a successful model of locally-based, vibrant Judaism, but wanted to create a community that was egalitarian and social justice-oriented.
Our first year, our founder Margie Klein hosted Shabbat dinners, held one-on-one meetings with local leaders, and organized a series called “Justice and the Jewish Calendar,” which featured Jewish and social justice programming organized around the Jewish and American Calendar.
Nine months into our existence, we became a member of the international Moishe House network. Generous funding from Moishe House helped us to recruit resident organizers to help run the community. At first, the resident organizers planned and executed events themselves. But soon, we realized we were stronger when we mobilized others to help, so we set up program teams in four areas – arts, social justice, learning, and Jewish practice. Eventually, these four areas became the four pillars of our work, though several of the pillars include multiple teams, which have emerged based on participant interest.
In 2007, we set up a Community Leadership Team, who strategized about how to manage our community’s growth, and helped us to create our first ever community retreat. At our first retreat, in June 2008, we decided to create community membership, to give participants ownership of our community. In 2009, our membership created a transition team to set up a formal board. We elected our first community board in 2009, and created four management teams – membership, communications, development, and finance — to include more people in our leadership.
Now, the Moishe Kavod House is made up of over 600 participants, with over 100 official members, and over 75 people serving in leadership on our teams.
Throughout, we have continued to build our political power, which resulted in our visit from Gov. Deval Patrick in Fall of 2010 and our victory in helping to pass a tenants rights bill in the MA State Senate. As we continue to grow, we need your help to become more sustainable, build our political power, and strengthen our community!