Jewish - We believe the Jewish tradition offers meaningful lessons and rituals that will deepen our lives and guide our work for justice.  We welcome Jews across the religious spectrum.

 

Progressive - We care about social justice and the environment, and believe change is possible when we come together and make it happen.

 

Leadership Development Oriented - We believe each person has something to offer, and that everyone can learn to be a leader who makes our community stronger.

 

Local and Tangible - We will work on service projects and organizing campaigns that directly impact the Boston community and environment.

 

Replicable - We hope our work will serve as a model for similar houses around the country.  We do our best the first time around, and keep track of your feedback to make our project even better as it grows.

 

 

Our house, beginning solely as the Kavod House, was created by leaders of Jews in the Woods, an inclusive bi-yearly gathering of Jews from the northeast for Shabbat singing, hiking, and study. We wanted to take home some of the community and spirit we found at Jews in the Woods, and looked to Chabad outreach houses as a successful model of locally based, vibrant Judaism. We also wanted to preserve the socially progressive values of our community, and wanted to find a way to involve young Jews in social action work.

 

After testing out our model in Washington, DC, we decided to apply for funding to start a pilot non-Chabad outreach house in Boston. We won a grant frrom the Bronfman Youth Fellowships in Israel Alumni Fund to get the Kavod House off the ground, and we recently received generous support from the Forest Foundation so as to join the Moishe House Network and become Boston's Moishe/Kavod House. Like the Chabad network, we welcome people, feed them, and offer them ways to get involved in a dynamic and diverse Jewish community, whatever their background. However, instead of asking people to become more orthodox, we make our focus to get people involved in social justice work and connect them with local opportunities. 
 

Four Moishe/Kavod team members live in the house, and a broader group of young Jews are engaged in helping to build the community and run individual programs. We hold Shabbat dinner or lunch most weeks and have other programs during the week that the house members help plan.

 

Each house member is responsible for helping with Shabbat, planning a few programs a month (could be arts, social action, Jewish learning), and following one area of interest (e.g., enviro events) to share information with our listserv. And of course, we do normal house chores and think together about how to make our house successful.

In order to support the hard work it takes to build this cool community and strengthen Jewish social justice work in Boston, we continue to look for funding opportunities to pay for food for community meals and general program costs. Moreover, we are looking to extend the circle of mentors who are generously lending their wisdom to this project, including faculty of Hebrew College Rabbinical School, the JCRC of Greater Boston, and the Jewish Organizing Initiative.

 

If you or anyone you know is interested in getting involved in some way, please let us know. We are looking for activists, organizers, Jewish leaders, fruity Jews, teachers, party throwers, bookkeeepers, intellectuals, cooks, artists, writers, webmasters, PR helpers, community builders, drummers, daveners.  Whether you are ready to lead a program or just want to help chop vegetables, you can make a difference to our community!