How We Empower Young Jewish Adults to Bring Judaism to Life

  Since our founding in 2006, Moishe House has empowered hundreds of thousands of Jewish young adults to reshape Jewish community for their generation. In 2019 when we established “Reshaping Relationships to Jewish Wisdom, Text and Practice” as one of our five strategic priorities, we certainly did not see a global pandemic coming but in so many ways, our leaning on Jewish wisdom and community helped us navigate through it. We have discovered many pathways of Jewish learning and are seeing how much they have positively impacted our work. What’s been the most fulfilling is to see how it has brought joy, comfort, connection and depth to the young Jewish adults we serve across six continents. Our learning starts at home. Through the Jewish Learning Collaborative, Moishe House staff and board members have been actively engaging in more than 600 hours of 1:1 Jewish learning a year. The topics are wide spread but all come back to helping us tap into wisdom that can help us learn more about ourselves, each other and the world. For most of us, it has been a new experience that continues to strengthen our curiosity to do more. We are also bringing Judaism to life with exciting immersive learning retreats. Whether it is an outdoor learning retreat about Shavuot in Colorado, a new program such as our Seventy Faces: Discover Your Way of Torah Retreat at Pearlstone Retreat Center in Maryland, or a very recent partnership with Hillel in Lviv, Ukraine to bring young leaders together to learn about what Judaism has to teach about trauma and particularly challenging times, we are seeing the learning come to life. Additionally, we are continuing to explore innovative ways for young adults to engage with Torah and Judaism through our Base rabbinical movement communities across the U.S. These programs provide interactions with rabbis in non-traditional environments through the core values of hospitality, learning and service. The learning does not just happen behind a book or screen. In the past 9 months, Moishe House has delivered more than 8,500 acts of service and learning around the world. Through a partnership with Repair the World, we have the incredible opportunity to have Jessica Herrmann working with Moishe House leaders to connect acts of Tikkun Olam with the richness of Jewish text. Thank you for all your partnership and support in making this only the beginning. David Cygielman Moishe House CEO & Founder