North Seattle's New Moishe House Is Feeling the Love
Will the first-ever official kosher- and Shabbat-observant house have what it takes to make it in Seattle?
Seattle isn’t exactly known for its religiously observant young adult Jewish scene. It’s hardly known for its Jewish scene, period. So the fact that the first designated Shabbat- and kosher-observant Moishe House in the world recently opened here is kind of crazy.
The house, in North Seattle, started to come together when Hadas Rosenberg, 25, moved here from Chicago in August. “I heard from my friend that there was a lot of people in this area of Seattle, in the Northeast area, who were really excited about the possibility of a Moishe House,” Rosenberg explains. “I was interested. I have always loved community building.”
Rosenberg, who works in sales for a tutoring company, met Hillel (Hilly) Steinmetz, a 26-year-old master’s student in computational linguistics at UW originally from Montreal, and Orr Toledano, 24, a software developer originally from Sacramento, at North Seattle’s Mercaz community. They were soon joined by Rachel Benezra Devine, 24, a job-seeking women, gender, and sexuality studies major with roots in LA and Seattle.
The house sits within the North Seattle eruv and is within walking distance to Chabad, Modern Orthodox, and Conservative synagogues. In a month’s time, they have held a range of programs, including “Cocoa, Crepes, and Canned Goods,” an oneg Shabbat, and a talk and discussion on the birth of religious Zionism. “Another exciting thing for us was that the people who came to our second event were all new faces,” says Rosenberg. “I think that’s a really exciting start for us to already be meeting so many people.”
Moishe House launched in 2006 in Oakland when a group of Jews in their 20s — too old for campus programming and not quite at the adult/family stage — were wanting for community programming. The idea, to rent a house together and host Shabbat dinners and events for others in their demographic, has expanded to some 150 houses in more than 25 countries. The houses get philanthropic and local funding that subsidizes rent and programming — a perk for young adults living in an expensive city. Moishe House is pluralistic, and while houses have come up with their own Shabbat and kashrut standards, the organization has never officially designated an observant house. Seattle joins a house in Sommerville, Massachusetts, in this pioneering effort.
Larry Gast, vice president of advancement for Moishe House, says the goal is to open three more observant houses in 2022 around the country. It’s a new strategic focus for the organization. “We’re not going to force it; we’re going to find the right groups,” he says. The fact that Seattle was one of the first to apply was admittedly surprising. “Where would you do a shomer kashrut house? Would Seattle be in the top 3 to 5? Maybe not,” he says. “This group absolutely fulfills our vision for what we want to execute through this initiative. We wanted to say ‘yes,’ so we did. We’ll give you the platform and invest in you, so you can take it to the next level.”
This is not Seattle’s first go at a Moishe House. The previous one, originally on Queen Anne and then Green Lake, closed in June when all the residents decided to move on and their places weren’t filled. Before that, the communal Ravenna Kibbutz had a similar vibe before it closed in the early 2010s. So does this Moishe House stand a chance, especially one that is decidedly observant?
“We hope that this Moishe House will stay longer than any of our terms staying in the house, because it’s something that I think the community was very much craving,” says Toledano. “But also, we’re accessible to people of all different levels of religion, all different races, backgrounds, ethnicities, sexual identities, gender identities, you know, that we build this open space for all types of Jews. I think that is what we’re really hoping will carry on.”
Rachel Rosenfeld, cofounder of Mercaz, sees North Seattle becoming a hub of dynamic Jewish life for young adults. Mercaz alone has witnessed six couples get married or engaged since July, and 17 babies born in the past two years with four more on the way. She’s excited about the organic coming-together of young adults to form their own communities outside of the legacy institutions.
“Something that stood out even before Moishe House is that these young people would have their own parties, and every nice-weather Shabbat they would go to View Ridge Park and play Ultimate Frisbee and have third meal together,” she says. “How do I want my Jewish life to be? It’s not only going to be getting invited to my parents’ friends for meals. The Moishe House is the next level of that.”
The majority of the guests to Moishe House events so far fall into the 22-32 target age range, and a lot of them are Seattle transplants, Benezra Devine says. They’ve had guests from many different synagogues and neighborhoods, including Ballard, Fremont, and Capitol Hill.
It helps to have the Moishe House brand recognition. “It has a very positive connotation,” says Steinmetz. “You move to a new city — it’s ‘Oh, I could, you know, connect with the Moishe House and get involved with the community.’ And a bunch of us are newcomers also. So we were really excited about the opportunity to be associated with that brand and get to meet new people.”
North Seattle is “a great community if you’re looking for young Jewish professionals,” says Elisheva Sprung, 26, who moved here from the East Coast three years ago to take a job with Boeing in Everett. Sprung attended Moishe House events in Green Lake, even though she keeps kosher and the house was not. She made a lot of friends but notes that religious people may not consider attending events that aren’t going to be kosher. “They feel they can be involved now.”
“Seattle’s a place we want to be, a place young adults are moving to for their careers and after college,” says Gast of Moishe House. He notes that while the Green Lake house did close, it could reopen. Meanwhile, a Moishe “pod” exists in Seattle’s South End. Different than a house, a pod is essentially a subsidized living space for two people that hosts fewer programs. “We may ultimately have three different locations in Seattle,” Gast says.
The idea that Seattle is a Jewish wasteland where nothing can survive is a concept that Rosenfeld believes Seattleites need to stop perpetuating. The energy is there.
She recounts a funny story. “Three or four years ago, this house of three girls had a Purim party,” she says. “I remember afterwards, they said, ‘Yeah, we had 50 people.’ Someone with me was like, ‘50 people?! Where did they all come from?’ It was like, they wanted to come to a Purim party. They just had a party.”
With Covid restrictions thawing, people are coming out of their bunkers, ready for human contact again. The Moishe House residents sense it.
“I have been in Seattle for the past seven or eight-ish years, so I know a little bit about that Seattle freeze phenomenon,” says Benezra Devine. “I’ll say just, currently, I’m not really feeling any of it right now.”
From furnishing the house to advertising their programs, an array of community and individual support has the residents feeling the love.
“The warmth that we’ve experienced from this community is just absolutely incredible,” says Steinmetz. “It never felt as though we were building something. It felt as though we were working together.”
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Just want to add that observant Jewish life would not be flourishing in North Seattle if it wasn't for the 40 + years of community and infrastructure building created by Rabbi Levitin, Chabad, and CSTL.