Moishe House Denver Opens its Doors! - posted 2/4/2010 1:39:01 PM

Author - Jeremy Moskowitz

 Young Adults Create Vibrant Jewish Community with Support from Rose Community Foundation

Denver, CO– October 29th, 2009 – On October 1st, Natalie Zelinsky, Elliot Cohen and Josh Sperling opened the doors of their Washington Park home with one goal in mind: to create their ideal Jewish community. Zelinsky, Cohen and Sperling are the founders of Moishe House Denver and are part of a grassroots movement that has been sweeping the globe.   

Moishe House, a network of homes throughout the world that serve as grassroots community centers for the young adult Jewish community ages 21-30. Moishe House empowers its residents, budding leaders in the Jewish community, to create a community to call their own by providing them with a rent subsidy and program budget.  In exchange, residents host 3-9 programs a month to engage their peers in a Jewish experience created for them, by their peers. Moishe House started as one house in Oakland, California in 2006, has rapidly expanded to 29 locations such as Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and London.

Moishe House has gone from a program of a small private foundation to an independent organization receiving major funding from Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, Jim Joseph Foundation, Righteous Persons Foundation and dozens of local partners across the country, locally, Moishe House is sponsored by Rose Community Foundation.   

“Moishe House’s partnership with Rose Community Foundation is truly exciting,” said Executive Director David Cygielman. “Having a local sponsor that is excited about developing the next generation of Jewish leaders is really wonderful.”

“Engaging Jews in their 20s is an important part of Rose Community Foundation’s work,” says Sheila Bugdanowitz, Foundation president and CEO. “Moishe House offers an innovative way for younger Jews to remain connected to each other and to their Judaism, which is a goal of our Jewish Life program. We are excited to fund the project in Denver.”

So far, Moishe House Denver’s programs include activities like Shabbat dinners, morning hikes and Monday Night Football watch parties. In the future they plan to add a focus on community service work to their programming agenda.

So who is Moishe House Denver?

Cohen, 24, is Ph D. candidate in Environmental and Sustainability Engineering at the University of Colorado, Denver. A native of Washington D.C. Cohen is no stranger to Jewish community building---having attended Jewish summer camp and being an active participant of a progressive, labor-Zionist youth movement from age 9 all the way through college. During this time, Elliot lived in Israel for two years---one year at an international high school on Kibbutz Beit-Hashita, and a second year, working first on Kibbutz Revivim as a mechanic, and later as a medic for Magen David Adom and as a “Big Brother” for a local foster home in the city of Migdal HaEmek.

After graduating in 2007 with a B.S. in Business Marketing, Zelinsky, 24, currently works as a Marketing Strategist with a database-marketing firm. Zelinsky is a veteran of the Hillel Ambassadors program at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Sperling, 24, is an Engineer and Urban Planner, a National Science Foundation IGERT
Fellow and MS and PhD Candidate in the Sustainable Urban Infrastructure
program at the University of Colorado Denver.
 
Sperling spent a year in Israel living and working on Kibbutz Beit Hashita
at the age of 16. He has been a leader in various Jewish communities
since his early involvement in the Habonim Dror Youth Movement, and
served as an ambassador to Habonim Dror-Australia in Sydney and
Melbourne in 2006. During his undergraduate degree in Civil and
Environmental Engineering at University of Colorado Boulder, he also
helped lead the Hillel Outdoors and Hillel Ambassadors Programs.

More information on Moishe House Denver can be found on their house page at www.moishehouse.org.  

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About Moishe House

Moishe House is a network of homes throughout the world that serve as grassroots community centers for the young adult Jewish population aged 21-30. Moishe Houses are designed to create a Jewish communal space for vibrant young lives. Moishe House currently has 29 locations worldwide and is continually expanding. For more information and to apply to open a Moishe House in your area visit www.moishehouse.org

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About Rose Community Foundation

Rose Community Foundation makes grants to organizations and institutions serving the seven county Greater Denver community in the areas of Aging, Child and Family Development, Education, Health, and Jewish Life.