GesherCity Boston has done it again! We brought out more young adults than ever before for an InfoSchmooze event – 200 people joined us at District on Tuesday, February 24th.

Lauren Fein from ADL & Elana Boehm from Pathways

Sam Feldman & Leah Winthrop greet participants at the GesherCity table!

The crowd at District

To see all the photos from this great event, visit our Facebook Fan Page. (As always, we are super grateful to our volunteer photographer, Howie Hecht!)

There were a great blend of new and returning participants, along with new organizations (like the New Center for Arts and Culture, AJCBoston-ACCESS, Workmen’s Circle) to present alongside “classics” on the young adult scene (CJP’s Young Leadership Division, Tremont St. 20’s & 30’s) – with groups representing everything in between (Chai Center, Coed Jewish Sports). In total, we squeezed in over 20 different organizations! I am continually impressed by the wide range of programs we have here in Boston for Jewish young adults, and am so excited that we are able to serve the community with such great events to bring ‘em all together.

Were you there? We’d love to hear what you thought of the InfoSchmooze, so leave us a comment!

Hi, friendly readers of the GesherCity Boston blog! This is Alexis Gewertz, the new Event Coordinator for GesherCity. I thought I’d write because I am SUPER excited about our upcoming event, the InfoSchmooze on Feb. 24th. This is just another online space where I can talk about my excitement, after having used facebook, twitter, and our website. THAT’S how excited I am!

District Restaurant and Lounge in Boston

INFOSCHMOOZE DETAILS:

February 24th…7 :00pm…District…180 Lincoln Street, Boston…18 Jewish organizations…LOTS of Jews!

This is my first event and I have been working hard to make sure it’s going to be a great time. I hope everyone reading this comes out because it is going to be a blast and hey, what else is there to do on a Tuesday night in the sad & cold month of February?

Also, I want to  pester everyone about RSVPing for the event. It’s quick & easy and will save you some $$ at the door, so make it happen. Use it as another means of procrastination (because you’ve probably checked Facebook enough for the moment…). C’mon. All the cool Jews are doing it.

Anyways, that’s about all from me. Please be sure to contact me (boston@geshercity.org) with questions about the event or GesherCity more generally. I’ve already met a handful of great GesherCity-ites (Gesherstonians?) and I look forward to meeting more of you, so when you show up for the InfoSchmooze be sure to introduce yourself!

See you all on SCHMOOZEDAY TUESDAY!

–Alexis

A recent post at JEWCY explores one woman’s adventures in dating. I’d have to agree that the single world can have its surprises. In this case, the author takes the unusual view of looking at her own Jewish identity by examining who she has dated. How about we expand this idea? Each individual identity is based not only on our own opinion but our relationship to other events in our lives. We could examine our Jewish identity by looking at our housing situations, in Boston or beyond. Or we could look at where we have spent major Jewish holidays and how far we would travel from Boston to make them possible.

Here is the link to the full article of Lilit Marcus reflections of her Jewish identity through dating article. What’s your take on it?

Alan Lew dies; Rabbi and Jewish Meditation teacher

I was saddened to hear this week of the passing of Rabbi Alan Lew. Rabbi Lew, age 65,  died suddenly this week while jogging while visiting the East Coast. He is recognized as a leader of Jewish meditation and a voice for social justice, especially through his congregation in the San Francisco area. You can read a news article here about his death – I’d like to share my thoughts about his life.

In an unusual path to becoming a Rabbi, Lew spent 10 years as a Zen Buddhist monk before entering Rabbinical school. This combination of fascination for Eastern practices and Jewish learning was how I first heard of him.

About 10 years ago, I was also very interested in meditation and Eastern religious practices. I enjoyed the simplicity of ritual I found, and the calming practices of meditation in silence and wonder in nature. My brother (not much of a Jewish practitioner himself at the time) happened to find Rabbi Lew’s book One God Clapping and bought it for me. I read it with rapt attention. The book is Rabbi Lew’s spiritual autobiography and he didn’t shy away from telling the good along with the bad in his life. Most of all, I learned that there were other Jewish spiritual searchers like myself and Rabbi Lew seemed to be a few steps farther along the journey and he had found it a valuable one to take. The book was one step of a path that opened my eyes to the wealth of current spiritual leaders within Judaism. People like Rabbis Zalman Shacter-Shalomi, Shefa Gold, Shawn Zevitt, and many others.

Teachers like this opened up the possibility to me of feeling a Jewish connection while enjoying a sunset, waking up in the morning, or even during services (ha!).

About a year ago, I attended a meditation and lecture by Rabbi Lew. He listened patiently to people’s questions and answered with thoughtful insights inspired by his knowledge of both meditation and the literature of Jewish sages. Its hard to put into words someone’s meditation style, but I felt that my own practice was stronger that day. I would also open my eyes during the practice some times do take a peek at “the master” and see him sitting in his pose rigid and calm, and then return to my meditation.

I feel personally and collectively the loss of Rabbi Lew this week and I pray that his memory is a blessing and we all continue his work and to share his teachings.

- Jeremy

The impact of what is happening in Israel can be felt across every Jewish community in the world, and Boston is no exception. Our goal at GesherCity is to help connect young adults with resources and information and to allow people to add their voice to the current situation. GesherCity does not believe that there is only one correct view on the challenges facing Israel and the international Jewish community today. Rather, we are seeking to provide you with more information about different perspectives and ways to get involved through the Jewish community so you can act in ways that are resonant and meaningful for you. There is no shortage of places to go to get that information – from world news sources to news from those that live in Israel.

To discuss your thoughts, please comment on this blog, or get to know other members of the community – for instance, through the GesherCity Israel cluster.

There are large group events planned here in Boston by a wide range of organizations. On some levels the messages are different, and on other levels they are similar. This week there are at least two community events that we would like to share.

Tuesday, January 13th, 5:30pm – Interfaith Vigil to End the Israeli-Palestinian Crisis – Park Street T Station

A silent interfaith vigil to stand shoulder to shoulder with members of Boston’s Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities in support of a cease-fire in Gaza.

Wednesday, January 14th, 5:30pm – Rally to support Israel – Copley Square

Come support Israel’s right to defend itself and promote a durable and sustainable peace. Ben Sigel, a leader for many local young adult organizations, will be speaking at the rally.

We look forward to days of peace, and hope they will come soon.

Reading the the local Jewish Advocate last week, I came across an article about a new website JewGlue.com started by a guy in his early 20’s named Brian Miller. This site aims to build a virtual Jewish community spanning age, interest, profession, and location. Combining elements of Craigslist, Facebook, JDate, and well – even GesherCity, this site is a pretty ambitious project to link Jews of all ages across the entire country for networking, jobs, dating, events…and more! Of course I had to check it out.

I was impressed by the scope of what Brian is trying to do. He genuinely wants to create a space for young professionals and Rabbis and mothers and college students all to be able to connect socially or professionally, to promote their businesses, or blog, or find events. Cara Hogan, writer of the Advocate article, states that “because JewGlue is all-encompassing and has so many features, it may be hard to market.” It’s also a bit overwhelming to use – and I consider myself pretty comfortable with the web.

I created a profile, which consisted of many many pages of info to fill out – my personality, my business info (much of which I skipped.) Logging on to my homepage (quite adorably called “My Shtick”) presented me with this box, halfway down the page:

I appreciated having the main ideas broken down for me like that. The toolbar along the top is also helpful – but again, SO many options. All main headers have general categories, and then a way to make it ‘mine’ – for example, under main header Groups the subtopics are Groups Home, Browse Groups, Create Group, My Groups, My Groups Membership. Whoa.

The site is still quite new, so I see how exciting it could be with more users and a bit of refinement to the navigation and options. I’m curious to see where it goes once more people start signing up. I was definitely intrigued by such a detailed networking site whose main purpose is not to get people together in person – although by providing event listings and opportunities for people to create groups, it certainly provides the framework for doing so. Noting the parallels, GesherCity provides event listings (calendar), groups (clusters), and a kind of forums (message boards) – but being able to narrow on a specific community (for us, Boston) and one specific age demographic (young adults) enables us to focus on the “in-person community” as the end goal.

Go check out JewGlue.com yourself – curious to hear what you think!

Shabbat Shalom everyone! Ally

There is another community-wide rally to support Israel taking place on Thursday, January 8th at 7:30pm at Mishkan Tefila in Chestnut Hill.

Join with the entire community to stand in support of Israel. Sponsored by ADL, AJC, AIPAC, BIAC, CJP, The David Project, Hadassah, The Hillel Council of New England, JCRC, SAIAT and others. RSVP’s encouraged to nereg@aipac.org

All the details are on our website. Please spread the word!

UPDATE: There’s now a Facebook event posted for this rally, too.

Want to start off the new year by partying at a HUGE gala event with hundreds of Jewish young adults  in Boston? You’re in luck. The Young Leadership Division of CJP is hosting “A Royal Affair” this upcoming Saturday night. It’s open bar, DJ & dancing, and will feature a performance by the band “Endway” – taking a listen on their MySpace, they’re not half bad! (This from a girl with rather high indie-rock standards… But I digress.)

Today (the 5th) is the last day to pre-register and save $10, so go buy those tickets now! After today, it’s $75 a person.

Because we at GesherCity know that attending an event with over 500 people can be a little intimidating, we are hosting a PRE-PARTY for you to meet people in a more low-key setting before heading over to the main event.

Come join us at Flash’s from 8:00-10:00; we’ll walk over to the ‘affair’ together around 10. Our website has all the details. See you there!

Here is a message from Dana & Matt, coordinators of the GesherCity Israel Cluster. Please email to let them know if you can make it to this important rally happening today (Tuesday the 30th.)

Please join the Jewish community at 5:00 PM TODAY in a peaceful counter-protest in front of groups that demonstrate against Israel’s defensive action.

The groups will be rallying against the Israeli consulate at 20 Park Plaza.

Our goal is very simple; not to engage the other side but to make sure that news media shows signs and people who support Israel.

Please let us know if you are coming!!!

Dana Horton: dhorton@jcrcboston.org or Matt Hoffman: usdnortheast@jafi.org

HAPPY HANUKKAH! For those of you in the Boston area, you know a piping hot latke and a snuggle by the menorah is MUCH needed right now. Check out some cowboys singing the driedel song – sure to put a smile on your face, at least!

If you’re craving celebration with others, check out Lights & Strikes bowling-hanukkah extravaganza happening TONIGHT, or Hanukkah Worldwide – Boston featuring kickass klezmer rock band GOLEM on Saturday night. There are dozens more events happening this week, though – our Calendar has the complete roundup. (And who doesn’t love the x-mas eve rite of passage: Matzo Ball & JBALL discounts here, kids!)

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On a totally unrelated note, we just joined TWITTER! Come follow us and we’ll follow you, too. Yeah!