JTA / NEW YORK JEWISH WEEK | APRIL 4, 2024

Once a month, a handful of Base volunteers join…with Jewish or Jewish-curious inmates… providing company, conversation and Torah learning for some of the city’s most isolated citizens.

The initiative is spearheaded by Rabbi Danny Stein, who, along with his wife Tamara, opened the UWS Base last summer.

JEWISH EDUCATION PROJECT | JANUARY 18, 2024

Adapting: The Future of Jewish Education is a podcast hosted by The Jewish Education Project. Hear CEO David Bryfman and a different guest each episode explore the big questions, challenges, and successes that define Jewish education.

Rabbi Jackson Mercer creates intentional spaces as a song leader. He is also the author of Wise Friends, a children's book that's really a book for everyone, filled with millennium-old Hebrew teachings.

JEWISH JOURNAL | DECEMBER 8, 2023

Building a congregation is hard work, even in the best of circumstances. But when Rabbi Sofia Zway, Moishe House’s new Base Rabbi, saw how Hamas’ attack on Israel Oct. 7 affected her members, she knew she had to make adjustments.

When she saw the young men and women who entered her living room on the first Shabbat after Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 assault, the rabbi was struck by their overwhelming sense of grief, anger and loneliness. She made the decision to make her home a grieving/processing space for the young men and women.

JEWISH BOSTON | DECEMBER 8, 2023

“It’s so fascinating to meet with people on a pretty regular basis and hear the ways in which people are wrestling with their identity in a way they’ve never wrestled before. Some people want to study Torah. For some people, it’s just: ‘I don’t really have Shabbat practice, and I’m looking to jumpstart that.’

So, I think there’s an eagerness to find things within Jewish community; it can be an anchor to some extent. I think there’s also a welling up of curiosity, whether that’s a curiosity of being in community with other people or the different parts of tradition. It’s such a fascinating reaction that I don’t think I was expecting.”

eJEWISH PHILANTHROPY | OCTOBER 3, 2023

Young adults crave thick community, inspiring learning, and rituals that have spiritual depth, ongoing relevance, and integrity,” Rabbi Jesse Paikin, executive director of Base, said in a statement.

“Rabbis should be leaning in to what makes our work unique: we can play integral roles in people’s lives with a distinctly and vibrantly Jewish vision of forming deep connections through powerful learning and gathering. We are excited to open more Base homes because the demand exists for these Jewish communities,” Paikin said.

JEWISH CHICAGO | JULY 26, 2023

Rabbi Sarah Mulhern has been delighted by how many young Jews are looking for wisdom from ancient texts. "Who would have thought millennials and Gen Z-ers would be knocking on my door to learn Torah on a Tuesday night?" she said.

Mulhern, who serves as the rabbi of Silverstein Base: Lincoln Park builds her classes around questions that matter to young people today--like how to form meaningful friendships and relationships--and structures the classes so students learn both from texts and from the other people in the room.

RELIGION NEWS SERVICE | APRIL 17, 2023

Young people told the researchers that rabbis they had encountered had helped them feel more spiritually connected, more connected to a Jewish community and more comfortable and confident being Jewish.

Meaningful encounters with rabbis may happen on college campuses, as happened for me. They happen through organizations like Base, which invites people into rabbis’ homes to share meals, learn Torah and develop stronger community connections.

KANSAS CITY JEWISH CHRONICLE | APRIL 27, 2023

“In my role as the Base Program Director, I first and foremost provide support and guidance to the Base rabbinic couples that are currently leading communities across the country, ensuring they have the resources (financial and otherwise) to create and sustain their new communities.”

Canadian Jewish News | MARCH 16, 2023

The new urban, decentralized, personal style of Judaism is perhaps best exemplified by Base, an organization that first sprung up in 2015 out of New York. Rabbinic couples open up their homes for High Holidays, Shabbat meals and discussion groups, inviting mostly young adults to attend and find a physical place to connect with their Judaism.

It’s of a piece with the broader rising impulse of revitalizing urban spaces and creating more “15-minute cities”—cities where everything you need, from groceries to banking, is a 15-minute walk away. To learn more about the Jewish angles of the trend, Avi sat down with Rabbi Jesse Paikin, a Toronto native who loved Base enough to move to Washington, D.C., to become the group’s executive director.

eJEWISH PHILANTHROPY | MARCH 2, 2023

Base was a remarkable opportunity and invitation to listen deeply to what modern Jews are asking; of me as a rabbi, our family as an educational resource, and of themselves as the living, breathing embodiment of the bridge between the past and the future. How and where do they fit in the diversity, complexity and vastness of Judaism and Jewish life?

eJEWISH PHILANTHROPY | JANUARY 19, 2023

“Understanding how do we speak to and listen to people and understand what their deepest yearnings are, and how can we provide experiences that are meaningful and relevant for them – that’s an approach that I bring to my students and that’s an approach that I bring in mentoring and coaching rabbis,” he said. “And that’s very much an approach that I bring when speaking with funders… It’s about listening and saying, ‘What’s important to you, and how can we respond to that?’”

eJEWISH PHILANTHROPY | JANUARY 9, 2023

In our world of endless possibilities and a myriad of increasing challenges, how likely is it that someone will feel committed to something that isn’t making them feel more alive, more connected, more rooted in the world?

When we focus on creating something meaningful, depth-filled and truly transformative, people are naturally curious and attracted to it. It’s not about rebranding Judaism, it’s about reimagining how Judaism can feel in our daily lives. If we’re offering that to folks, my hunch is a lot of people are going to want in. Instead of thinking about this change on a one-to-three-year year grant cycle, let’s think about this on a 20-year horizon.

The J | AUGUST 11, 2022

Base was founded seven years ago by four friends in Manhattan and Brooklyn who were passionate about Jewish outreach. Each Base is run by a rabbinical couple, something that Sandmel believes is based on the successful Chabad model, one in which hospitable emissaries create a warm atmosphere.

At Base, people are invited into the rabbi-and-spouse’s home for Shabbat and holiday meals, Jewish learning, programs and social connection. It is run under the auspices of Moishe House, and the initiatives are similar, except that at Moishe House there are multiple residents, they’re not married, and they receive rent stipends in exchange for planning events for their 20- and 30-something peers.

eJEWISH PHILANTHROPY | DECEMBER 17, 2021

If this model sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Chabad has been using radical hospitality as a vehicle for transformation in Jewish communities for years. We felt it was time that rabbis and Jewish leaders outside of the ultra-Orthodox community heed the ancient call of Abraham and Sarah and open our tents.

eJEWISH PHILANTHROPY | MARCHC 6, 2021

Moishe House, which provides living spaces and programming to young Jewish adults, is acquiring Hillel International’s rabbinical network Base Movement in an effort to offer more spiritual content and counseling.

“It is clear that investing in meaningful relationships between great rabbis and educators is a key to successfully unlocking the beauty of Jewish life,” Moishe House founder and CEO David Cygielman told eJewishPhilanthropy.

JTA | JANUARY 18, 2018

Base occupies a middle ground between the home- and synagogue-based outreach of Chabad, the outward-looking Hasidic movement, and Moishe House, a network of apartments where young Jewish singles host social and holiday events in exchange for rent subsidies. While Chabad offers its services to all comers, its guiding philosophy is haredi Orthodox. Base is intentionally more pluralist

eJEWISH PHILANTHROPY | JANUARY 11, 2017

“Does this Jewish Journey have a destination? And furthermore, do we as educators have a responsibility to lead our learners, on their Jewish Journey, toward a destination?“

We must have enough faith in ourselves, in the text, and in our learners, to share our Torah, the Talmud, our tradition, conflicting commentaries, ancient and contemporary interpretations. We must experiment with communal prayers and rituals that feel foreign in today’s I-centered society. We must trust our learners, no matter their background, to enter the great Jewish conversation that has been going on for years. Millennials don’t want a watered-down version of Judaism. They want the real thing, with all of its contradiction and complexity, with its irony, humor, and poetry.