By Nancy B. Greer
President & CEO
Young couples today, including Jewish couples, are more diverse than ever before. Imagine two people who want to build a Jewish life together and connect with the Puget Sound Jewish community. The partners might be recent transplants to the Seattle area or have lived here all their lives. They might have been raised Jewish or they might be an interfaith/mixed-heritage couple. In any event, they are trying to figure out the kind of Jewish life they want to have and are looking for a place to begin.
Does that sound like you or people you know? Thanks to our generous donors, the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle is opening a door for couples to begin that journey through our Reset & Refresh program, which is now taking registrations for the Spring 2020 cohort.
Reset & Refresh is a six-part series for young adult couples to build community around Jewish values. The program gives partners an open, welcoming, and reflective space to discover more about their Jewish identity, explore together how young families can build Jewish lives, and make friends with people at a similar stage in their lives. As a group, participants will explore ways in which definitions of Jewishness, access to Jewish content, and relationship to Jewish community organizations are being challenged and transformed in this generation.
At a time when coming together is more important than ever, Reset & Refresh explores approaches to gathering that create comfortable and meaningful experiences, large and small, that will deepen relationships and reconnect people with family and friends. The group will explore ways of gathering that bring joy and fulfillment to ourselves and others. There is fun built into the program too – get ready for artisanal challah baking!
Couples who took part in the Federation’s inaugural Reset & Refresh earlier in 2019 say the program gave them the tools they were seeking to integrate Judaism into their lives in their own way and to build community. As two partners shared with us afterward, “Reset & Refresh was exactly what we were looking for. We made new friends and expanded our Jewish community in Seattle. We were able to experience a curated Jewish experience that allowed us the space to be thoughtful about religion in our lives.”
And another pair told us, “We now know about new options to express and explore our faith and have more options to choose from.”
Intrigued? You can learn more about Reset & Refresh here. We still have a limited number of spaces for our our Spring 2020 cohort, which starts April 22.
Reset & Refresh is an amazing experience that gives participants a guided tour of the possibilities of their Jewish journeys toward a fulfilling Jewish life. We invite young couples to take a look, and if you know of people who would be interested, please let them know!
