Some Jewish groups teach participants how to be leaders. The Hineni Circle takes a different approach, instead aiming to teach DMV-area young adults to live Jewishly.
“We see people who are centering Jewish homes in their lives as the future of the Jewish people,” said GatherDC’s Rabbi Amalia Mark, who runs The Hineni Circle.
The recently launched 10-month “experience” aims to help participants in their 20s or 30s gain skills for difficult conversations, encounter new ideas, models and Jewish perspectives, invest in Jewish community groups, build lasting relationships with peers, adopt or continue at least one home-based Jewish ritual, and make at least one concrete decision about one’s Jewish life, according to the website.
Armed with this new knowledge, participants are “naturally going to be involved in Jewish community and step up into leadership roles,” Mark said.
Sarah Flores Shannon is among the 13 participants of The Hineni Circle’s inaugural cohort, which began meeting on Oct. 28.
“It felt like The Hineni Circle would give me an opportunity to truly build out my own Jewish community, while also giving me the tools to try out and decide what type of Jewish rituals I wanted to incorporate into my life,” the Falls Church resident said.
The Hineni Circle came about from a desire to create an integrated, rooted experience. A group of GatherDC’s funders wanted to support a leadership development fellowship. Mark and the group brainstormed for half a year about how they would “fill a space that wasn’t being filled.”
“We wanted to be able to offer a program that didn’t exist, and that would meet a new need, and that would help other Jewish [organizations],” Mark said. “We saw this as fitting into something bigger than just us, that would also support any other 20s and 30s Jewish [organizations], and, hopefully, longer-term, the Jewish community in general here.”
“I think it’s been necessary for a long time, actually,” she said of The Hineni Circle. “I think that people are so hungry to own Judaism with both hands.”
The group kicked off with a trip to Pearlstone Retreat Center in Baltimore from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2, followed by a Shabbat dinner.
“It’s been amazing to see how we’re coming together really naturally as a group,” Flores Shannon said. “I think that, already through a lot of the different sessions that we did at our retreat, I’m finding small pieces of Jewish wisdom and ritual that I’ve been incorporating into my practice.”
Mark leads the meetings, which consist of text study and discussions. Sessions feature guest educators who speak to the group about one of The Hineni Circle’s eight pillars: zman (sacred time), mikdash (home), tzedek (justice), tzedakah (charity), v’achalta, v’savata (food ethics), kehillah (community), mishpachah (family) and lilmod u’lilamed (learning).
“The DMV holds some of the best Jewish educators in North America,” Mark said. “So we’re trying very hard to put folks in front of our fellows … and [have them] learn directly.”
The group recently heard from Sarah Waxman, the CEO and founder of At The Well, a Jewish women’s wellness nonprofit. The next session will be spent reflecting on what the group learned and how they’re practicing these concepts. Participants can ask any questions.
“We’re constantly taking it in, practicing, reflecting, processing, and then practicing again,” Mark said. “So it’s a cycle.”
The length of the immersive, in-person experience is what sets The Hineni Circle apart from similar programming in the area, hopefully leading to deeper, more meaningful connections. “We’re not interested in replicating what already exists in the Jewish DMV,” Mark said.
Prior to joining The Hineni Circle, Flores Shannon said, her involvement in the Jewish community was “very in and out.”
“I pop in and go to one event,” she said. “I think what I realized only since I started my participation in The Hineni Circle is that what I’m looking for is Jewish community, and that’s only really possible when you’re repeatedly showing up with the same group of people, oftentimes in the same space.”
The application process for participants was “pretty intense” — GatherDC accepted half of the 26 applicants, who each submitted written responses and interviewed with Mark and two GatherDC staff members.
“We wanted to create a cohort of people that weren’t just great on paper, but that could also really work and learn and grow together,” Mark said.
She and her fellow staff members tried to be representative of age, geographic location within the DMV and stage of life. But there are also unexpected similarities.
“As someone who recently got engaged, I met someone else in the cohort who got engaged on the same day,” Flores Shannon said. “We’re both having those considerations of, ‘What does it mean for us to build a Jewish home?’”
In the first session, the group examined the concept of hineni — or “here I am.” Flores Shannon read commentary by Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin: “‘Hineni is a pure, astonished and unguarded affirmation given before all the facts are known.’”
“I think that idea really summarized how I feel about this experience,” Flores Shannon said of The Hineni Circle. “I don’t really know what’s in store. I know I’ve signed up for a huge commitment in terms of time, but I’m coming in so open-hearted and ready to be deeply moved by this experience.”
