Eve Lustig has been connected to the Washington, D.C., Jewish community her entire life, having grown up in the District as the daughter of a local rabbi and spending plenty of time with fellow congregants for services and Shabbat dinners.
Now, Lustig is back in D.C. after spending four years at Tulane University in New Orleans. She has spent most of the last two years working at Sixth & I as a Jewish life associate, getting more people involved in the same Jewish community that helped raised her.
What’s your background and how did you end up at Sixth & I?
I grew up in D.C. I’m super-involved in the Jewish community. My dad was a senior rabbi at a Reform congregation forever and for my entire childhood growing up. I was always going to temple on Friday nights and schmoozing with congregants from a very young age, super entrenched in Jewish life. And then I went to college at Tulane in New Orleans and was not at all thinking about working in the Jewish world. I was really interested in criminal justice reform. And then in my senior year, when I was looking at jobs and I knew I wanted to come back to D.C., I was looking at different amazing nonprofits and at Sixth and I and saw the job available. When I started, I didn’t expect to end up working in the Jewish world. And now, I’m so thrilled that it’s what I do. I love it.
What are you responsible for as a Jewish life associate?
Like a lot of small nonprofit teams, we all wear a lot of hats, which is part of the reason I love the job so much — there’s always a million different things going on and a lot of different types of work. The main buckets that fill out my day-to-day are that I run all of our social programming. We’re really trying to do innovative and intentional social programming. So, not just a happy hour where people have to do the work to meet each other, but programs that are really facilitated and designed intentionally to create meaningful connections for people to one another. Any sort of different, funky, intentionally planned social programming, I run all of those.
I also do a lot of community engagement work. So, I meet one-on-one with people who are new to our community or who are already in our community and build relationships with them, connect them to Sixth & I programming and connect them to other Sixth & I members. I also run all the logistics and handle all the coordination for our nine-month conversion course, which is called the Jewish Welcome Workshop, and it’s for about 40 students and it goes from September to May of each year. I also do all the admin for all our classes, and I work with the senior rabbi and executive director of Jewish life on his calendar.
What drew you to work at Sixth & I?
I was really drawn to working at Sixth & I because as someone who grew up in D.C., it was always this cultural institution. I didn’t even initially think about it as a Jewish institution, but more so like a place for ideas and conversation and art. Growing up, I would go see my favorite authors. I remember I think when I was in high school, Zadie Smith spoke at Sixth & I, and I thought it was so cool that there was this amazing author that I love that talks about the Black British experience and she’s talking about her book at a synagogue in D.C. When I was looking for jobs, I was looking for mission-driven places that are doing something cool in the world and helping people and bringing people together, and Sixth & I felt like it’s doing all those things in a really alternative and interesting way.
What’s it like for you socially as a Jew in your 20s providing programming for other Jews in your age group?
It’s kind of difficult, actually. Every Jewish professional will tell you it’s kind of hard to have a Jewish life outside of work. So, in a lot of ways, I feel more in touch with my Judaism than I ever have. Because I’m working as like a Jewish public servant in a way, creating opportunities for other Jewish people, creating Jewish programming, creating space for Jewish conversation. So, in that way, I feel really in tune and in touch with my own Judaism. … On the other side, I feel like for the first time I don’t have as much of a regular Jewish practice on my own outside of work. Sometimes, I work on Shabbat so I’m not free to go have Shabbat dinner with friends or host Shabbat at my home. I’m working on holidays, so I’m not leading those or going to [see] different friends. So, in that way, I’ve had a hard time making a Jewish young adult life for myself outside of work. So, it really has its pros and cons.
How has your Jewish identity evolved as you’ve grown up, being the daughter of a rabbi, going to Tulane and then returning home to work at Sixth & I?
I feel like my Jewish identity is so much at the forefront of who I am. And I give a lot of credit to my parents and how they raised my brother and me with our main values of what it means to be a good person and a good community member, both in your own home community and in the world. It happened to be the same values that we focus on in Judaism. So, tikkun olam, repairing the world, feels important to me, and that’s a Jewish value. Being in a community with other people, being really into knowledge and learning and questioning things when they don’t feel right, that’s super Jewish and very much how I was raised.
I love all the classic Jewish Reform girl stuff — I love NFTY, I love Jewish Reform music like Dan Nichols. It’s very much a part of who I am. And it’s been cool working at Sixth & I now that I’m at a time when I’m defining who I am as a person because I graduated from college two years ago. It’s been interesting to define this new version of Judaism for myself, because it’s now part of my profession.