Most of us in the Jewish community take it for granted that we have a warm — or this time of year cool — home in which we can sleep easy every night. That’s not true everywhere and a group from the Jewish community, led by Barry Kaseff, is making sure a family in Kansas City, Kansas, will have a home of their own where they, too, can feel safe and secure.
This past Sunday the group, known as Mitzvah House, had a ground blessing on the site where the home will be built. {mprestriction ids="1,3"}Under the auspices of Heartland Habitat for Humanity an assortment of groups from the Jewish community are banding together to build the home in KCK. So far the following organizations have agreed to find volunteers to lend a hand to build the house — Congregations BIAV, Beth Shalom, Beth Torah, B’nai Jehudah, Ohev Sholom and Kehilath Israel Synagogue, Jewish Community Center, KU fraternities ZBT and AEPi, KU Hillel and Moishe House.
Kaseff has long enjoyed seeing the entire Jewish community work together, starting with the Jewish Arts Festival in 1994. He and his wife Jessica served on the steering committee for that event.
“I just loved the idea of the whole community coming together. At the Arts Festival we had everybody there, all the organizations were under a tent, everyone came together and it was such a wonderful experience. I’ve always loved the Arts Festival, for many reasons including that aspect,” Kaseff said.
The Kaseff family is dedicated to tikkun olam, helping to repair the world, and chose to spend a day building a Habitat for Humanity home when a group of their friends celebrated Barry Kaseff’s 40th and 50th birthdays. It was at the 50th celebration last year where the idea of the Jewish community Habitat for Humanity project began to take root. It was suggested by Mark Naster, who is Jewish and serves as director of corporate and foundation relations for Heartland Habitat for Humanity.
“I thought, who needs that headache,” Kaseff recalled.
But the idea was brought up again, this time from friend Alan Edelman, who is the Jewish Federation’s associate executive director.
“He said, ‘Barry, it was such a great thing. Have you ever thought about bringing the whole community together to do something like this?’ ”
Kaseff was still a little hesitant. It takes a $65,000 commitment to undertake a project like that. But Edelman told Kaseff he knew a foundation that might want to contribute to the cause.
So, he proposed the idea to a few others.
“Everybody said, that’s a great idea, it sounds so cool. We’re in. And that’s how it progressed,” Kaseff said.
But it hasn’t been easy raising the funds to get started.
“I had to be persistent. We were hoping to start building in June. I really started pushing on the fundraising in January. Things always take longer than you plan,” he noted.
Kaseff, and a small group of people on his committee including his father, Harold Kaseff, made presentations to several congregations and organizations to present the idea. So far The J, Beth Shalom, B’nai Jehudah, Beth Torah and K.I. each pledged $5,000 toward the project. A foundation, which at this point will remain anonymous, also donated $33,000 to the project.
“We’re not actually done yet. We’re about $4,000 short. I think more people will want to contribute, especially once we start building and the word starts getting out,” he said.
Even though Mitzvah House hasn’t quite met its fundraising goal, Habitat has given the green light to begin the house. The foundation will be poured soon and approximately 30 days after that volunteers can begin building. The first group is actually signed up for Sunday, Sept. 20.
Habitat generally works on a house Tuesday through Saturday. In this case, volunteers will work on Sunday. About 15 people per day are needed to get the house built.
“I don’t think within the Jewish community we will get that many people per day because of work schedules. But luckily Habitat has a group of people — a lot of retired people — that like to work. So they will be able to fill in any of the days where we can’t put together a group,” Kaseff said.
He’s excited that Jewish Federation is planning to get millennials involved in the project.
“This is a great way to get some of these 20-something and 30-something folks that don’t have many connections to anything Jewish. It’s perfect for that age group. It’s not a religious thing. It’s not a congregational thing …”
Naster told Kaseff a lot of organizations volunteer on a home-building site as a team-building experience. He’s hoping Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy will be one of those groups.
“We are working with HBHA to involve the upper school students in some way. If they do, I think that will be really cool,” Kaseff said.
No one else has yet committed to a team-building event, but Kaseff said excitement for the project overall is building.
“Just the other day, someone said to me he thought he could get 15-20 people working on one day,” he said. “We’d really like to get multiple people from multiple organizations together so that everyone can meet more people. That really is a great idea.”
This isn’t the first time a group from the Jewish community has banded together to work on a Habitat house. For the past several years, every other year a group made up of Jews, Christians and Muslims work together on The House That Abraham Built. It was a project the late Susan Choucroun worked on with Congregation Ohev Sholom’s Rabbi Scott White. Kaseff hopes the Mitzvah House will help spur more members of the Jewish community to take part in that effort also.
“We’re going to try to do the Mitzvah House on the Kansas side this year and we’ll do the one of the Missouri side with The House That Abraham Built next year. I think they have other funding for it, so I don’t have to do the fundraising for it. We hope the volunteers we get this year will want to work on that project next year,” he said.
Rabbi White is a big fan of Habit through his work with The House That Abraham Built.
“For me, The House That Abraham Built is winning the trifecta: a needy family acquires its own home; Jews, Christians, and Muslims interact while working side-by-side; and I get to build relationships with clergy from those communities. It’s a win-win-win,” he said.
Volunteers don’t need to have any carpentry or other skills to volunteer.
“There are plenty of different jobs for plenty of experience levels. You don’t need to know anything,” he said. “It’s just so much fun and it’s so great to see people out there working. They show you how to do everything, it’s really not that complicated.”
Volunteers must be at least 16 years old and, Kaseff said, 16- and 17-year-olds “need to keep their feet on the ground.”
Habitat’s Naster said the organization is proud and excited to be working with the Jewish community of Kansas City to help build a home for a family in need.
“This is a unique experience as no other Habitat affiliate has engaged their entire Jewish community in such a project,” Naster said.
“Barry brought together a team of dedicated individuals who saw the Mitzvah House as a great opportunity and worked hard engaging the synagogues and Jewish organizations to get involved and helped with providing the funds and the volunteers to make this a reality. It took over a year of planning, partnering, and educating others on the positive impact of such a project. It’s great that it’s finally here.”
Kaseff hopes there’s a good buzz about Mitzvah House and people love it.
“If so, we’ll see if we will do this again two years from now.”{/mprestriction}
