Though less than a year old, See KC — an initiative designed to showcase what Kansas City and the Jewish community have to offer in the hopes of enticing young Jewish singles, couples and families to move here — is already a success.
See KC hosted its third cohort for a weekend visit last month. In total, 54 people (including children) have visited Kansas City through the program, and nine people – families and individuals – are in the process of moving here between now and the end of the summer.
“I think it’s tremendously exciting,” said Bridey Stangler, See KC program manager. “The sense of ownership that we can feel over helping someone find their next step in life and their new home is great. I’m so proud of this program and all that we’ve been able to achieve with it in a short amount of time.”
See KC participants have varied in age, geographical location, lifestyle, observance level, etc. The last cohort included people from as close as Joplin, Missouri, and as far away as New York City and Seattle.
Some participants, like New York City native and resident Rebecca Halff, have never been to Kansas City before. Halff is finishing her law degree at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and has accepted a job with the Kansas Capital Habeas Office as a capital defender, which she’ll start in August.
Halff came on the See KC trip knowing very little about the city, “just some vague ideas about jazz, barbecue, and Taylor Swift,” she said. Now, after her weekend here, Halff said she is “extremely excited” to move to Kansas City.
“I love that the city has both big city elements — an arts scene, thriving subcultures, walkable neighborhoods, good vegetarian food, world-class museums — while retaining small-town warmth and friendliness,” she said. “I could feel that the city is in a moment of exciting energy and growth — the first women’s sports stadium in the world and the streetcar expansion were highlights for me — and it made me want to be there while it’s all happening.”
Other participants are more familiar with Kansas City, whether they live close enough to have visited before or grew up here but moved away. Dani Kaplan falls into the latter category. Her family attended Congregation Beth Shalom, she’s an Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy alumna and the daughter of Dr. David Kaplan and Sherry Kaplan (z”l).
Kaplan and her husband, Michael Arenson, currently live in Providence, Rhode Island, with their two young children. The pair are thinking about relocating and are looking at their options to be closer to family. Taking part in See KC helped Kaplan experience Kansas City and the Jewish community in a way that she hadn’t yet as an adult.
“It was truly such an impactful trip for us and really allowed us to see living in KC in such a tangible way,” she said.
See KC is a program of Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City and a direct result of the Kansas City Jewish Community Study, which found that the Jewish community is not always perceived as welcoming to those who didn’t grow up here.
“We saw in the community study that our community is not as welcoming to new transplants as we thought, but See KC has enabled our community members to really stretch those muscles and make people feel at home,” Stangler said.
The community members who have participated in See KC weekends have risen to the challenge, offering to do everything from giving tours of the city, welcoming participants into their homes for Shabbat dinners or taking them out to experience some Kansas City nightlife.
All the See KC participants who are preparing to move have been in communication with members of the Jewish community that they met while they were here, and they are excited to engage and be a part of the community.
“The Jewish community members I met were by far the greatest highlight of the trip. I was astonished and moved by people’s enthusiastic welcome,” Halff said. “People came out every day to meet us, to let us into their homes, to give us driving tours of the city, to offer insights and advice about KC living and to explore the city with us. Their generosity and openness was striking. I left genuinely looking forward to returning and forming real friendships with the people I met there.”
As Stangler prepares for the next See KC visit, scheduled for June 6 through 9, she said she is excited to have more and more Kansas Citians involved in the welcome process, “and we’re always excited about the prospect of seeing our community grow.”
