A few weeks back my friends Josh Kanter and Brad Snider invited me to a meal in Woodbridge.  It was an event for their social action focused Moishe House (http://www.moishehouse.org/houses_a.asp?HouseID=89).  Moishe House is an international organization providing meaningful Jewish experiences to young adults in their twenties. The House supports and sponsors young leaders as they create vibrant home-based communities for their peers. The food was delicious (especially the challah and the long-grained wild rice), but it is the company that really got me pontificating.  Just about everyone there was focused on social justice in some form.  There was a spectrum of ‘do-gooders’; some were focused on bringing kids from the suburbs to paint murals in the city, some on improving recycling in Detroit, and others on making Detroit more immigrant-friendly.  Upon some contemplation it occurred to me that this has to be more common in Detroit than in other cities.  I know every city has groups focused on social equity, but they are (in my non-empirically backed opinion) niches in vast cities full of endless traditional professions.  In Detroit having an urban garden, or having a non-profit focusing on helping underprivileged kids through boxing, fencing, or painting is mainstream.  One would think that Detroit’s inundating amount of problems makes people apathetic by now.  But, for many people of our generation it has done the opposite – it has motivated them to set aside more traditional employment to work for a cause about which they are passionate.

most of the attendees of the dinner (I hadn’t arrived yet)