Inclusive Riverway Project helps make Temple Israel of Boston’s big tent even bigger

“Inclusive Riverway Project helps make Temple Israel of Boston’s big tent even bigger“
by Brett M. Rhyne, Jewish Journal of Greater Boston, published December 18, 2025​​​​​​​

The success of the Riverway Project, Temple Israel of Boston’s initiative to bring in Jewish millennials and Gen Zers, lies in its close association with its parent synagogue.

“What I think makes us really special and unique is that we don’t just exist as the Riverway Project,” notes its director, Rabbi Andrew Oberstein. “We’re also a part of the Temple Israel umbrella. So what we can offer people in their 20s and 30s is explicit 20s and 30s community, but also the opportunity to be a part of an intergenerational synagogue community.”

Leadership team member Hannah Moverman, 36, calls the Riverway Project “a really unique, very vibrant community within the community” of Temple Israel.

Through its weekly social, political and religious activities, its monthly Shabbat services and its annual High Holiday celebrations, Oberstein estimates Riverway engages about 1,500 young adults per year. That number is impressive, given that Temple Israel has about 1,300 member families in total.

“The really incredible thing is, even though conventional wisdom seems to be telling us that young people don’t want to join synagogues and prefer to not affiliate, the majority of new members at Temple Israel are coming in through the Riverway Project,” he says.

And it’s not simply people who age out of Riverway and then join TI. “It’s not a feeder in that way,” Oberstein says. “The majority of new members of Temple Israel are people in their 20s and 30s without kids, who are hungry for intergenerational connection and have seen the power of a synagogue and what it can mean, even at this life stage.”

TI started Riverway 25 years ago to attract congregants who are neither families with young children nor older adults. “So many people are Jewishly engaged in college, and then there’s this gap of time where people feel like, ‘Well, until I have children to put into the preschool, why should I be a part of a synagogue?’” notes Oberstein.

Riverway’s approach is to embrace the diversity of the Jewish millennial and Gen Z community.

“Our big thing is inclusivity,” Moverman says. “Promoting a home for people who might not have another Jewish space: Jews by choice, Jews of color, LGBTQ Jews, anybody who identifies as Jewish in any way.”

Member Amanda McFarland exemplifies the Riverway Project ethos. A queer Jew by choice, she was in the process of converting and was looking for community.

“Especially as someone who was coming into Judaism and didn’t have a family connection or anything like that,” she says. “Rabbi Andrew was my sponsoring rabbi, and he said, ‘You know, you should really come to Riverway. I think you’ll like it.’ I was very nervous, so it took me a couple months to get the courage to come in; but I came in and I just immediately felt so welcome.”

That was four years ago. Last year, McFarland was so enthralled with the community she found at Riverway that she joined the leadership team as its tzedek chair, which has led to even more gratifying experiences.

“I’ve been able to really build a connection between the Riverway community and our larger justice community at Temple Israel, and it’s just been such a great place,” she says. “I feel like I’ve brought people there who are, maybe, either like me – who were in the conversion process – or friends who maybe went to Hebrew school or did their bar/bat mitzvah and then never interacted again with a temple environment.”

As is common among this cohort of American Jews, there is a broad range of opinion about Israel; yet the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack has underscored the diversity of accepted political opinion among Riverway members.

McFarland acknowledges that while some people left the group because they felt it was too Zionist or not Zionist enough, most Riverway members agree on the values of justice and the sanctity of life.

“We’re able to actually talk about them in a way that feels almost impossible in other spaces,” she says. “I don’t know how we’re doing that, but I really just think that people come to Riverway to be together, and they come to Riverway because they resonate with the values of Riverway: assuming the best, assuming that people care.

“It’s allowed us to have really productive conversations around really difficult issues that we’re facing as a whole community.”

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