Base BSTN

Base BSTN is a community rooted in the along the Cambridge/Somerville city line, serving the community of the Greater Boston area, for anyone seeking and searching for deeper relationships with community and tradition with an eye towards creativity and accessibility. Base BSTN is committed to being a home for any individuals, families, and communities to cultivate a curiosity for learning, an eagerness for growth and change, and the warmth of meaningful connections.

Here you'll find events big and small, from community Craft Fairs to intimate Shabbat dinners. This is the best place to follow along with our regular offerings. Our address is always sent out 24 hours before events for the privacy and security of our community.

Excited to keep up to date with all things Base BSTN including exclusive learning opportunities, art giveaways and more? Join our mailing list - sign up here

A bit about us:

Rabbi Jackson was Ordained at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College in Newton, MA with a Specialization in Spirituality and Social Justice and a Masters in Jewish Education with a concentration in Israel Education in conjunction with the iCenter. Jackson was a part of the inaugural cohort of The Nachshon Project’s undergraduate fellowship as well as the first cohort of Graduate School Fellows as well as being a Hartman Limmud Rabbinic Fellow and one of the inaugural Learning Fellow’s at Lehrhaus: Jewish Tavern and House of Learning in Boston. He has worked to build singing prayer communities across the country in California (Congregation Rodef Sholom, URJ Camp Newman, University Synagogue, and NFTY), in New York (at Kehillat Romemu as the Joseph S. Ingber Rabbinic Fellow) as well as here in Boston (Asiyah Jewish Community, Temple Beth Sholom of Framingham, Temple Beth Zion, and Mishkan Tefilah). When not recording his own music, like his most recent album – “Notnim B’ahavah Reshut”, Jackson sings with the Chaverai Nevarech Band featured on R’ Josh Warshawsky’s albums.

While coming from different backgrounds and practices, Jackson and his intrepid partner Rachel built their home around the integration of Jewish interpretation and the creative arts. In doing so, they have built several communities and projects seeking to bring intimate connections to Judaism across all backgrounds and denominations: intentional Judaica called Hiddur Mitzvah, to create innovative, tangible aspects of ritual and as well as the Moishe House Cambridge Arts Pod, a community built around engaging with Judaism through creativity. They are eager to continue to welcome folks into their home and into Jewish tradition with Base Boston. You can reach Jackson at [email protected].

Rachel, owner of Binah Design, is a scribe, artist, graphic designer, and bookbinder. Rachel’s first art commission was the design of a bar mitzvah invitation, when she was 11 (before her own bat mitzvah).

Since then, Rachel pursued her love of making things by hand, intertwined with Jewish tradition in a number of ways. She spent two years at the Migdal Oz seminary in Israel, deeply immersed in Talmud, and in her second year, silk screening at the Jerusalem Print Workshop. She studied Visual Art and Humanities where she wrote her BA thesis on modern philosophical understandings of the physical form of the book at the University of Chicago. She completed a certificate in bookbinding at the North Bennet Street School in Boston where she studied traditional methods of gold tooling and leatherwork, tool making, and metalworking, among a wide variety of skills and disciplines.

Rachel studied sofrut(sacred Hebrew calligraphy) from renowned teacher Jen Taylor Friedman, and has been working and teaching as a soferet since 2015. She has written two English language megillot that abide by all the rules of sofrut, which are the only two known kosher English megillot in existence. Her teaching has focused on providing accessible opportunities for traditionally marginalized communities to access the texts and profession of sofrut including the first class accessible to deaf and hard of hearing participants.