First-of-its-kind Jewish cohousing complex breaks ground in West Berkeley

Asher and Theo Wight shovel dirt during a groundbreaking ceremony at the future Berkeley Moshav site on Sunday, March 23. Credit: Aaron Levy-Wolins/J. Staff

After 10 years of meeting, planning and fundraising, shovels finally hit dirt at the symbolic groundbreaking for Berkeley Moshav, the nation’s first Jewish urban cohousing complex, with 36 privately owned units.

“Such an important dream is coming true,” said Rabbi Dev Noily of Piedmont’s Kehilla Community Synagogue at the celebration on Sunday, offering a blessing that “this way for Jews to live is a good way.”

This story was first published on J. The Jewish News of California

About 60 people, including a dozen children, gathered at the building site on San Pablo Avenue near Bancroft Way for an afternoon of thanksgiving, feasting and dancing to klezmer music. Twenty-eight of the condos in the four-story building have already been sold. One more sale is needed before actual construction can begin as planned on May 6.

A building rendering for 2403-07 San Pablo Avenue, the site of future Berkeley Moshav co-housing. Credit: Studio KDA

Project founder Roger Studley, who lives in Berkeley with his family, is confident that it will happen. This has been his dream for more than a decade. 

“He had the vision, the talent, the perseverance to keep at it no matter what,” said Dan Alpert, a future Berkeley Moshav member as the residents will be called. 

Alpert plans to move into one of the units with his wife, joining his son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren who have claimed another unit — all of them making a three-generation commitment to what is still an experimental way of living together. 

Berkeley Moshav members pose during a groundbreaking ceremony at the future Jewish cohousing complex on Sunday, March 23. Credit: Aaron Levy-Wolins/J. Staff

Residents will own their units and will share 8,700 square feet of communal space, including two kitchens, a terrace, courtyard, play area, bicycle and car garage, art studio and gym. Decisions involving shared spaces are made as a group. 

“I love the idea of interacting with people throughout the day, the idea of living communally — knowing that if I need an egg, I can just go next door,” said Alpert’s daughter-in-law, Yona Adams, who will live in a three-bedroom unit with her husband and two children, ages 11 and 12.

“Judaism is important to us too,” she added. “We almost never go to temple, but we love celebrating the holidays together. We love the songs. This is a good way to show the kids that being Jewish and part of a Jewish community are important values to us.”

Berkeley Moshav is one of some 180 cohousing developments in North America.  According to cohousing.org, the national umbrella supporting such ventures, cohousing is an “intentional, collaborative neighborhood that combines private homes with shared indoor and outdoor spaces designed to support an active and interdependent community life.”

Berkeley Moshav will adhere to that concept, adding Jewish intentionality to the mix as the “moshav” part of the name implies. (In Israel, a moshav is a village with some similarities to a kibbutz.)

Both an indoor dairy kitchen and a small outdoor meat kitchen will be kosher, and residents will celebrate Jewish holidays and Shabbat together, as the spirit moves them, Studley said. 

Berkeley Moshav founder Roger Studley grabs a shovel during the groundbreaking ceremony. Credit: Aaron Levy-Wolins/J. Staff

Even the expansive, shared top-floor terrace, with its sweeping views of the San Francisco Bay and Golden Gate Bridge, is referred to as the “Havdalah Terrace,”  where residents can hold the weekly ceremony to mark the end of Shabbat. 

The flavor of the community will be Jewish, though you don’t have to be Jewish to live there, Studley said, adding that most of the residents so far are Jewish, of various observance levels.

Construction should take 18 to 20 months, the builders have told Studley, so residents can expect to move in by early 2027. Units range in size from one bedroom to three-plus bedrooms — the “plus” being an extra room that can double as a bedroom — and currently run from about $800,000 to $1.7 million. The residents will determine monthly fees. 

Josh, Yona and Aviva Abrams and Dan and Laura Alpert — two families who will move into Berkeley Moshav — pose by an excavator during a groundbreaking ceremony at the future Jewish co-living site on Sunday, March 23, 2025. Credit: Aaron Levy-Wolins/J. Staff

What about the significance of 36 units? The number 36 is “double chai,” or “life” — twice the luck and blessing of 18, one of Judaism’s symbolic numbers.

“I’d love to claim that we chose that number, but it was serendipitous,” Studley said with a laugh.

Those who have bought into the dream share a love of community as well as Jewish tradition.

“I’m here because community matters,” said Michelle Bashin, speaking at Sunday’s groundbreaking. “There’s a national epidemic of loneliness. The remedy for loneliness is daily contact with friends and family, and that’s what will happen here.”

Future resident Paul Sugarman told the crowd that he and his wife made their down payment 14 months ago because they are ready to downsize and don’t want to move into a senior residence where “everyone there is old, like us.”

“We found the community we were looking for in Berkeley Moshav,” he added, “and the fact it’s a Jewish community made it even more appealing.”

A global movement across the diaspora supporting Jewish intentional communities called Hakhel exists, but apparently there is only one other Jewish cohousing community with residents — Living Tree Alliance, a cooperative farm in Vermont — and it is zoned for just seven private homes.

After a groundswell of interest in cohousing several years ago, interest in the idea shrank, Studley said, especially after Israel’s diaspora ministry stopped funding Hakhel.

Even so, Studley is bullish about the future of Jewish cohousing. He started a nonprofit, urbanmoshav.org, to advise and support similar projects elsewhere.

Once Berkeley Moshav is up and running, Studley plans to pour more energy into that venture.

“My intention is to have this be replicable and do more urban moshavim in other places,” he said. “Once I get this one under construction, and I can take a little vacation, then I can start thinking about where else we can pull this off.”