By Britten Schear, Special to JTNews
If you ask Becky Sternberg’s mother, the Eastside Jewish Lunch is a larger replica of the Mitzvah lunches Becky hosted as a child with her saved-up baby-sitting money. The younger Sternberg says that from an early age she delighted in gathering her family and friends together and treating them to meals out.
The similarities end there. For one thing, at the monthly Eastside lunch — or “EJL” as the lunch-goers call it — “Everyone pays for themselves,” Sternberg says.
The EJL began as Sternberg’s excuse to get some friends together for an extended Friday lunch. Lauren Bernstein, a longtime friend and co-planner of the lunch, joined Sternberg and another friend, Brian Schultz, for the first lunch. Soon after, the group grew to six core members, then multiplied into the 60 members that are on the invite list today.
At one of the first lunches, Sternberg jokingly suggested that they give their event a name. Now, nearly a year after it started, the EJL has become a serious success. “After one lunch,” says Stern-berg’s older sister Judy Findley, “I know I will go back again.”
Roughly 20 to 25 attendees eat at each lunch, and it’s always on a Friday. The location is always different, as the EJL is committed to sampling a new “world cuisine” from a new Eastside restaurant each time. The last lunch, on February 21st, was all-you-can-eat sushi.
Sternberg and Bernstein do not choose kosher restaurants or enforce dietary restrictions. There is no pressure to dress up, no controlled discussions about current events, no guest speakers, and certainly no work-related talk, though many of the attendees are Microsoft employees. So what makes this lunch distinct from any other casual gathering?
“We are all Jewish,” says Dan Rosenstein, a software engineer at Microsoft. “A lot of us who go aren’t interested in other Jewish agendas [such as] fundraising, religion, politics, and leadership…we just like sharing our private time with other Jews.”
It is the absence of any overtone that attracts many to the lunches; perhaps it is also what keeps the regular EJL lunchgoers between an average 25 and 35 years old.
There is no attempt on either Sternberg’s or Bernstein’s part to make the lunch an event for a younger crowd, but there is no doubt that the regular attendees of the lunch are consistently from a younger generation.
Sternberg has invited her parents, but they have yet to attend. Bernstein’s parents do not know about the event, and anyway, she notes with a grin, “It’s not exactly the type of thing that parents would be interested in attending.”
Also, the majority of the EJL lunches are single men and women. While not many couples attend, Judy Findley says she has brought her husband, and others do bring their spouses on occasion.
In fact, Sternberg notes, many mothers agree that the lunches are likely a good place to “meet a nice Jewish boy.” This was certainly the case at one of the first lunches, where Sternberg and Bernstein were the only two females in the group of10. That ratio has since changed, and both women will assure you that it is now a gender-balanced lunch.
The lunch is not just Washington natives, either. At the last lunch, about half the people there hailed from out of state. Bernstein grew up in Seattle and says the lunch is a nice place to “meet new people from all over the country who have moved to the Seattle area in recent years.”
Likewise, for those who have moved to this area recently, the EJL is an opportunity to meet new people and connect with the Jewish community.
Sternberg explains how when she lived in Boston, “it was easy to meet Jews.” In Seattle, however, the smaller Jewish population does not provide newcomers a chance to mingle with other Jews as easily. Sternberg worries that for some, this leads to a detachment from Judaism altogether. Learning about Washington’s “Jewish geography,” as Brian Schultz puts it, helps outsiders establish a base of familiarity.
At the very least, the EJL can provide lunchgoers with an occasion for networking. Since the lunch is made up of mostly young professionals, those who attend have an opportunity to get an inside track on open positions in a variety of fields.
With the Eastside covered, what about the Westside? Sternberg and Bernstein are eager to expand the EJL to lunches in downtown Seattle, or anywhere in Seattle proper where someone can suggest a good restaurant.
The first Westside lunch has just been announced, and will take place on March 14. Says Bernstein, “I’d even like to see it become a national thing. I have visions of Eastside/Westside softball teams….”
Sternberg welcomes anyone interested in joining the list by contacting her at [email protected].