Shalom House History
By Clair and Anna Kauffman
While searching for a house in SoWe Lancaster in 2010, we happened upon the place that is now home to the Shalom Project. The decision to purchase the house on High Street was not a quick and easy one. It would mean leaving our beloved neighbors on South Lime Street and patiently waiting for the years it takes to feel at home in a new neighborhood. As first time property owners, it also meant wrestling with the exploitative history and cultural understandings of property ownership in North America. What were our primary motivations to purchase and “settle” in this place? If we were to purchase it, how would we do good to its neighborhood, its history, and its future? What exactly were we investing in and what were the expected returns? Knowing that being able to buy a place like this wasn’t merely the result of our own hard work, how would we share this undeserved gift with others? How would our neighbors and neighborhood become beautiful to us?
Who knows how we finally answered (or didn’t answer) all these questions, but hold a question long enough and it eventually charts a course (like when we realized we were no longer locking our doors or had once again said yes to a friend or stranger staying with us for a night or four months or two years).
In Cabbage Hill’s not too distant past, working class German immigrants purchased land from Quakers and began to build and settle on “The Hill.” Our new (old) home held numerous reminders of its German builders and inhabitants. To remember this recent history and since we wanted to make the house a place of welcome, hospitality, and belonging -- we named it “The House of Geborgenheit.” “Geborgenheit” is a difficult to translate German word used to describe a state of comfort, well-being, warmth, belonging, and security. It has some striking similarities to the Hebrew word “Shalom”.
Cabbage Hill is no longer primarily populated by German immigrants and holds rich social and ethnic diversity. Where did all these folks and their families come from? How and why did numerous waves of immigrants come and continue to come to this place? And what about the time long before it was Quaker farmland and German rowhouses -- when it was the home of indigenous Susquehannocks and New Dorwart Street was a creek rather than a street? What a storied place and how did it all happen!? Even as we held these somewhat difficult questions, The Hill became a rich and colorful place for us.
For six short years, we called it home before once again our lives took a turn with another move. Since our initial goal in buying the house was not to “flip” our investment, we looked for another option. It was Anna who first said, “I wonder if the Shalom Project would want to use this house?” Less than a year later in August of 2018, a Shalom Project cohort was moving in.
As the sixth Shalom Project cohort moves into the “House of Geborgenheit”, I reflect on what it’s been like to rent it to the Shalom Project. It’s been great! What a joy to see these wonderful people eager to learn and serve in Lancaster’s communities. Folks that are willing to be in a place and not merely want to be in a place. People that not only want to leave their mark on Lancaster, but are willing to let the place leave its mark on them. People who are willing to hold difficult questions of their own and let those questions chart their course. In many ways, what we hoped for (and more) by moving to High Street is being realized as each new cohort moves in. May this wonderful “project” continue for many years!
