When lying in bed with COVID one day at his parents’ house, Flynn Lesko scrolled down on his phone and saw an advertisement for an opening at Moishe House in Upper Fells Point.
For Lesko, the timing could not have been more perfect. He had been looking for a new place to live after his apartment building was sold to new owners. Lesko has been a Moishe House resident since January and said it’s been a “good match.”
Now, as a Moishe House resident, Lesko and his roommates host seven events every month for young Jewish adults. “One of my favorite events … was [when] actually my roommate made a Sukkah on a pretty budget friendly basis,” he explained. “He wrapped a tarp around three sides of his structure that used to be a soccer goal, and then he got [corn] stalks put on the top and we had a really successful Shabbat dinner.”
Originally from Columbia, Maryland, Lesko grew up affiliated with the Reconstructionist Jewish movement, but spent his formative years attending Hebrew school at Columbia Chabad. Then, in high school, he took part in an after-school program at Columbia Jewish Congregation that put him in contact with other local Jewish teens and also took him to other places of worship nearby.
“I thought it was a very positive experience that made me a little bit more well-rounded — of just learning about the world around me, in addition to being Jewish,” Lesko said. “I think, at the time, me being in high school surrounded by mostly non-Jews, [the teen program] was probably the most comfortable thing for me to do.”
Lesko attended University of Maryland, Baltimore County for his undergraduate degree in biology. The beginning of college coincided with the COVID pandemic. “I started in 2020, so my first real socialization at the time was going to UMBC Hillel virtual events through that whole first year,” explained Lesko. “We had our pre-Shabbat check-in and little socials. And that was some of my main socialization, especially in that first year, being completely virtual.”
After his first year, Lesko joined the boards of both Hillel and Chabad, and continued to serve on both for the rest of his time at UMBC. Lesko said he also worked as a resident assistant. “I really enjoyed it. I mean, I enjoyed my staff team,” he said.
He’s also enjoying his life and his work in the Upper Fells Point Moishe House. “It’s been great to just be able to meet different people and socialize [in] the Baltimore area,” Lesko said. “I’ve met a lot of great friends. … It was kind of funny because all three of the people that moved in after me, I knew beforehand. Two of the people I went to Jewish preschool with in Columbia, and one of them, I went to Jewish kindergarten with at the same place. … It was very Smalltimore, having happened to know everybody.”
His love of the Jewish community makes it relatively easy for him to juggle Moishe House responsibilities with continued schoolwork. Lesko is a second-year nursing student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore and a part of the Jewish Student Association at UMB.
His time as a resident assistant also helped prepare him for nursing, he said: “It was kind of like practicing for being a first responder.”
Lesko explained that his schoolwork can sometimes be grueling, but when he gets to work with patients, he is always reminded of why he is studying to become a nurse.
“I don’t always enjoy the lectures and the exams,” he said, “and then I’ll go to the clinical sites and I’ll work with patients, and I’m reminded of why I want to do things, because I really do enjoy helping people.”
