25 in '25: Brian Bills and Michaela Ross create new friendships through old traditions

25 in '25: Brian Bills and Michaela Ross create new friendships through old traditions
Michaela Ross and Brian Bills
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For Brian Bills and Michaela Ross, the project started with a New Year’s resolution.

What followed have been two years and counting of monthly Shabbat dinners, in which the couple opens their home to friends, friends of friends, and even friends of friends of friends, really anyone. The only month they didn’t host Shabbat was the month their daughter was born.

Ross, who is Jewish, always celebrated Shabbat with her family growing up. For her the traditional Jewish day of rest was a time to reflect on the week and come together as a family. 

Bills is not Jewish but has adopted the tradition as his own, even if he hasn’t quite perfected all of the prayers. To the couple though, it's less about the prayers and the religious component, and more about building community. 

“What I like about Shabbat is that it marks a transition from the week of work and that kind of stress to hopefully a time of rest. So usually, Shabbat starts on Friday night and ends on Saturday night. People celebrate it in different ways,” Ross said. “I think it is a really nice opportunity to mark the passing of each week and to invite rest into our lives.”

Their first Shabbat, the couple remembers wondering apprehensively if anyone would come. Now it's such an ingrained tradition for them and their friends that some of their friends have started their own takes on the tradition. From the first night, the tradition became one of community celebration, with an emphasis on friends and togetherness.

“I might have been the only Jewish person there,” Ross joked.

Now, the duo see themselves as “a well-oiled machine.” ​​Each dinner, they move their tables into place, turn on extra air purifiers, make a triple batch of soup and sometimes bread, and wait for the guests to arrive. The rest of the dinner depends on who comes and what they bring. There’s no expectation others bring food though. Bills and Ross laughed remembering a Shabbat in which every guest brought a bottle of wine.

Each Shabbat dinner also features a prompt attendees get sent with their invitation. 

Guests can choose not to answer it if they don’t want to, but typically the question becomes the theme for at least a portion of the dinnertime conversation. A few months ago the prompt was: “Tell us about a time when you asked for help?”

The couple has an email list with 93 names on it in which they send out their formal invitations along with a preview of that night’s prompt. But attendees don't have to be on the list to show up.

Max Wasserman moved to Richmond about a year and a half ago with his partner. After mentioning how he was in search of Jewish community beyond temples, Wasserman’s coworker referred him to Bills and Ross’ tradition. Wasserman arrived with his partner early and quickly felt at home. 

The prompt for Wasserman’s first Shabbat in Richmond asked attendees to share something they learned about themselves in 2024. 

“It was surprisingly vulnerable to be out there in a group of strangers and to talk about yourself like that,” Wasserman said.

Wasserman said that he now bumps into people from the dinners all the time.

“Why this matters broadly in Richmond, is that you have these two really community-minded, kind people who are basically opening their doors to strangers to show up and eat soup and bread and talk about themselves and a group of people in a way that I don't think exists very often,” Wasserman said. “And this is a space where you can access that with really, like, minimal buy in.”

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Bills and Ross love structure and reflection, and are not strangers to reevaluating their dinners, asking for feedback, and setting goals for future dinners. As for their immediate goals, the two hope that as they live in Richmond for longer their dinners will reflect the city more and more.

“I think it's still not a space that is representative of Richmond, and in particular, it's visibly not representative of Richmond's racial diversity, which I feel like is just really tough, because that's something that I think both Michaela and I care about and have not yet found the way to sort of create in this community or in this routine of our lives,” Ross said. 

The pair also hopes they can start the next generation of Richmonders on the tradition.

“I think it's kind of grown with our family," she said. "We had our daughter, Anna, about a year into doing it and now our friends will bring their infants, their toddlers, their young kids, and people come and go as their family schedule dictates.

"I feel like that speaks to the inclusive mindset we want to have about it."

Contact reporting intern Juliana Vandermark at jvandermark@richmonder.org.

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The 25 in '25 series profiles unsung heroes who make us proud to be Richmonders. Read about the other winners here, and attend the event in their honor on Sept. 19.