The minyan is the message
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April 28, 2010
When Rabbi David Schuck of Pelham Manor, NY, wanted to bring a more spirited Friday night service to his small Conservative synagogue, he brought in ringers. With a small grant, he hired six students from the Jewish Theological Seminary to come spend a Shabbat with his congregation. Their only responsibility: to sing and pray with the kind of enthusiasm and intensity that he hoped would catch on among his members.
Without giving them the experience of such davening, he said, “it was very hard [for members] to know what you are talking about. You have to demonstrate what it could be like.”
I heard Schuck speak at last weekend’s Third Independent Minyan Conference, and that’s exactly how I feel about the term “independent minyan”: If you haven’t been to one, you don’t quite get the picture. The term describes a group of like-minded Jews who gather in rented spaces to create what they consider their ideal prayer services. They tend to prefer a traditional service, but with full participation for women. They’re usually led by skilled lay people, seldom by rabbis or Jewish professionals. There are probably more than 60 such groups in the country, including Zamru in Princeton.
I sometimes joke that they are Conservative congregations for people who like the prayer service as much as I like the kiddush afterward. And there’s a certain truth to that: A lot of their energy and talent comes from Judaism’s “centrist” denomination, and the words they use to describe the prayer service include “meaningful,” “musical,” “spiritual,” and “empowered.”
My own synagogue shares some DNA with perhaps the best-known of the independent minyanim, Kehilat Hadar on the Upper West Side. Hadarniks and the faculty from the spinoff Yeshivat Hadar have spent time with us in the ’burbs, teaching their melodies and modeling their intense engagement with the siddur and Torah.
When the independent minyanim first began to attract attention in the past decade, many asked if they pose a “threat” to mainstream synagogues, especially Conservative.
But 10 years since the founding of Hadar there’s a shift afoot. The mainstream now wants to learn from the upstarts, and the upstarts seem happy to oblige. Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, one of Hadar’s cofounders, has titled his new book Empowered Judaism: What Independent Minyanim Can Teach Us about Building Vibrant Jewish Communities. This past Tuesday, Kaunfer’s book inspired a panel discussion at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he was ordained. Moderating the panel was Arnold Eisen, the seminary’s chancellor, another sign that the minyanim are seen less as a threat than, well, the future.
The book recalls Hadar’s evolution from a word-of-mouth minyan that met in members’ apartments to a growing force that includes the hundreds-strong community, America’s first egalitarian full-time yeshiva, and Mechon Hadar, an institute founded by Kaunfer and Rabbis Shai Held and Ethan Tucker, designed to promote the movement’s vision for prayer, study, and social action.
Mechon Hadar hosted last weekend’s conference and the afternoon symposium, which was an opportunity for synagogues and the independents to learn from one another. Organizers say they drew people from 42 minyanim and 29 synagogues, as well as the big Jewish educational institutes and foundations.
I met rabbis from big “establishment” shuls in Long Island and Boston as well as lay leaders from Atlanta, Texas, and our own Highland Park. The usual generational dynamics seemed reversed: Young men and women with shockingly dark hair and flat bellies imparting wisdom to folks with AARP cards.
Kaunfer told me Sunday about the ways Mechon Hadar is serving as a resource to synagogues. Yeshivat Hadar sends faculty out for a different kind of “scholar-in-residence” Shabbat. They lead congregants in traditional text study using a yeshiva model. The weekends help synagogues satisfy a “thirst for direct Jewish learning beyond a lecture,” Kaunfer told me. Yeshivat Hadar is also offering a week-long “Executive Seminar” this summer. Kaunfer expects a lot of synagogue lay leaders looking for ideas and inspiration.
Kaunfer said his goal is to help synagogues ask a seemingly simple question: “What is your ideal Jewish service?” Hadar wants to help them take the next, admittedly difficult, step — namely, what’s keeping you from getting there?
What makes Hadar’s approach refreshing — and perhaps likely to succeed where other similar efforts have not — is the way it weds transcendence with the nitty-gritty. Sure, Kaunfer and his colleagues talk about “pathways to empowerment,” “cultivating mind and soul,” and “the presence of God.” But the conference, like Kaunfer’s book, sweats the details. How long should services be? How do you use e-mail and Facebook to network? Should minyan seating be in rows or a circle? He recognizes that even so lofty a vision as unlocking the power of prayer can be undermined by an uncomfortable pew and a cantor with time-management problems.
In Sunday’s closing session, Shai Held addressed a rap one hears against the independent minyanim — “that they are taking away the most talented and committed” young Jews “to create communities of elites.” But the conference suggested something else entirely — a smart group of committed young Jews who don’t want to subvert the establishment, but to empower all of us to create the kinds of communities we want and need.
Andrew Silow-Carroll is Editor-in-Chief of the New Jersey Jewish News. Between columns you can read his writing at the JustASC blog.
Comments
Elihu Davison
April 29, 2010
Plus ce la meme change, plus ce la meme chose.
The first independent minyan is Boston’s Havurat Shalom, established in 1968. Among its founders were Rabbi Arthur Greene and (ghost)writer William (then known as Bill) Novak. Also Jewish Catalogue editors Sharon Strassfeld, Rabbi Michael Strassfeld and Richard Siegel (now director of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture.)
Havurat Shalom was shortly followed by the establishment of a number of other independent minyanim including the New York Havurah, Washington DC’s Fabrangen, NYC’s West Side Minyan, the Library Minyan in Los Angeles and numerous others.
Inter-havurah retreats followed, first taking place at Weiss’s Farm in Long Branch, NJ. These retreats subsequently morphed into the annual National Havurah Institute, now administered by the National Havurah Coordinating Committee.
No, independent minyanim aren’t new. But their membership seems to be generational. And as new minyanim are established and develop their own zeitgeist, they attract new attention.
Andrew Silow-Carroll
NJJN Editor-in-Chief
April 29, 2010
FYI Kaunfer’s book addresses the differences as he sees them between independent minyanim and the first-wave havurot. He also discussed this in an interview with the online magazine Tablet.
http://www.tabletmag.com/life-and-religion/26047/minyin-man/
He tells Tablet, “The general cultural context is different. The Havurot were part of the general countercultural 1960s youth movement. Both the independent minyanim and Havurot are invested in meaningful spiritual prayer, but what that looks like is different. For the Havurot, it was cutting and reducing some of the prayers and being very focused on the Torah discussion—they would often have a 30- to 40-minute Torah discussion. It was also a sense of prayer being in fellowship—everyone sat in a circle and they would have a real intense relationship, both in prayer and outside. The minyanim are less intense on that scale—you come to daven, not necessarily to form a close-knit community. In terms of prayer, the minyanim return to the traditional liturgy and the innovation is in the singing. The seating at independent minyanim is in rows, the more traditional layout.”
Debbie Burton
May 02, 2010
My independent minyan (NTEHEM in Chicago) was founded 30 years ago, but it is not at all like Kaunfer’s description of Havurot. Our services are full and traditional. The founders of my minyan had previously been members of a Modern Orthodox synagogue, but wanted more participation for women. I haven’t read the book yet, but I’ve read other summaries and listened to Rabbi Kaunfer’s podcast on his book. The only way my minyan differs from his description of “independent minyanim” is that my minyan is much older than 10 years. We have no paid clergy, we put the bimah at ground level in the middle of the seating, sometimes whoever is leading services uses new tunes, we do the full traditional liturgy (using the Sim Shalom siddur) and full kriyah Torah readings, a brief 10 minute D’var Torah (some comments from the audience, but if not brief they would be expected to continue privately over kiddush!), etc. Our community is pretty close knit, but that is because the members have have decades of services, celebrations of semachot, social activities, mourning, etc, to bind them together. So maybe the fact that most of the members are settled is another difference.
Some of the now adult “children” of my minyan have joined Kehilat Hadar when they have lived in NYC. One was even a “Gabbai” (i.e. part of the leadership group) for a few years.
The good thing about the spread of these new independent minyanim is that there will be more places for the children of my minyan to go to and feel at home. One of the complaints of our grown children several years ago was that they couldn’t find the same kind of place to daven when they grew up and left the area for college or work.
Mark Berch
May 23, 2010
I don’t think the distinction is that sharp between the two. The Silver Spring [Maryland] Egalitarian Minyan was established in 1979 and I’m sure it saw itself then as a havurah (I wasn’t around then). It had, and still has, a full Friday night service, followed by Kiddush, washing, motzi, and a pot-luck meal and a complete bentching. So with this “traditional liturgy” (but adding the imahot) it would seem to qualify as an “independent minyan”. But the home setting, and the meal, and the concomitant socializing, has been an essential piece; without it, we would not have survived, which is a havurah-like characteristic. It seems to me that we fit into both categories.