With all the doom and gloom stories of assimilation of young Jews in North America, one good news story is the rise of vibrant independent minyanim (prayer groups) throughout the continent, but particularly on the east coast of the United States. Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, one of the founders of Kehilat Hadar in Manhattan, perhaps the most successful independent minyan in North America, has just published Empowered Judaism: What Independent Minyanim Can Teach Us about Building Vibrant Jewish Communities, an enthusiastic panegyric and how-to guide for setting up an independent minyan.
If you’re at all interested in Jewish life these days, you might have found yourself pondering one of two questions recently. If you’re not all that connected, you might have thought to yourself, “Where are all the young Jews these days?” If you are very connected, you might have thought, “Why is Judaism now being run out of my friend’s living room instead of a synagogue?”
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.” How can we relate to those historical figures who hold a place in our Jewish life, having been braver for five minutes longer? Are they a tool to be used by our teachers, or reminders of our own ability reach farther, do more, and make a real difference in the world? We turn to three young rabbis from different streams of Judaism for their thoughts.
In Judaism, the covenant between God and Israel has two aspects to it—a concrete contract, on the one hand, and an infinite set of aspirations, on the other.
Thus, the 613 mitzvot are concrete obligations that the Jewish people take upon themselves in serving God, but in and of themselves they do not exhaust our commitments and obligations, because a relationship rooted in love can never be encapsulated in a checklist, no matter how long or detailed. Love’s aspirations are limitless, and hence the Bible mandates not only that we observe the commandments, but also that we “walk in God’s ways,” which our sages interpret as living a life of chesed, of love manifested as kindness. The concrete mitzvot thus represent the baseline commitment beneath which we may not fall; a life of lovingkindness is the height towards which we aspire.
This past week, Rav Hershel Schachter, eminent Torah scholar and leading figure at Yeshiva University, issued fighting words. The ordination of women as rabbis is such a serious infraction of Jewish Law, he insisted, that it technically falls under the rubric of “Yehareg Ve-al Ya’avor”—one should sooner be killed than violate the Law. Now, of course, I presume, Rav Schachter did not mean this literally, but only sought to express with the fullest rhetorical force available to him the absolute impermissibility according to halacha [Jewish law] of women functioning as-- let alone actually being called—rabbis.
What would it take to radically improve adult Jewish literacy in America?
This is a problem long debated, but I believe we face an unprecedented opportunity to make a quantum leap forward during the next decade.
A cursory look at Jewish life in America reveals only the challenges to this goal: declining engagement, membership and connection. But below are some of the factors that are playing in our favor.
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.
His students have left, and Steven Exler is taking a moment to reflect. He’s just finished his session, presented to representatives of independent prayer minyanim, on how to comfort mourners. It’s a pastoral role that Exler, associate rabbi at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, has performed countless times.
Now, he wonders what’s next.
Probably when the first synagogue was established, which may have occurred sometime between 200 BCE and 70 CE, a sizable percentage of Jews who attended the services objected to something they saw or heard. This is human nature. Whenever a large group is involved in something, many will dislike what they see and hear. Thus, for example, the president of the United States is considered to be well liked if 60 percent of Americans favor him.
Imagine you don’t know how to read a novel.
Now, this is a thought experiment, so bear with me: You know how to read other books and essays, but you don’t know how to read a novel.
It’s strange to write a book about independent minyanim when you don’t even attend one anymore.
Independent minyanim are those grassroots, all-volunteer-led Jewish prayer communities that have popped up with force across the United States, Israel and Europe over the past decade. In 2000 there were three of them; now there are more than 70. I wrote about them in Empowered Judaism: What Independent Minyanim Can Teach Us about Building Vibrant Jewish Communities.
A few years ago, my friend and colleague Rabbi Ethan Tucker wrote an article about independent minyanim in which he asked, almost as an aside, “We all cook and bake. Why shouldn’t every community be baking its own matzot?”
Elie Kaunfer’s new book, “Empowered Judaism: What Independent Minyanim Can Teach Us About Building Vibrant Jewish Communities” (Jewish Lights Publishing) is being described as a manifesto for independent minyanim, which have been flourishing and attracting increased attention in recent years. But while a good deal of the book serves as a practical guide for busy lay people interested in creating meaningful prayer groups of their own, the bigger message is intended for anyone “invested in making the Jewish community a more vibrant place,” Kaunfer says.
American Judaism is in crisis. But it isn’t the crisis that mainstream American Jewish leaders would have you believe. It is at once much better and much worse.
Orthodox and Reform Jews sharing the same congregation? Davening together? Even eating at the same table? It seems only a somewhat more likely occurrence than seeing Saudi Arabian King Abdullah presiding over a ceremony in Mecca consecrating a statue honoring Theodor Herzl.
There was the flour, the water, and the intention of turning them into unleavened bread to be consumed during Passover. But what made this matzo-making operation different from all others?
With specialized varieties of matzo fetching more than $60 a pound, and an increased longing for spiritual connection, a process that was once confined to factories in Orthodox enclaves of Brooklyn and Israel had found a new and unlikely home: an apartment on the Upper West Side.
Halfway through the Saturday morning service, it struck me: A transcript of the service would be no different from that of a standard Orthodox Jewish service. We were faithfully adhering to the unamended, centuries-old traditional Hebrew liturgy. A transcript, however, would not show that men and women were sitting together, without the physical divider that separates them at an Orthodox synagogue, or that women were leading parts of the service -- another blatant egalitarian break with Orthodoxy.
The Jewish community is expert at anticipating failure, even disaster. Declining affiliation rates, rampant intermarriage, collapsing schools and synagogues — these are the problems that top the communal agenda. Judaism, it is said, is a product that no one wants to buy anymore. The question is then posed: How can we convince people that Judaism is still relevant?
Elie Kaunfer and Ethan Tucker became friends at Harvard and eventually dreamed up whole new concepts to change the world.
No, they didn’t create Microsoft.
But Kaunfer, an aspiring journalist, and Tucker, a science history major, decided instead to dedicate their intellect, energy and lives to re-invigorating Jewish religious life.
I first met Elie Kaunfer in 2001 when a friend of a friend invited me to a Saturday morning prayer service that Kaunfer and friends had organized in a Manhattan apartment. Kaunfer, then 27, was working as a corporate-fraud investigator, and the minyan was his side project. But Kaunfer is hyper-organized, passionate, and single-minded; his hobbies are not like yours and mine. That minyan soon started meeting regularly in a rented church basement. It acquired a name—Kehilat Hadar—a website, subcommittees, spreadsheets, weekly Torah Study sessions, and an annual Shavuot retreat attended by hundreds.
