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.
A Rabbi, a Minister, and a Priest join together to host the live call-in program, A Show of Faith on 1070 KNTH in Houston, in which they discuss current events and other issues of the day from their unique perspectives. Rabbi Elie Kaunfer was a guest on the January 31, 2010 episode.
Rabbi Elie Kaunfer offers a personal story and an informed view of a growing, grassroots movement seeking to create and foster vibrant Jewish life in “Empowered Judaism: Independent Minyanim and the Future of American Jewish Life” (Jewish Lights, February). Rabbi Kaunfer’s vision calls for individual Jews, not only rabbis, to engage seriously with text and tradition to bring about prayer services that strive for a profound encounter with God. This is a Judaism not closed from the wider world.
We’re at an inflection point in contemporary Jewish history. Inside the Beltway, the Bubble, the Echo Chamber, innovation and social entrepreneurship are in full swing. Programs to support Jewish non-profit startups are proliferating to general delight and acclaim. I have to pinch myself every time I hear someone use a phrase like “The Next Aaron Bisman” or “The Next Hadar”.
Susan Berrin: Let's begin our conversation by looking at what defines do-it-yourself (DIY) Judaism today. What's the relationshp between the draw of DIY and a contemporary yearning for community?
Britain’s Supreme Court has weighed in on the thorny question of Jewish identity. By a 5-4 vote on December 16, the judges upheld an earlier court ruling that publicly funded Jewish schools in Britain could not admit students by what it deemed to be ethnic considerations. Such schools, said the court, had to look beyond the Jewishness of an applicant’s mother when determining admissions. From now on, questions of religious practice and commitment must come into play.
It is not yet the law of the land, but legislation to extend Israel’s national maternity-leave policy is well on its way to approval. Earlier this month, the Knesset voted overwhelmingly to grant new mothers six months unpaid leave — the first 14 weeks of which are paid.
Even supporters of this legislation concede that it doesn’t offer much when compared to the generous family-leave policies in European countries. But compared to American practices, and particularly those in the Jewish community? No contest. A massive study conducted by the organization Advancing Women Professionals, released in September, found that only 35% of Jewish communal organizations have paid maternity-leave policies, and just over half offer time off without pay.
Still, a few of my sources find cause for applause. Jen Taylor Friedman, the world’s first soferet, or female Torah scribe, and a British native who is now at work on her third commissioned Torah scroll (she completed her first in 2007), says that there are “new soferot popping up all over the place.” She adds that, “I think my miracle is Yeshivat Hadar, actually. The school, which began its first full-time program this September, provides “hardcore Torah learning! and is completely egal! with amazing faculty! who actually GET feminism!” e-mails Friedman.
I enjoyed reading “The Push and Pull of Jewish Philanthropy” (Between The Lines, Nov. 20) and appreciated Gary Rosenblatt’s analysis of the complicated relationship among federations, family foundations and Jewish entrepreneurs.
It surprised me when he asserted that entrepreneurs are enthusiastic about receiving funding from federations, but “many are skittish about becoming associated with the Establishment, fearing they will lose their counterculture image among their peers.”
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. The false crisis—declining Jewish continuity, caused by assimilation and intermarriage—has become the rallying cry of institutional Judaism. But fundamentally, it is a red herring. The real crisis is one of meaning and engagement.
I would like to ask both Rabbis Kaunfer and Mintz, if independent minyanim are the wave of the future, reinvigorating American Jewry with their ruach, where and how do we envision their leadership being educated?
Over the past generation, there has been an explosion of adult
learning opportunities offered by synagogues and independent
institutions (e.g. Meah, Melton, Wexner Heritage). Yet the cutting
edge of Jewish education has yet to seriously impact the synagogue
service itself. Below I explore what I see as the highest priority for
synagogue life: high quality prayer education. In order for worship to
be revitalized, prayer instruction, broadly defined, must be
overhauled and constructed anew.
Jews across the country are looking for new ways to connect to the substance of their religion and tradition. In New York City, thousands of young Jews found that connection through Kehilat Hadar. But Hadar turned out to be more than just a local minyan; it became a model of grassroots religious community that spread dramatically across the United States and Israel. That model of community came to be known as an “independent minyan.”
Mechon Hadar has opened North America’s first full-time egalitarian yeshiva in New York City. With support from UJA-Federation of New York, Yeshivat Hadar has expanded from being a summer-only program and will run five days a week from September to May, accomodating18 fellows.
Independent minyanim are not a challenge to the movements — the Internet is. Let me explain.
In his groundbreaking book, What Would Google Do, Jeff Jarvis makes a compelling case that the mass market is dead (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009). There are only niche markets. What happened to the world in which there were only three TV networks? It was replaced—first by dozens of cable channels and then by millions of online videos.
Rabbi Mintz makes a strong point in viewing independent minyanim not as a threat to movements, but instead as “showing us the possibility of a new engaged, immersed, committed generation.” As executive director of Mechon Hadar, an organization that networks the 60-plus independent minyanim across the country, I am often asked: what is the future of the “alumni” of independent minyanim? Here are some possibilities:
Turns out the traditional synagogue model doesn't have a lock on religious offerings. One alternative that's sprouted up: independent prayer groups that invite the spiritually hungry to study text, as well as shape and lead their own services.
