Mechon Hadar Guest

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.

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.

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.