by BZ [➚] · Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
(Crossposted to Mah Rabu.)
Everyone agrees that there was a wave of independent Jewish prayer communities founded in the 1970s, and another wave founded after 2000, with some but not nearly as many founded in between. And many attempts have been made to draw distinctions between these two waves, but they all fail in one way or another to capture the entire data set, whether it’s the use of the word “minyan” vs. “havurah”, liturgical choices, the way the chairs are set up, or membership vs. no membership.
But I think I’ve come up with a distinction between the two principal waves of independent Jewish communities that is 100% airtight so far (though maybe you know of an exception). There are a number of minyanim, old and new, that are called “[name of city/neighborhood] Minyan”. The test for whether such a minyan is part of the older or the newer generation is whether people use a definite article when using the name of the minyan in sentence.
[UPDATE: To clarify, this hypothesis is intended to apply only to minyanim whose names fit the pattern “[name of city/neighborhood] Minyan”, not to other minyanim.]
Compare:
- “I’m going to the Highland Park Minyan this Shabbat.”
- “I’m going to DC Minyan this Shabbat.”
More examples:
- Founded in the 1970s: the Highland Park Minyan, the West Side Minyan, the Newton Centre Minyan
- Founded after 2000: DC Minyan, Cambridge Minyan, Mission Minyan
(Do you know of further examples that either support or disprove this hypothesis?)
Note that even for the minyanim that usually get a definite article, “the” isn’t part of the name. It’s not an integral article as in “I’m going to a The Newton Centre Minyan event * “. This is just a question of how the name of the minyan (which does not itself contain an article) is treated grammatically, like “Ukraine” vs. “the Ukraine”.
My sources in Highland Park, New Jersey, report that a new independent minyan is in formation there. So I suggested that, in keeping with contemporary trends, they call it “Highland Park Minyan”, to avoid confusion with the Highland Park Minyan.
by Aryeh Cohen [➚] · Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
In the final session of the Independent Minyan Conference Shai Held (philosopher in chief of Mechon/Kehilat/Yeshivat Hadar, the sponsor/organizer of said conference) gave a rousing defense of a Torah which was imbued with service and was at its core egalitarian—and that this was the Torah that was embraced by the independent minyan movement. It was a great vort, which I would easily sign on to. (He also taught a wonderful piece from Reb Nachman on Friday night, and he taught it wonderfully.) Shai’s remarks however left me wondering why there were so many non-egalitarian independent minyanim (“partnership minyanim” and non-partnership modern orthodox minyanim) represented at the conference. This was only one of the interesting anomalies of the conference.
More »
by Aryeh Cohen [➚] · Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
From an interview with Sarah Miles, author of Jesus Freak: Feeding, Healing, Raising the Dead, by Lisa Webster over at Religion Dispatches.
There are so many problems with church as it is. Do you think the institution is redeemable?
Well, I don’t think the answer is: let’s have a church with groovy music that the kids like. That’s just endless marketing.
The whole interview is here, and it’s worth reading.
by BZ [➚] · Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
(Crossposted to Mah Rabu.)
I’ve had the opportunity to lead rocking musical services in a number of great communities (such as Kol Zimrah, NHC, Limmud NY), and have been asked “Can you come to my community and lead a service like that?”. And the answer, of course, is no, I can’t. What made that service awesome wasn’t anything that I did; it was the participation of the whole community, which isn’t something that one individual can just parachute into an existing community and create. Then there are other people who get that one person can’t do it alone, and instead suggest “If a bunch of you come to my community and sing loud, then maybe services will be better.” Sometimes this works to one degree or another, but sometimes this, too, fails miserably, because even bringing in a group of enthusiastic people to an existing structure can’t always overcome other entrenched factors.
Both in the specific case of prayer and in the more general case of building meaningful Jewish community, it’s not enough to have a leader, and not enough to have a group of committed participants. The answer is both more difficult (since it’s not as simple as hiring a new rabbi or “bringing in more young people” or whoever the target group is) and more accessible (since it’s about what the community does, not about who does it, so it’s available to any community that is truly committed to it). If a Jewish community is interested in beginning the process of self-examination and transformation to become fully empowered (both in prayer and in other aspects of Jewish life), I recommend starting by reading Rabbi Elie Kaunfer’s new book, Empowered Judaism: What Independent Minyanim Can Teach Us about Building Vibrant Jewish Communities (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2010).
Empowered Judaism is a book about the newest wave of independent minyanim, as well as about a larger vision for Judaism and Jewish community. It offers something to many different constituencies: independent minyan organizers seeking to read about best practices from other minyanim, people in other Jewish communities who want to learn what these minyanim are all about and how to incorporate successful elements into their own communities, and future historians of this period in American Jewish history who want something more in-depth about the early 21st-century independent minyan phenomenon than the many superficial articles that have appeared in the press.
More »
by guestpost [➚] · Thursday, March 4th, 2010
This is a guest post from Rachel Silverman, 5th year Rabbinical student at JTS, and member of KICKS’ leadership team.
What do you call a new independent minyan that is neither new nor independent? The folks in Brookline, MA have decided to call it KICKS – Kehillath Israel‘s Community Kabbalat Shabbat. It fits few, if any, of the criteria that define the independent minyan movement – 
and yet it is, without a doubt, the place you are going to want to be on Friday nights in Boston – starting March 12.
We can’t claim to be independent because not only are we meeting INSIDE a Conservative synagogue, but we are actually becoming the Kabbalat Shabbat service FOR the synagogue. That’s right. Kehillath Israel has graciously handed over responsibility for their Friday evening service to a group of young, empowered Jewish leaders, straight out of Kehilat Hadar, Kehilat Kedem, and the Washington Square Minyan (all great and vibrant places from which we are regularly inspired and have learned a tremendous amount).
Just as if we were creating a minyan from scratch, the leadership team has been meeting diligently to confront the big questions of how to make this happen. How do we balance quality davening with a sense of inclusivity? How do we create a feeling of community outside of our prayer space? How do we make the chapel a warm and welcoming place to be? Our answers are nothing earth-shattering, but they are the result of thoughtful, careful deliberations which will hopefully produce the right atmosphere for a prayerful experience.
I’ve never been one to predict what is to come, but if I had to take a gander, I’d say this is the wave of the future. The combination of being in a synagogue that feels like an independent minyan is a win-win situation. The synagogue gets active, engaged, passionate, (mostly) young participants through their doors – a group of people who otherwise tend to avoid synagogues at any cost. The minyan-goers get the spiritual, energetic davening and the warm, welcoming, peer community – both of which they’ve been craving. As the minyan participants get older, they have a natural connection to a synagogue for lifecycle events, nursery schools, and movement specific opportunities, such as Israel trips, USY, etc. Put all together, we create a vibrant intergenerational community.
Sure, working within a synagogue structure has its challenges. Changes require buy-in from the existing community and rabbi – and there is only so much change that will, ultimately, be permitted. But that structure also means that we can focus on what we’re good at (amazing davening and creating community), and not get bogged down in questions of things we can’t change (the set up of the room, for example). In our case, KI and Rabbi Hamilton could not be more open to the change that we want to create – and I’m confident that their support is what will ultimately make us successful.
One of the unique features of KICKS is that we have created a davening leadership corps that will meet monthly to cultivate intentional leadership of our tefilah. We will work together to establish goals for our davening, to consider the arc and flow of the service, to think together about tunes that shape the arc, the give and take of leader and kahal, and the use of space, voice and body in shaping davening and inviting the energy of the kahal. It is also our goal to reach out and train new leaders. We look forward to offering sessions to help develop these skills among people who want to learn and join our team.
KICKS is kicking off (yes, pun intended) on March 12. We meet in the Rabb chapel of Congregation Kehillath Israel, 384 Harvard Street, Brookline, MA. Mincha begins at 5:35, Kabbalat Shabbat will be at 5:55, and Ma’ariv will be at 6:30. We will meet weekly, but start times will vary depending on candle-lighting. We’re planning Shabbat dinners, both potluck and home hospitality, for future weeks.
You can join our facebook group here, and sign up for our mailing list (a google group) here. You can also email kikabbalatshabbat@gmail.com with questions, comments, or your desire to get involved.
by BZ [➚] · Thursday, February 11th, 2010
Jewschool’s decade-in-review series began with the best JewFilms of the 2000s, and continues with this roundup of the independent minyan phenomenon.
Though the independent minyan wasn’t invented in the last 10 years, this decade has seen the tipping point in the growth of grassroots Jewish prayer communities, both in numbers and in impact on the overall Jewish scene. These communities differ from one another in their approaches to Judaism and Jewish practice, but they share a volunteer-led structure and a participatory ethic, and they operate outside the denominational institutions. They range in size from 10 people gathering in a small apartment on a Friday night to 500 people crowding into a church basement for Kehilat Hadar’s Yom Kippur services.
It’s nothing new that many Jews feel alienated from establishment Jewish institutions, but the independent minyan surge has happened in the past decade because, now more than ever before, the means, motive, and opportunity to act constructively on that alienation are all in alignment. More »
by BZ [➚] · Sunday, February 7th, 2010
The DC area and other parts of the Mid-Atlantic region were hit on Friday and Saturday with significant amounts of snow. Many areas are still without electrical power (ours came back on around 5:30 pm on Saturday), many institutions are closed (some school districts have already preemptively closed through Tuesday), and only the underground parts of the Metro system are operating.
Because the snowstorm was over Shabbat, some Jewish congregations canceled their services, while others went on as usual. At Segulah, we went on with the show (thanks to our host, Tifereth Israel, which never closes on Shabbat), and I’m glad we did. We got a respectable showing of 20 people or so. The missing demographic was young children and their parents, who quite understandably stayed home, but all other ages were represented from 14 to 70s. We also had the earliest average arrival time ever: at least half of the people who showed up were there at the very beginning or right after, and almost no one arrived after the Torah service began. This is probably because on a day like that, you’re either going to do it or you’re not; it’s not worth trekking through a foot of snow (the streets and sidewalks hadn’t really been plowed/shoveled yet) just to show up for the last half hour. We continued with a potluck lunch in an apartment that was powerless and electrically heated, but well-insulated and naturally lit. Everything else may remain shut down for a while, but nothing stops Shabbat!
If you’re in the affected area, and your power is on (or you can access the Internet with your phone), how was (or wasn’t) your Shabbat affected by the snow? Share your stories in the comments!
by BZ [➚] · Sunday, January 31st, 2010
Are you interested in starting a new grassroots havurah and/or minyan? Are you working on sustaining an existing one? If you’ve never done this before, the way to go about this is usually to talk to people who have. But what happens if you don’t know who to talk to? Like Ezra and Yehudah HaNasi, we’re living in a time when it makes sense to start writing down some of our oral Torah. But thanks to technological advances, the 21st-century Jewish Catalog doesn’t have to be a static document, but can (like the real Oral Torah) be continuously expanding.
Toward this end, the National Havurah Committee has just launched a Havurah Resources site to support new and existing havurot and minyanim by collecting and consolidating new and existing online resources. There’s a lot there already: Are you starting a new community? Exploring options for incorporation so that your havurah can collect donations? Interested in learning to gabbai the Torah service at your minyan? Trying to figure out how to make decisions in a non-hierarchical community? Looking for ways to plan a text study or engage your community in social justice? It’s all there, along with multiple collections of links to other resources around the web.
Everything on the Havurah Resources site is just intended to begin the conversation, so each of the articles has comments enabled. If you disagree with something there, great! Add your voice. Most important, if you have something to add, about any aspect of running a grassroots Jewish community, that isn’t there yet, email resources at havurah dot org, so that this collection can expand.
by shamirpower [➚] · Thursday, January 28th, 2010
Editor’s note: The following is a guest post from Marc Katz, the Revson Rabbinical Intern at Congregation Beth Elohim. He blogs at reformdafyomi.blogspot.com.
Each week, over Shabbat dinner we engage in an experiment in mindfulness. Moving through the Shabbat table liturgy we are forced to think about two things: how does our wine and challah taste and where did then come from?
During the weekday, I eat akin to Homer Simpson, eating too much and beginning each bite before finishing the one before. On Shabbat, we are forced to take a step back. First we remember through blessing the wine and challah that food is a gift, and it is from God. (Of course it’s a law to bless our food on the weekdays as well even the most pious Jew would argue that there is something different and special about Shabbat blessings.)
In addition, the Shabbat liturgy forces us to follow an order. I’ll admit that I’m a fork loader. The more I can taste in a given bite the happier I am. But on Shabbat, we don’t mix. First we taste the wine. Then we taste the challah. Only then do we get to eat everything else. Shabbat is our chance to pause, taste our foods, and enjoy the difference in taste at each step in our ritual.
For this reason, it couldn’t be any more perfect that Tu Bishvat, the holiday where we usually celebrate the unique tastes of nature and look closely at how we relate to God’s world, falls on Shabbat. It is during this holiday that we are encouraged to go above and beyond what we do every week, to be mindful of our food in all aspects. This coming Saturday, at Congregation Beth Elohim when the clocks strike 6PM we will combine the best of Shabbat and Tu Bishvat.
Taste of Tu Bishvat will be an experiment in mindfulness. Like the Shabbat table liturgy we’ll take the time to really taste our food (through meditative practice) and to study and discuss where our food comes from by looking at issues of sustainability and eating. The night will end with a havdallah service as we say goodbye to Shabbat and Tu Bishvat. Cost is $18. To register click here.
Taste of Tu Bishvat is a program of Brooklyn Jews and the Jewish Meditation Center of Brooklyn. It is co-sponsored by the AJWS-ADODAH partnership.
by shamirpower [➚] · Sunday, January 10th, 2010
Looking for an opportunity for full time study in an egalitarian setting? Yeshivat Hadar in New York City offers a chance for both summer and year ’round study for women and men to study together – and you even get a living stipend. I’ve been to a bunch of classes, lectures, and more than a handful of weekday services. It’s quite an eclectic bunch of of students – and their teachers are excellent. Want to learn more? Check out this Wednesday night’s event – in person or online.
The Cairo Geniza: Crumpled Papers, Revolutionary Prayers
A Taste of Yeshivat Hadar — open to all
Considering applying to Yeshivat Hadar’s 2010 Summer or Full-Year Program?
Interested in experiencing learning at Yeshivat Hadar and asking your questions?
When: Wednesday, January 13, 2010, 7:30-9:00 pm
Where: Yeshivat Hadar, 190 Amsterdam Avenue (at 69th Street), NYC
Cost: Free
Taught by Rabbi Elie Kaunfer
In December 1896, Solomon Schechter traveled to the “Ben Ezra Synagogue” in Old Cairo and discovered 200,000 Hebrew manuscripts, some from as early as the 9th century. Among them were alternative liturgies that will astound those used to the standard Ashkenazi prayerbook, including alternate versions of the weekday Amidah. In this class, we will study how crumpled papers in a forgotten attic can change our understanding of prayer.
RSVP to info-at-mechonhadar.org
Prospective Applicants to Yeshivat Hadar are especially welcome to this program, which will end with Q+A about Yeshivat Hadar’s full-time programs.
Can’t come to NYC? Join us on the phone or on ustream. Here’s how:
Go here to watch a live broadcast. Register for a free account ahead of time, and login to chat your questions.
Have specific questions? Email Aryeh Bernstein, Director of Recruitment, at bernstein-at-mechonhadar.org.
You can download our applications here: Summer (2010) and Full-Year Program (2010-11).
by BZ [➚] · Sunday, December 27th, 2009
The short version: Segulah! DC’s newest independent minyan, with “full-liturgy, energizing, songful, and participant-led egalitarian davening in a warm and welcoming neighborhood community”. Shabbat morning services this week, January 2, 2010, 9:30 am, Shabbat Vayechi, Reamer Chapel at Tifereth Israel Congregation, 16th & Juniper St (7701 16th St NW; enter off Juniper), Washington DC, two-table potluck to follow at a nearby home. All ages are welcome. RSVP to segulahminyan at gmail or on Facebook, and/or join the email list.
The longer version:
All the way in the northernmost reaches of our nation’s capital, in the very last alphabet, is the neighborhood of Shepherd Park, and just over the Maryland line is the unincorporated urban area of downtown Silver Spring (home of NOAA, the American Film Institute, and the Discovery Channel). (The picture at right shows the north boundary stone marking the border between DC and Maryland.) This multistate (or one state and one something else) neighborhood is more affordable than central DC but more walking- and transit-friendly than the burbs, and therefore it’s no surprise that it contains one of the most diverse and fastest-growing Jewish scenes in the Washington area.
The Jewish epicenter of the neighborhood is upper 16th Street, or “Sheish Esrei Elyon”, where a single two-block stretch contains three congregations that are exceptional in different ways: Fabrangen is a historic first-wave havurah that started in 1971, born out of the activism of that time, and continues to this day. Ohev Sholom is an Orthodox synagogue that has reached out to the LGBT community. Tifereth Israel is home to JuggleK, a kashrut certification that certifies both conventional kashrut standards and ethical standards, whose first and only client is a vegan soup subscription service. Other Jewish highlights of the neighborhood include Moishe House Silver Spring, the offices of KOL Foods, and the former synagogue building that is now the Ethiopian Evangelical Church.
Segulah is the latest addition to this constellation, and meets in various locations on both sides of the state line. In addition to its other meanings, “Segulah” means “purple”, a reference to the Purple Line (pictured above) that will one day link Silver Spring to the other loose ends of the Washington Metro (and which Jews United For Justice is working on making fair). Attention New York: we challenge the Second Avenue Subway to a race!
In addition to being purple, Segulah is also a treasure! And we’ll be meeting this Shabbat to complete the book of Genesis, share song-filled prayer, and eat lunch. Details are at the top of this post. See you there!
by zt [➚] · Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
A little while back, in addressing recent discussions of minyanim and reacting to Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, BZ posted:
Rabbi Kaunfer writes “New self-proclaimed movements sprung up — Reconstructionism, and the Renewal and Chavurah Movements.” The “Chavurah movement” is not now and has never been a “self-proclaimed movement” parallel to the “big three” or the Reconstructionist movement. Rabbi Kaunfer himself has argued for why the latest wave of independent minyanim do not constitute a “movement” in that mold, and the same is true for earlier waves of havurot.
This has led me to think about the similarities and differences between what people tend to refer to as Chavura, Conservative, Independent Minyan, Orthodox, Reconstructionist, Reform, and Renewal. (note that I alphabetized them rather than forcing them into a spectrum that doesn’t quite fit). Of course these labels have substantial overlap. Some are parallel. Some are not. They all come about because people want quick categories that they can use to label the Jewish approach of themselves and others.
–This next paragraph can be skipped, it defines a few terms and frames the issue, but some might find it needlessly semantic–Some of these labels are (what I’ll call) institutional, ideological, and/or aesthetic. Institutional groupings are based on a subset of Jews being unified based on connection to an institution(s). For instance, The Conservative movement is an institutional grouping since it’s people are connected through camps, schools, youth groups, an other institutions. It is also an ideological grouping since it has positions on many questions that it endorses. Conservative Jews have tendencies to think about Israel in certain ways, egalitarianism, etc. Of course, some differ and there is some diversity, but certainly, you can see what I mean by ideological grouping. By aesthetic, I mean a preference for decision-making model, prayer approach, or something else which is not explicitly Ideological. In many cases these issues are deeply moral, so I don’t mean to imply that this is in any sense superficial. Minyanim, for instance are united by a desire for lay-ledness and thus “Minyan” is an aesthetic grouping. This is a rather arbitrary nuance but there certainly is a nuance between how people think about the world (ideology) and how they prefer their prayer specifically (prayer aesthetic) that while influenced by the former is a slightly different issue.
Now I’ll take a look at a few common groupings and examine what they are, where they come from, and which they are parallel too, and not.
More »
by BZ [➚] · Saturday, November 21st, 2009
(Crossposted to Mah Rabu.)
Blogging from the Bolt Bus on the way, appropriately, to the National Havurah Committee board meeting:
Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight wrote this insightful post last fortnight following the elections:
Why did Democrats lose in Virginia and New Jersey on Tuesday? Because independent voters moved against them, say the pundits.
This is true [... b]ut it doesn’t really tell us very much. It’s a lot like saying: the Yankees won the Game 6 last night because they scored more runs than the Phillies. Or: the unemployment rate went up because there were fewer jobs.
It’s worth a read in its own right, but I want to focus on one section and draw an analogy to the Jewish community:
Part of the problem is that ‘independents’ are not a particularly coherent group. At a minimum, the category of ‘independents’ includes:
1) People who are mainline Democrats or Republicans for all intents and purposes, but who reject the formality of being labeled as such;
2) People who have a mix of conservative and liberal views that don’t fit neatly onto the one-dimensional political spectrum, such as libertarians;
3) People to the extreme left or the extreme right of the political spectrum, who consider the Democratic and Republican parties to be equally contemptible;
4) People who are extremely disengaged from politics and who may not have fully-formed political views;
5) True-blue moderates;
6) Members of organized third parties.
These voters have almost nothing to do with each other and yet they all get grouped under the same umbrella as ‘independents’.
Similarly, many overlapping terms are used for Jewish individuals and communities who are not affiliated with any of the major denominations: independent, unaffiliated, nondenominational, postdenominational, Just Jewish, etc. More »
by Ruby K [➚] · Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
Attention all artists! Today is the day- the deadline for applications to be one of two Poretsky Artists in Residence at the National Havurah Committee Summer Institute 2010. The two artists selected will be teaching a course and presenting their work to a diverse, open, eager community of 350 people from all across North America.
If you stopped halfway through your course description, time to finish it up, as the application is due in less than 11 hours! You can download the application by clicking here. Applications due 11:59pm tonight, East Coast time. Good luck!
[Edited by TWJ to add: today is also the last day to submit course proposals. More details here.]
by BZ [➚] · Sunday, November 15th, 2009
(Crossposted to Mah Rabu.)
Independent minyanim have been popping up all over the press lately. First of all, they make an appearance in this CNN piece on “New Jews”, but that deserves a whole snarky post of its own, so I’ll leave it alone for now.
Two articles focus on independent minyanim: one in the August/September issue of Hadassah Magazine (it’s old, I know, but it wasn’t available online when it first came out, so it seems to have slid under the blogosphere’s radar), and one (which is really four and counting) in the latest edition of the URJ’s Eilu V’Eilu.
More »
by Aryeh Cohen [➚] · Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
My good friend Sarah Newman blogged over at TakePart about my daughter’s bat mitzvah at the Shtibl Minyan this past summer. As Sarah writes:
What also makes this bat mitzvah so special is that the sustainable practices they chose to incorporate into Shachar’s bat mitzvah can be used for any type of event. And, the greatest lesson that came of their planning is that it involved, engaged and helped to build an already thriving little community in the heart of the Los Angeles megalopolis. The family didn’t do this on their own; all members of their tiny synagogue (myself included) pitched in.
Indy minyan plus eco- and social-justice friendly bat mitzvah with amazing desserts.
(Why isn’t that a category on any of the surveys?!)
The whole story is here.
by guestpost [➚] · Saturday, October 10th, 2009
This is a guest post by Jacob Rosenblum.
Hey all you yids and ivrim, over the next several months, I will be starting a Jewish Commune (aka kibbutz) around Woodburn, Oregon, just 30 minutes from your mama’s house in Portland (okay, it’s 30 minutes from my mama’s house).
If you’re lookin’ to set up shop in the Pacific Northwest, and want to live in a community that taxes its members heavily in order to provide for common well-being, we might be just the place you’re looking for. We need a few good Jews to join on to the start-up phase. Drop by woodburn.jewishcommune.org, and sign up to receive updates on the project, or apply to join.
Myself and David Zenaty, two twenty-something yids of Olympia, Washington State, have decided to throw in together and start a Jewish Commune, using the following “communal mitzvot” as foundational pillars:
- Supporting Communities Targeted by Racism
- Discovering Our Connection to Jewishness
- Connecting to the Land
- Fostering Economic Interdependence
- Creating Inter-Generational Community
If you’ve been in a group of young intrepid souls of late, you know of the murmur in the air. Community is the worthwhile thing, the spark of holiness that infuses everyday questioning and mediates every conversation. We’ve simply pulled together one iteration of what that community could look like for any person: a specific place, with specific people, and with specific values.
After living in my college town for seven years, I’m moving geographically closer to where I grew up, but in some ways, in the ways of dividing the world according to urbanism and racism, I’m moving much further away. My new neighbors will be semi-rural, and many of them born in Mexico, neither things that I experienced in the corner of Portland that I grew up in.
I’ve known since I was aging out of compulsory school that at some point, this is a path that I wanted to go down, to commit fully to a place and, most especially, a group of people. I can’t say that this is how I expected it to happen.
One day I woke up and realized how crazy this dream is: moving onto land with a group of people and all their quirks, negotiating the legal and societal notions of what a group of people are doing living together anyway. And as much as I wondered how I could do this, a different reality struck me: this is the only thing worth doing.
When I first envisioned community, I had no inkling of wanting Jews the way I do now, or of how important building relationships with people of color would become for me. And I accept this aspect of a path: I know enough to know the entrance point, but I have no clue where it will lead me. Openness to discovery is a blessing.
I feel that way about the Woodburn Jewish Commune: this is a launch point, I have some ideas about what it could look like in two years, but really there are many different directions it can go in, as it flexes and stretches to accommodate the full lives of many people. Perhaps we will end up with several properties in different areas, perhaps we will establish a non-profit, perhaps language study will be a key focus of our community. Perhaps kosher produce (pickles, grape juice, etc.) will be the key foods we bring forth from the land, perhaps we will develop into a community of firefighters. The key thing (ha-ikar) is that we can think about it together, and build ourselves a community that includes our experience fully as Jews; both in the things we decide to do that we didn’t think Jews were allowed to do (such as farming) and in the things that we decide to do even though it’s scary to be seen doing them as Jews (like banking).
This is a physical manifestation of a deep inquiry of my experience as a Jew, one that will encompass my life and the daily doings of many a good person. I invite you to dig in with us! There is so much goodness!
Thanks for reading, I’d love to hear you thoughts. Wishing you each great joy during this season, chag sameach!
by David A.M. Wilensky [➚] · Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
This series has been crossposted to The Reform Shuckle. Here is the Intro.
To those of you who were worried that I was unhealthily smug, worry not. My day of davening at Hadar was the most humbling prayer experience of my life. Many have complained, mostly in the comments here, that this High Holiday Sampler Plate Adventure series has been rather smug. I’ve often been accused of smugness and I won’t go so far as to deny it.
First, let me apologize to anyone who was actually looking forward to my reflections on watching Kol Nidrei live streaming at Jewish TV Network. I couldn’t get it to work right, so I just went to bed frustrated. I was gonna live-tweet it and everything. But alas.
Uv’chen, I’ve been hearing about Kehilat Hadar since I moved into this part of the world and I’ve been told for a couple years now that I need to check it out. I dunno if Yom Kipur was the best day to make my first trip to Hadar or not, but I had a great time. And by a great time, I mean a deeply reflective time.
In recent years, I’ve had Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist prayer experiences, not to mention post-, non-, anti-, and multi- denominational ones. Hadar is the closest I’ve ever come to Orthodox. Despite the deeply various backgrounds of the people who come to Hadar, the founders and the feel is certainly as close as you can get to Orthodox while remaining egalitarian.
Which is to say that I can’t remember the last time I spent about 50% of Jewish service as confused and lost as I was for most of yesterday. I’m normally someone who prides himself on his facility with the sidur. Even the machzor, which I don’t know as well as the daily or Shabat sidur, has never been hard for me to navigate. So normally, when things in a service don’t got just the way I want them to, I’m frustrated or annoyed or exasperated.
I was certainly frustrated yesterday, but in a good way. I felt challenged yesterday by a lack of knowledge. And when it comes to gaps I discover in my liturgical knowledge, my instinct is always to fill the gaps. Mostly, I was humbled. Yes, you read that right. I said I was humbled. There were tunes I’d never heard before, sung loudly and raucously with clapping, dancing and podium-pounding. It was an attitude I’d never encountered before on Yom Kipur. There was excitement, but the proceedings still managed to remain as somber as I ordinarily think of Yom Kipur as being. These nearly joyous outbursts of song nicely paralleled Rabbi Shai Held‘s sermon, easily the highlight of the day, in which he spoke of a bizarre Talmudic verse which calls Tu B’Av and Yom Kipur the most joyous days of the Jewish year.
Aside from the new (to me) tunes, this was my first encounter with an entire congregation that prostrates itself during the Avodah service! Not to mention the part of the service when everyone at Hadar lays flat on the floor, face down. That one was new to me, so if anyone wants to leave a comment with an explanation, it’s much appreciated.
Yesterday was an endurance test. I arrived at 8:50 a.m. and shacharit has started five minutes earlier. Finally, at 7:30 p.m., about eleven hours later, we wrapped up Ne’ilah. (That’s eleven hours of davening, with only a one-hour break, for those keeping score at home.) Yes, I thought! Now I can go eat. Without skipping a beat, they launched right into Ma’ariv. I briefly entertained the idea of sticking around, but my grumbling stomach and aching head said otherwise. Luckily, Hadar was handing out candy, juice boxes and water bottles on the way out!
I’ve never felt so truly reached by the liturgy of the day, so I’m glad of Hadar’s part in helping the fast and the davening do their intended work on me.
I’ll now move on to a few thoughts about Hadar as a community. Keep in mind that I’ve never been on an ordinary Shabat, so I don’t know what Hadar is normally like.
I’ve heard the charge leveled at Hadar that it is elitist or cliquey. I suppose I can see that from this limited experience, but it is not as if I arrived not knowing anyone in the room. Within the cavernous, packed church multi-purpose room we occupied for the day, I spotted about five bloggers I know (including a few Jewschoolers, including our BZ and Jen Taylor Friedman). I also spotted Tamar Fox, who gave me my first break blogging anywhere other than my own blog, sitting directly in front of me. My boss, a former coworker and about a half-dozen of our volunteers were there too. I ran into a few other friends as well, some of them Yeshivat Hadar alumni and some current Hadar students. So I felt comfortable because of all the familiar, friendly faces, but I can see how others would not have the same experience.
All in all, a good gmar chatimah, I think. Hoping yours was good too.
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