Empowered fisking
(Crossposted to Mah Rabu.)
The 21st-century independent minyan phenomenon has inspired many newspaper articles. However, the published “serious” writing (with the appropriate academic or intellectual credentials) on this topic is still far more limited, leading to founder effects, with a few mutations being propagated over and over. For example, Riv-Ellen Prell’s article in Zeek, comparing two generations of independent Jewish communities, is often cited as an authority. While Prell literally wrote the book on an older generation of havurot with an ethnographic study, there is no evidence that she did any primary research on the newer minyanim, or has even been to one; her main source of information on these communities seems to be the roundtable of minyan leaders that appeared in the same issue of Zeek. Yet that article is what there is. In the quantitative realm, the 2007 National Spiritual Communities Study gathered lots of valuable data on independent minyanim, but the report (and/or initial media stories about it) also originated some misleading conclusions that won’t go away. Rabbi Elie Kaunfer’s book Empowered Judaism isn’t the entire story, but there is absolutely no question that Kaunfer knows his subject, and it’s now out there as a real live book.
Margot Lurie’s recent review of Empowered Judaism contains many of the lazy smears about independent minyanim that we’ve been hearing for years (citing such sources as “one parent of a minyan-goer” and “a friend of mine”). Under other conditions, the best thing to do might be to ignore it. But this review is published in the Jewish Review of Books, which gives it the intellectual cachet to place it into the small pond of “serious” writing on this subject. So this review needs to be fisked in the bud before it becomes the next authoritative voice on independent minyanim.
So here we go.
These minyanim are, in some ways, descendants of the “havurot” (fellowships) of the 1960s and ‘70s for which the Jewish Catalog served as a guide. Those participatory communities were marked by a countercultural, anti-institutional, Do-It-Yourself aesthetic, of which the new minyanim, to some extent, partake.
This past Shabbat, I attended Fabrangen‘s 40th anniversary celebration. They still meet every Shabbat, and they still don’t have a rabbi or a building. Many of the havurot of the ’60s and ’70s still exist, so the past tense is not the correct way to refer to them. By their continuing existence, they also provide an answer to the question of whether an independent lay-led community can survive as its participants get older.
It is important to distinguish further between two types of independent minyan, which, while often possessing overlapping sets of congregants, have very different motivating impulses. First, there are “partnership minyanim” … Fundamentally a response to the difficult question of women’s roles in the Orthodox world, they rely on a controversial halakhic responsum of Rabbi Mendel Shapiro allowing women to lead non-obligatory parts of the prayer service. … The second type of minyan is not an outgrowth of halakhic re-interpretations within Orthodoxy or a response to segregated gender roles, but an effort to meet a “crisis in spirituality,” …
Lurie is correct to delineate these two separate motivating impulses whose confluence around the turn of the century enabled the independent minyan boom. However, while these impulses may have originated separately, they have become intertwined to the point that it’s not just that the two types of independent minyanim have overlapping participants; it is no longer possible to sharply delineate two types of minyanim. The “partnership minyan” model is being adopted not only by communities that want to increase women’s participation in the Orthodox world, but also by “big tent” communities who (rightly or wrongly) perceive this model as a pluralistic compromise that can accommodate everyone. On the flip side, many minyanim with deep roots in the Orthodox world (such as Shira Hadasha, the flagship partnership minyan) give serious thought to the “spiritual” issues associated with the “second type of minyan”.
There is an open secret about Hadar: like many other minyanim, it is funded by lots of organized community money, offered by institutions eager to keep young Jews connected to their heritage. (This may explain why Kaunfer writes like someone who has devoted a big chunk of his life to writing grant applications.)
Yeshivat Hadar does indeed do a lot of fundraising from foundations, making it possible for students to attend for free and receive a living stipend. However, Yeshivat Hadar isn’t a minyan; it’s a yeshiva. Kehilat Hadar (which is a minyan) is funded almost entirely by donations from its own participants. Kehilat Hadar has received some “organized community money” in the past (e.g. from Bikkurim), but this was never a secret, open or otherwise; when Kehilat Hadar was participating in Bikkurim, this was mentioned at the bottom of every email. And, in having received this funding in the past, Kehilat Hadar is not “like many other minyanim”. Most minyanim have never received any “organized community money”; they are either funded entirely by donations or they operate on a budget of zero (meeting in participants’ homes or other free spaces).
(As an aside, I wonder if the founders of the three Hadars are starting to regret their decision in naming the newer two. It may have made sense from a marketing perspective, since Hadar was already a successful brand, but it means they and others are forever stuck making this sort of clarification when people inappropriately conflate the various Hadars.)
Through this, Jewish organizations, while creating opportunities for young Jews to worship and study—and they do create these opportunities, and these opportunities are valuable—also prop up a not-very-impressive aspect of elite American culture: the long-extended enabled adolescence. In an interview with Tablet, Kaunfer called this period the slacker-sounding “post-college, pre-whatever.” It has also been described by Jeffrey Arnett, a psychology professor, as “emerging adulthood,” and in David Brooks’ more august term as “the odyssey years.”
On the ground, what this looks like is upper middle class Americans spending the ten to fifteen years after college messing around and “figuring out their lives” while postponing marriage, children, and responsibilities.
Let’s first assume for the sake of argument that “emerging adulthood” exists. What is the mechanism by which independent minyanim (whether they’re funded by their participants or by the Elders of Zion) prop it up? Is the idea that if the only Jewish community option were suburban family-centered synagogues, then young adults would be in a bigger hurry to get married, have children, and buy a house in the suburbs so that they could be part of those sweet sweet synagogues, and independent minyanim are the crutch holding them back?
More likely, the societal factors contributing to later ages of marriage and parenthood were around before this latest wave of independent minyanim, and are much larger than our tiny Jewish community. If these minyanim didn’t exist, no one would have children and settle down any earlier, but a lot of people would spend more time alienated from Jewish life.
One way or another, the bill for this eclectic adventurousness is footed by parents, or, for the best and brightest, by various institutions and sinecures.
Wait a minute. Here, Lurie is characterizing independent minyan participants as unemployed trustafarian slackers, but just two paragraphs earlier, she wrote about “the e-bankers, lawyers, and bright-eyed young professionals who form a core segment of the minyan: stockbrokers in Birkenstocks.” So which is it?
Probably a little of both, but again, that has nothing to do with minyanim. Lurie (and perhaps Arnett, Brooks, et al.) are conflating multiple factors that need not go together. To be sure, the growing population of childless young adults does much to enable urban minyanim such as Kehilat Hadar (and not the other way around); because they’re not raising children, they can afford to live in neighborhoods such as the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and have the time to contribute volunteer energy to creating and sustaining minyanim. But that has nothing to do with “messing around and ‘figuring out their lives'”, or “postponing … responsibilities”. Many of these childless young adults are employed in “responsible” jobs.
It seems that Lurie wants to attack various full-time year-long programs run by the Jewish community as enabling a prolonged “odyssey”, but if so, she’s going after the wrong target: most independent minyanim meet on Shabbat, when even most employed people have the day off, so participating in an independent minyan (unlike, say, spending a year learning in Israel) doesn’t postpone anything.
Certainly, in opting out of synagogue life, most young Jews become unaccustomed to supporting Jewish institutions financially.
This is true, but “most young Jews” aren’t involved with independent minyanim either. Among those who are, they do become accustomed to supporting their communities financially. And unlike synagogue members, who pay membership dues in exchange for perceived benefits (like paying for a gym membership), most newer independent minyanim don’t have formal membership, and therefore independent minyan participants who donate to their minyan do so without the expectation of getting anything directly in return; they do it because they know the community needs their support.
In a faith that initiates its 12- and 13-year-olds into adult responsibility, the concept of thirty-year-olds as “emerging adults” should be, at the least, suspicious.
For sure. But independent minyanim may be the sector of Jewish life that treats thirty-year-olds least like “emerging adults” and most like (adjective-free) adults, with adult responsibilities. Unlike conventional synagogues that run “20s and 30s groups” that are extensions of the youth group, and unlike Federations with their “Young Leadership Divisions”, independent minyanim are places where adults of any age can take full responsibility for running the community, without being marginalized as “young people”. Far from being slackers, the 20somethings who start minyanim are taking action when they don’t even have to.
Now that independent minyanim have been through several crop cycles, it is reasonable to speculate about their future. “When people ask what will happen to the minyan as it ages, my experience suggests that it simply won’t [age],” writes Kaunfer. “Most people past their mid-thirties leave the urban area, and a new crop of college graduates moves in . . . The institution itself is actually quite stable, because it caters to a demographic that is constantly replenishing itself.”
This quote from Kaunfer isn’t about the future of independent minyanim in general. When he says “the minyan”, he’s not talking about an abstract minyan, but rather, a specific minyan: Kehilat Hadar. And this model of dynamic equilibrium has proven to be correct for the Upper West Side. It’s not correct everywhere, but he’s not claiming that it is. Kaunfer has listed a number of other possibilities.
Pretty soon, those who stay will need Hebrew school, they will need bar/bat mitzvah training, and before you can say egalitarianism, bang, they’re a shul.
And here we have the framing of independent minyanim as rumspringa (a classic move by Jewish establishment types who want to avoid feeling threatened): these responsibility-free young adults are running wild now, but once they have children, the clock will strike midnight and poof! what they’re looking for in a Jewish community will revert back to what their parents’ communities do. Then they’ll uncritically accept–nay, “need”–the institutions of Hebrew school and bar/bat mitzvah just the way they are. There’s no chance that they’ll embrace new models of Jewish education just as they embraced new models of prayer communities, and there’s certainly no chance that anyone has done this before and emerged unscathed (oh wait, see above, about Fabrangen’s 40th anniversary).
The Havurah movement had a necessarily different relationship to institutions (part of their function, in the early years, was to earn 4D draft exemptions for those participants who were studying for ordination), but even they could not resist the institutional pull: in 1979, the National Havurah Committee was founded.
It was Havurat Shalom (a specific havurah) that was set up as a seminary to earn draft exemptions, not “the Havurah movement” (whatever that means). And I have no idea what the NHC example is supposed to prove, or what Lurie thinks the NHC is. The National Havurah Committee is an organization with one not-quite-full-time staff member, one summer intern, and a whole lot of volunteers, and it provides resources, events, and networks for anyone interested. Unlike a denomination, the NHC has no affiliated congregations. The hundreds of havurot and minyanim across the country have become no more “institutional” due to the NHC’s presence than they would be without it.
There are, however, ragged edges to these commitments. Most minyanim that stress prayer over other forms of Jewish communal life do not meet weekly (Hadar is now an exception). To one parent of a minyan-goer, this signals the unseriousness and “lack of commitment of a generation—they can’t even commit to coming to shul every week.”
Are you for REAL? Here’s a simple exercise: take a Reform or Conservative shul, and count how many people are there on the high holidays. Then count how many people are there on an average Shabbat. Then calculate the ratio of these two numbers. Next, do the same calculation for an independent minyan (that does high holiday services). Not even the same order of magnitude! If the average minyan-goer shows up every two weeks or so (i.e. every time the minyan meets), that is FAR more frequent than the average synagogue member. (And that doesn’t account for cities with multiple alternating minyanim, where many people go SOMEWHERE every week even if it’s not the same place.)
In what is perhaps the most disturbing result of this antiauthoritarian impulse, independent minyanim have encouraged the growth of communities without rabbis, and sometimes without anyone above the threshold of don’t-trust-anyone-over x (adjusted for my generation’s protracted youth).
Communities without rabbis (in the sense of a job description, not a professional degree), yes. Age thresholds, no. Yes ,there are many independent minyanim with populations mostly in the 22-40 range, but none of these minyanim explicitly encourage that homogeneity (unlike “20s and 30s programs” from the established Jewish community, which do). There are various reasons (some of which Kaunfer explores in his book) why people above a certain age are less likely to be found in these communities, but anyone who wanted to be there would be welcome.
Where, finally, do the minyanim stand in the rough spectrum of practicing American Judaism?
“The minyanim” are not the Borg. They really are independent — of the denominations and of each other. If there is a “spectrum”, then there are independent minyanim in many places on it (and off it).
Hadar and other communities are to be praised for appealing to the Orthodox, which the havurot never managed to do.
Why is appealing to “the Orthodox” more praiseworthy than appealing to anyone else? And who are “the Orthodox”? Obviously, most Orthodox-identified people wouldn’t daven somewhere like Hadar.
Certainly the right wing of Hadar is left-wing Orthodox in observance.
“Certainly”? Who is “the right wing of Hadar”, and what does “left-wing Orthodox in observance” mean? The only part of this sentence that I understand is “is”.
Trying to place these minyanim on conventional left-right spectra is a fool’s errand. There are people who are dumbfounded that Hadar does same-sex aufrufs and full Torah reading, but that’s only a contradiction if you start with faulty assumptions.
But still: Kaunfer is a dyed-in-the-wool, Cradle Conservative Jew, as are 46 percent of all independent-minyan-goers.
The actual statistic from the 2007 Spiritual Communities Study is that 46% of independent minyan goers were raised identifying as Conservative — no mention of how many of them were “dyed-in-the-wool”. And 46% is still less than half, so we can conclude that the majority of independent minyan goers were not raised in the Conservative movement. In comparison (from the NJPS data presented in the same report), 35% of synagogue members identify as Conservative, so the independent minyan population is not dramatically different from the synagogue population in this regard.
If the independent-minyan movement is, at heart, a Conservative critique of Conservative synagogue life, does it not follow that the phenomenon is much less expansive, and less important, than is claimed?
If the independent-minyan movement is, at heart, a front for the Mexican drug cartels, does it not follow that they should face federal prosecution?
If my grandmother has wheels, does it not follow that she is a streetcar?
Even I could do a better job arguing the case for “independent minyanim are really Conservative deep down”, and I don’t even believe that position! Making this claim based on a few leaders (who started one independent minyan, not “the independent-minyan movement [sic]”) and less than half of the overall independent minyan population is pretty weak.
Furthermore, the innovations of independent minyanim are fully compatible with Conservative Judaism itself.
They’re also fully compatible with the phlogiston theory, bimetallism, and plate tectonics. Nu?
Conservative synagogues would like nothing more than to welcome independent minyanim, and their young members, into the fold.
Especially if their young “members [sic]” will provide warm bodies to maintain the status quo at those synagogues.
But the minyan movement has taken on a life of its own, abandoning rather than revitalizing the Conservative world.
Except for the majority of independent minyan participants who couldn’t abandon the Conservative world, because they were never in it to begin with.
Such a non-normative concept of halakha is empowering mostly in the sense that it empowers people to think that they are keeping halakha whether or not they really are.
I carry around Beg The Question cards, to promote the proper use of the expression “to beg the question”, but then I often find myself at a loss when trying to think of correct examples of “begging the question”. But thanks to this sentence, now I have one.
To spell it out: Lurie’s critique of this approach to halakha (in which there is not “a simple yes-or-no answer”, but there is support for either conclusion) relies on the predicate “whether or not they really are [keeping halakha]” having a well-defined objective truth value. That is, showing that this approach to halakha is invalid relies on the basic assumption that this approach to halakha is invalid.
What this article seems most to worry about is whether or not movements – as they are- will continue to flourish. I expect that -as tehy are- they will not. even as someone who works in that milieu, that doesn’t particularly bother me. Movements are -in Judaism- a recent, Western phenomenon. When they are gone, something else will be there, and I’ll figure out a way to wiggle a place into it. I can understand why this might be threatening to people whose entire careers have been firmly entrenched in a particular model – and a reasonably lucrative one, at that (at least for male clergy, most especially in the Reform movement, although again, it depends upon where you are). However, all institutions have a lifecycle. Even American culture is going through significant changes, and to think that this blip in historical (Western) Judaism was destined to last forever is just silly.
now, can we stop talking about whether or not indie minyans are good or bad and get back to thinking about some better educational models than supplementary religious schools as they are?
Jewschool has an editorial staff, right? This should have been about 1000 words less than it is. No room for jargon in this hizz.
Another stupid claim to fisk:
To cite one statistic from the Spiritual Communities Study (2007), conducted by the S3K Synagogue Studies Institute in collaboration with Mechon Hadar: 58 percent of minyan-goers have had a romance with a non-Jew, 24 percent in the past year. Kaunfer stops short of endorsing the practice, but he does call this “integration with the non-Jewish world” an indication of the open-mindedness and cosmopolitanism of young minyan-goers. To those who think of these young Jews as the most committed of their generation, such numbers may indicate something altogether different
Yes? What does it indicate? If they come to shul regularly they are comitted – to the shul, and most likely to what it represents. And if they date goyim, then how does it impinge on this commitment?
While I agree with most of this fisking, I have a few nits to pick.
I don’t know a single regular minyan that meets in a free space. Individuals donate space in their home or community buildings (jewish or non-jewish) donate space for minyans to use. Calling something “free” if money doesn’t change hands undervalues the core importance of these donations of space and also the donations of time that are the lifeblood of most lay-led communities.
Lurie: Conservative synagogues would like nothing more than to welcome independent minyanim, and their young members, into the fold. BZ: Especially if their young “members [sic]” will provide warm bodies to maintain the status quo at those synagogues.
Speaking as a young member of three Conservative synagogues, I would like nothing more than to welcome members of indy minyanim to disrupt the status quo and I’m very far from the only one who thinks that way. In an article where you spend reams of text fighting stereotypes, why are you stereotyping other groups?
@KRG. Ask the Mitnagdim and Hasidim (or Ashkenasim & Sephardim or the Karites) if movements in Judasim are a recent phenomenom. Movements will always be here. The boundaries can get fuzzy and often realign. In the past, the Orthodox, Conservative and Reform movements have proved very adept at shifting their boundaries to become welcoming homes for large numbers of Jews. The big modern change is that I’m unsure whether current movement leadership (at least in the Conservative movement that I know best) has the vision and managerial competence to successfully shift boundaries before going bankrupt.
Good work BZ! I hope the JRB runs this next issue. This ought to embarrass the author and publication a great deal.
It seems like you have more of a problem with the choice of adjectives more than anything. And, yes, that was not a very well written article. But somehow, I doubt your goal is to be an editor. You are looking to shoot down some of the GIGO theories about Indies.
But (and I have been to several), it’s been my experience that the Indies claim to be “trans-denominational” or “post-denominational” is essentially gibberish. What this means if you’re Orthodox, is: we’re going to bend the rules. What this means if you’re Reform is, oh, you’re Reform so your traditions don’t mean shit, even though we’re going to co-opt a lot of them and just not use the “R” word.
There’s absolutely zero wrong with that. I actually like practicing that kind of Judaism, I just don’t like apologizing for it or spinning it.
Now, secondly, the whole Hebrew School thing. One of your chief complains about the article was that it lacked data. So, in a sort of verbal legerdemain, you change the burden of proof and say the article must present data showing these folks won’t create alternative educational institutions? Well… where’s the evidence that they will?
And come on. Even if the idealists at the heart of some of the Indies aren’t doing it, $2,000 a year synagogue dues play a large role in many of their members’ motivations, whether you want to admit that or not.
I tend to think of it as a plus, though, for Jewish life. Some involvement is better than none. Some giving to some community is better than none, and I think most of these folks would be at none. I don’t think it’s a zero-sum kind of thing. In other words, I don’t think the synagogues are really losing all that much. But that doesn’t address where the money for a Hebrew School will come from (*some* of the Indie folks will want that, even if the majority create “alternatives”) or where parsonages for rabbis will come from, either.
The article is not the best I’ve read on the topic, but the Indies do have a few challenges to address and beating up on people who don’t do such a great job addressing them won’t solve them.
“independent minyanim as rumspringa”
I heart you, BZ. Nice post.
Nice post. I reread this article yesterday and found myself thinking it need a good BZ fisking.
Many of these childless young adults are employed in “responsible” jobs.
Not only that, but a significant number of them are employed in the sort of Jewish communal support roles that support the Jewish communities Lurie theorizes that they want nothing to do with.
frederick rosenshvigger, yes, we do have an editorial team–not staff, though. But JS is all-volunteer and rather decentralized. We all post whenever we want without passing our posts in front of an editor first.
fisked? more like skinned alive!
I embrace independent minyanim _because_ it’s a way to help deprive oxygen from my class enemies, the OJC. If supporting them doesn’t actually cause any damage, I’ll have to go back to supporting Hare Krishna and radical yogis. Sigh.
the new USCJ strat plan dovetails nicely with this.
Jon says, “Some involvement is better than none. Some giving to some community is better than none, and I think most of these folks would be at none. … But that doesn’t address where the money for a Hebrew School will come from …”
Equating involvement with money is one of the things that makes much of institutional Judaism unappealing to me, and I imagine to other “young members.” Saying that people who organize and run their own services are less involved in Jewish communal life than people who pay to show up or receive services for their kids is just false. Furthermore, assuming that without money you can’t do anything (what if minyan members, for example, are knowledgeable enough to teacher their own children how to lead services and write a drash, instead of relying on a Hebrew school?) is what digs institutions into a hole when the people it wants to attract are willing to give time but not money. You don’t need a rabbi’s parsonage when a critical mass of congregants can (and will), collectively, do the rabbi’s job.
The time/money split is not entirely correlated with affiliation or lack thereof–Conservative college kids, for example, look a lot like minyan members, until they graduate. If being a responsible Jewish adult is measured by my checkbook record, without regard to what I do with my life, I hope I never graduate from the “emerging adulthood” phase.
Frankly, BZ sounds to me like a member of an Indie minyan who can’t deal with the well written criticism that this reviewer writes. There is an important aspect to Indie minyanim that does not give back to the communites (synagogues, youth movements, camps) that gave them their own Jewish identity. That is not a sign of an in depth understanding of the Jewish community. The institutions that were there for them may not be there for their children, and then what? Yes, some minyanim will persevere (so the Fabrangen is 40 years old; how many other chavurot no longer exist, or-horrors-have folded into existing synagogues?) and last longer than others, but ultimately there’s no free lunch.
@shlomo – With respect, there is no more obligation on anyone to uphold an ‘institutional’ form Judaism any more than anything else. Many indie minyanim don’t have anti-institutionalism as a cornerstone. People like them for aesthetic or social reasons. In the market place, people make choices. Many attendees must feel that for whatever reason they existing institutions are meeting their current needs. That does not preclude them from supporting them nor other institutions from which they have benefited in the past but no longer need, e.g. camps, youth groups, shuls, yeshivas, etc.
The review was not particularly well written and like your comment, was more of a critique of the subject matter than of the book.
Large kalter shuls may have suited the US Jewish populace in the early to mid-twentieth century. Perhaps that is changing. The need may now call for re-shteiblization, or at least a wider variety of kehilla formats than have been common in the last century, and perhaps only in specific urban centers at that.
Outright disdain for institutions is not something most minyans embrace. That they choose other formats and settings for their gatherings holds lessons for shuls and the community in general.
Rather than disputing the facts, we learn from them.
“Ben Zoma said: Who is wise? He who learns from all people, as it is said: ‘From all those who taught me I gained understanding’ (Psalms 119:99). ” pirke avos
Shlomo- Who says that people who go to indie minyans won’t give back to youth groups/camps/schools/etc.? That’s kind of a silly assumption. You know what’s not an in depth understanding of the Jewish community? Assuming that adults who have been given a strong Jewish background will automatically join a synagogue, even if that synagogue doesn’t provide for their needs. That’s pretty silly too. Maybe synagogues should consider what “emerging adults” are looking for in a community and try to foster it. Oh wait, some have done that. And hey! It works! Fancy that.
Also, I’m sure there are other schuls that appeal to “emerging adults.” Those are just some of the ones that I’m familiar with.
@shoshie I dont know that AES really fits that bill, though they try. Their efforts tend to be more of the extension of Youth Group model.
::shrug:: To be honest, I don’t particularly care HOW synagogues are considering the needs of post-college, pre-child adults. Just that they’re doing it. And it’s the only one of the three that I haven’t actually attended, just heard about from friends who go there now. I know that Beth Shalom Seattle and Tremont Street both do/did a pretty good job of incorporating that group into the main congregation, though there are/were still events specifically targeted to 20’s and 30’s people.
BOOM. Awesome job BZ. As always, your writing on pretty much any kind of Jewish communal structures or religious practices is really insightful.
“To one parent of a minyan-goer, this signals the unseriousness and “lack of commitment of a generation—they can’t even commit to coming to shul every week.”
It’s not just that indie minyanaires go to shul in at least as high proportions as synagogue members. It’s that making shul happen when you are running a lay-led minyan is SO much more work than just showing up in the audience at a rabbi and cantor-led service. “Coming to shul” is much *more* serious when it requires setting up and putting away chairs, preparing a Torah reading or dvar torah, or leading a part of the service, setting up and cleaning up after kiddush … You can accuse indie minyan attendees of a lot of things, but taking the lazy way out isn’t one of them!
Dan writes:
I don’t know a single regular minyan that meets in a free space. Individuals donate space in their home or community buildings (jewish or non-jewish) donate space for minyans to use. Calling something “free” if money doesn’t change hands undervalues the core importance of these donations of space and also the donations of time that are the lifeblood of most lay-led communities.
Fair point. However, getting back to the supposed “open secret” about minyanim, if a minyan receives donations of space from a Jewish organization, that’s not a secret either — there’s nothing more public about a minyan than the location where it meets.
Shlomo, that doesn’t quite track. If someone grows up Reform, but chooses to join a Conservative shul when in adulthood, are they not giving back to the institution that helped them out? What about someone who goes further, like getting involved with Chabad?
They minyan crowd isn’t staying out of shuls to spite them or out of laziness. Rather, they are doing it because they can’t get what they want in a shul.
Who can honestly argue that we should affiliate with an organization because we grew up there, but no longer associate with its ideas?
Jon writes:
Now, secondly, the whole Hebrew School thing. One of your chief complains about the article was that it lacked data. So, in a sort of verbal legerdemain, you change the burden of proof and say the article must present data showing these folks won’t create alternative educational institutions? Well… where’s the evidence that they will?
If we’re talking about children who haven’t reached school age yet or haven’t been born (and I’ll assume we are, since the original article used the future tense), then of course there’s no data yet either way. (Though there is indeed evidence of alternative educational structures that have recently formed or in the process of forming.) But Lurie didn’t simply say we don’t know what’s going to happen; she treated Hebrew school, bar/bat mitzvah “training”, and the very idea that children get their Jewish education in the same place they daven, as inevitable: an inappropriate leap when talking about a population that has treated nothing about Jewish communal structures as inevitable.
And sure, maybe some independent minyan participants will want that. I wish them well. But this claim (which Lurie is not the first to make, and won’t be the last) is saying more than that — it’s saying “You can run, but you can’t hide. Sooner or later, you’ll have no choice but to come crawling back.”
And come on. Even if the idealists at the heart of some of the Indies aren’t doing it, $2,000 a year synagogue dues play a large role in many of their members’ motivations, whether you want to admit that or not.
As minyan critics would be the first to point out, most independent minyanim don’t provide the full range of programs that synagogues do. And the programs that minyanim do provide that could be perceived as competing with synagogues (e.g. prayer services) tend not to be treated by synagogues as excludable goods — that is, most synagogues don’t restrict prayer services (etc.) to members. So if minyan participants liked everything about synagogues except the price, they’d just go to synagogues without becoming members. As Jo notes above, this is a lot less work. So if they look for alternatives instead, there must be other reasons.
Shlomo writes:
Frankly, BZ sounds to me like a member of an Indie minyan who can’t deal with the well written criticism that this reviewer writes. There is an important aspect to Indie minyanim that does not give back to the communites (synagogues, youth movements, camps) that gave them their own Jewish identity. That is not a sign of an in depth understanding of the Jewish community.
I am not now and have never been a member of an indie minyan. I have been an active participant in 5 indie minyanim, but none of the 5 has anything called membership. Yes, some independent minyanim do have membership, but most of the independent minyanim started after 2000 do not. So referring to “members” of independent minyanim (when referring generically to the set of all independent minyanim) is not a sign of an in-depth understanding of the Jewish community. (It comes across like the interfaith organizations that refer to Jewish “churches”.)
I will concede that the review was well-written and that the author has a promising fiction career ahead of her, but that doesn’t make the criticism valid, any more than criticizing Conservative synagogues for receiving most of their funding from the sale of centrifuge technology to North Korea (which the USCJ has never publicly denied).
The United States Jewish population is estimated at 6.5 million, and according to the last NJPS, 47% of American Jews are synagogue members. This means that there are over 3 million American Jews who are not synagogue members. The total independent minyan population (though hard to define, because many minyanim do not have membership – see above) has been estimated at around 20,000: less than 1% of the total American Jewish non-synagogue-member population (and further reduced because some independent minyan participants are also synagogue members). So if you’re looking for someone to blame for not supporting synagogues, why single out this tiny minority for vitriol? Why not start with the other 99%+?
To be fair, the word “member” has multiple meanings, and I would consider myself to be a “member” of the minyan I attend once a month despite it not having anything formal “membership.”
Kol hakavod. I (heart) BZ too.
Lurie’s type of “you young’uns will join our institutions when you grow up” argument has probably been in circulation since before Jews left Mitzrayim (and I don’t mean Mubarak’s Egypt, may the present crisis be resolved soon and peacefully).
I have persisted in my havurah-community, rabbi-less, Jewishly-well-educated practices since I was 16. Call me adolescent, but since I’m now over 50, it doesn’t look like that is going to change in my lifetime.
Lurie’s complaints boil down to privileging the fate of institutional arrangements — asking who will maintain the sunk costs in our suburban synagogues and professional infrastructure — rather than asking the more challenging questions about how a vibrant Jewish cohort is expressing its identity and commitment to participation – and what that might mean for the rest of us, as a critique, a prod or even an inspiration.
Better to ask how indie minyan-goers identify themselves, what brings them joy and frustration, and perhaps in what ways they are different or similar to similiarly positioned Jews who don’t find any interest in Jewish prayer, Jewish study, Jewish activism or (insert your favorite “way of doing Jewish” here).
Asked this way, a broader community can start asking whether there are any Jewish (or even general communal) needs that such voluntary groups cannot provide for themselves. (Organic kashrut certification? burial plots? nonprofit tax advice?) Community organizing 101 suggests filling in those gaps and going from there.
And this doesn’t even touch the question of how Lurie, and pundits like her, think the dissolution of indy minyanim would somehow (re)engage the majority of Jewishly-born people who have no active involvement with Jewishly-identified life at all. Is it complete heresy (irony intended) to challenge the premise that maybe it’s not so terrible if Jewish people meditate, date and marry non-Jews or contribute to Oxfam instead of Jewish philanthropies? But that’s a question for another day…
Glad to hear all of the discussion and thanks for the many reponses. A few points. @ BZ-like in your original article, making points like “I am not a member nor never have been a member of an indie minyan” is a bit silly. You want to use the word attender? Davener? You choose whatever you want, but to make a non-point of a term usage is just silly. As to the numbers, the point is that many of these 20,000 are among the best educated and most active of their genration. Therefore choosing to be removed from the past generation’s institutions has significant consequences for both the institutions and those people who remove themselves, none of which are positive. As to how synagogue’s may or may not react to the needs of people who now go to indie minyanim, I can tell you that I have been a part of similar minyanim in three different cities (LA, Chicago and New York). In each case we approached synagogues to say we wanted to support them and meet in their building, but to do our “own thing” keeping in mind the halachic parameters of the synagogue (all were Conservative). Strangely enough, they all said great! That way we met our needs, while at the same time supporting the institutions that enabled us to become who we were.
BZ as always knocks it out of the park. Just a few additional points…As alluded to in BZ’s and other posts, many participants in indie minyanim are either also at the same time synagogue “members,” or belong at some life stages to a synagogue and at other points to indie minyanim. It’s not an either-or proposition for many of us. In many years I’ve spent 1 day of Rosh Hashanah at a synagogue, and the next at an indie minyan (often when a synagogue didn’t offer 2nd-day services at all). The participants in different minyanim I’ve belonged to, in cities with rabbinical seminaries, often included lots of rabbinical/cantorial students, who also had obligations to various local synagogues and temples. Such minyanim are hardly anti-institutional (where Jewish institutions are concerned), but instead exist side by side with those institutions (though I won’t deny minyanim taking pride in the idea of providing spiritual sustenance to Jewish professionals whose jobs involve providing it to others, in larger synagogue settings). BZ is correct in suggesting that the real number of people involved in indie minyanim is minuscule — but perhaps slightly disingenuous (or maybe just modest!) in failing to note that they are some of the “best and brightest.” It is not just any 1% that Conservative and other denominational groups fear “losing” — it is a group that is the opposite of lazy and disaffected, and are in fact the most committed and engaged Jews of their respective age cohorts. That they refuse to “buy in” to the synagogue model, however, should cause more soul-searching inside those institutions, and less criticism directed out (and indeed it has, on the part of many in the Conservative movement).
As always, well said BZ.
Further to your point Diane – Not only do many of us folks who have spent time in independent minyanim also *spend time* in shuls, in my experience the shuls often *benefit immensely* from the vitality and skills brought to them by those folks that were learned in independent minyan settings. For example, the medium sized super institutional and movement affiliated shul I grew up in was blessed for a few years with the presence of a family, the mother of which had was a former gabbi of Hadar and the father of which an active independent minyan participant. During their time at the synagogue they became linchpins of the community – teaching classes, reading Torah, giving drashes. I am a former gabbi of two different independent minyanim, and now am organizing morning minyan, leading services, and reading torah at a shul (albeit non movement associated). Giving people meaningful Jewish content is not competition. It is good for Judaism and for Jews. ‘Nuff said.
I do think there is a conversation to be had about the importance of Rabbis as spiritual guides and (in halachic communities) poskim. I tend to think we need to find a way to bring together independence, vitality, and community participation and responsibility with leadership and the fostering of deep knowledge and expertise which takes more time than most people can devote to something outside of their careers.
I also think there is something to be said for the proposition that I wouldn’t be able to (and others like me won’t be able to) lead services, teach classes, and run minyanim for an independent minyan or a shul unless someone is willing to invest a lot of money in serious Jewish education for me and others like me. But it’s not at all clear to me why that has to mean Hebrew School or Movements. In my case it came mostly through Pardes and other non-movement affiliated adult education institutions. And it’s not at all clear to me that the folks who participate in independent Minyanim aren’t going to (and don’t already) invest in that kind of serious capacity building. They are smart enough to know they can’t function without it. They just might not want to do it through failed models like Movements and Hebrew School as they currently exist.
Just to add on to a few points here, any article that talks about people who go to indy minyans as a separate group have no clue what they are talking about. I regularly attend 2 synagogues and 2 indy minyans (and pay dues to 3 synagogues). In one of the indy minyans I attend, almost every is also a synagogue member. In the other, I’d say at lead 1/3 are dues paying synagogue members. The numbers might vary, but there aren’t any sharp lines.
20s/30s groups in synagogues exist mainly to help bring in an age group that often feels left out or alienated from synagogue life, for whatever reason. I know that every congregation is different and every 20’s/30’s group is different, but in my synagogue members of the 20’s/30’s group spend plenty of time praying, socializing, and otherwise interacting with older and younger people, even if they do occasionally have their own bowling nights and singles mixers. Independent minyanim tend to be much more homogeneous in age and do limit that kind of intergenerational interaction. How much that matters is debatable, but the fact itself shouldn’t be denied.
Along the same lines, B.Z., I think you’re too cynical about the attitude of mainstream synagogues to young people and new ideas. All institutions are inherently conservative to an extent (including independent minyanim), and if you want to have a different style of service it’s probably easier to start your own community than to have to haggle with a synagogue board. But it’s also worth considering how many of the innovations of independent minyanim are so utterly radical that they couldn’t possibly be brought into your standard Conservative synagogue. There are plenty of shuls that would be very happy to have more young people and a more engaging, energized service. There are pros and cons to both mainstream synagogues and independent minyanim, but I think it’s damaging to the Jewish community as a whole if people in the “Hadar demographic” start thinking that nothing good can happen within the four walls of a synagogue so long as it has a paid rabbi and members over 40.
@Annie, Regarding people teaching their own children versus paying Hebrew schools. I will venture to say that you don’t have children because this just isn’t something most people with children would write. As a parent, you need to constantly decide what is worth your time vs your money. Do you want to spend your free hours creating age-appropriate lessons and teaching them or hiring someone with more teaching experience to do that? While one will obviously do some direct teaching, of all the very Judaically knowledgable people I know, I can’t think of anyone who has a day job who doesn’t hire others through day schools, supplementary schools, or tutors.
I don’t think adulthood is measured by the size of checks, but it recognizing the value of people’s time and donating ones own time and/or helping to pay for others time who want to use their knowledge as part of their profession. For example, a formerly rabbi-less synagogue where I was a member has people who could do every job of the rabbi. It was just exhausting to coordinate all the volunteers as the synagogue grew. Using communal money to hire someone to do the fundamentals so that volunteers wouldn’t be too burnt out to do other things, like prepare drashot and lead services.
@ BZ-like in your original article, making points like “I am not a member nor never have been a member of an indie minyan” is a bit silly. You want to use the word attender? Davener? You choose whatever you want, but to make a non-point of a term usage is just silly.
Minyanim that choose not to have membership aren’t just playing word games, but are making a deliberate choice to have a communal structure that is different from most synagogues (and from some other minyanim/havurot). The refusal to acknowledge this represents a failure to engage these communities seriously on their own terms.
As to the numbers, the point is that many of these 20,000 are among the best educated and most active of their genration. Therefore choosing to be removed from the past generation’s institutions has significant consequences for both the institutions and those people who remove themselves, none of which are positive.
At least some of those consequences must be positive, or else people wouldn’t do it.
If we’re talking about keeping the institutions financially viable, then a dollar is a dollar; it doesn’t matter whether the dollars are coming from the “best educated” or from anyone else. And there is no way that the <1% of the population who are involved with independent minyanim have more money (in the aggregate) than the other >99%.
And if we’re talking about non-financial support, then you’re making the common error of assuming that a person’s level of Jewish commitment and activity is an immutable characteristic that stays constant over his/her lifetime and is not dependent on external circumstances. You’re assuming that if people active in independent minyanim didn’t have the minyanim, then their second choice would be to be active in institutional synagogues (rather than sleeping late on Shabbat morning, in the short term, or becoming less Jewishly active all around, in the long term). There are other Jews with similar upbringings, from among the “best and brightest” of the liberal Jewish movements, who took different paths in adulthood and ended up Orthodox, secular, or unengaged with Jewish life. Why are they off the hook for not supporting the Jewish institutions that raised them, while the small number who are actively engaged in building liberal Jewish communities get the blame?
As to how synagogue’s may or may not react to the needs of people who now go to indie minyanim, I can tell you that I have been a part of similar minyanim in three different cities (LA, Chicago and New York). In each case we approached synagogues to say we wanted to support them and meet in their building, but to do our “own thing” keeping in mind the halachic parameters of the synagogue (all were Conservative). Strangely enough, they all said great! That way we met our needs, while at the same time supporting the institutions that enabled us to become who we were.
That’s great! I’m glad to hear that this worked out for these minyanim and these synagogues.
Eve writes:
There are pros and cons to both mainstream synagogues and independent minyanim, but I think it’s damaging to the Jewish community as a whole if people in the “Hadar demographic” start thinking that nothing good can happen within the four walls of a synagogue so long as it has a paid rabbi and members over 40.
Ok, this calumny has to stop. I have written many criticisms of Jewish institutions, sometimes harsh, but even I have not gone so far as to suggest that synagogues with low young adult populations are intentionally trying to exclude that age group. Yet you and Lurie make the reverse baseless accusation about independent minyanim.
Elie Kaunfer writes in Empowered Judaism that when Kehilat Hadar started, they actually did targeted outreach to people over 40. For various reasons (discussed in the book), this didn’t stick, including that the people in question already had other communities that they felt attached to, and that word about the new minyan spread virally by word of mouth and people in their 20s tend to know other people in their 20s. However, some people over 40 did stick around Hadar, and are happy there. And in other communities, the story is different. Segulah, the minyan I am involved in now, has regular participants of all ages from babies to over-70. And of course, the surviving independent minyanim from the earlier generation still have no paid rabbis, and now have the majority of their participants over 40.
Eve writes:
But it’s also worth considering how many of the innovations of independent minyanim are so utterly radical that they couldn’t possibly be brought into your standard Conservative synagogue.
It’s also worth noting that not all independent minyanim are “traditional egalitarian” in style, and therefore some of them would be out of place in a Conservative synagogue in more obvious ways than others.
For shits and giggles, I took a poll on Friday night at our (monthly, neighborhood-based) independent minyan to see how many of us were engaged professionally in Judaism. The number came back at 80% — and we live in a not-traditionally-understood-to-be-Jewish neighborhood.
I don’t know how many, if any, of us were members of synagogues, but the overwhelming majority are contributing the majority of their time to the institutional Jewish community. The remaining 20% could all say they are engaged with at least one other Jewish organization besides our minyan, many of them in an intensive volunteer capacity.
I know, this is just anecdotal evidence, but it’s a piece of the picture that often gets ignored in these discussions.
dlevy, It would be nice to make this less anecdotal to shut up all the people complaining about indy minyan attendees not supporting their communities. How about readers run a tally of various minyanim and get a compiled list here? Here are my questions:
1. Minyan Name
2. Date/event
3. Total # of attendees
4. # of attendees who have worked a job as a professional Jew in the past year (full time, tutor, paid weekend program leader, …)
5. # of attendees who are members of a synagogue
6. # of attendees who donated money to a Jewish institution in the past year.
Any other of the usual complaints about indy minyanim to answer with a short tally? My gut feeling is questions about age ranges, children, where children are getting their Jewish education are interesting, but would be a bit more complex to collected & remember and don’t relate the major critiques of indy minyanim.
For #6, does donating to the minyan itself count? Why or why not?
Dan, I like this proposal very much. But BZ’s question about whether or not the minyan counts as “a Jewish institution” is apropos – the issue we’re dealing with here is a rigid definition of what constitutes Jewish “community.” Indie minyanim are theoretically capable of providing a backbone for a community that has quantifiable differences (most of which have already been brought up in this thread) from one oriented around a synagogue.
No one holds up examples of a problematic or poorly-functioning synagogue as evidence of underlying problems in the structure of Jewish communities set up around membership-based synagogues. Yet when individual minyanim fail to live up to someone else’s standards of what constitutes a functioning Jewish community, this is used to show that the concept of indie minyanim is inherently flawed.
I suspect – and this is just a suspicion — that the majority (if not the totality) of individuals who donate to an independent minyan also donate to at least one other Jewish organization.
Whether donations to indy minyanim count depends on which critique you’re trying to address. If the critique is, “These people are only takers who don’t give money even to support the institutions they use” critique, then donations to indy minyanim count. If the critique is, “These are selfish people who don’t give money to anything in the Jewish community that doesn’t directly benefit them,” then it should be donations to things besides indy minyanim. I’ve probably heard the second critique more often and with more bite so I suspect pushing back on it is more valuable.
I strongly suspect that dlevy is right and few donate money to indy minyanim and nothing else in the Jewish community. Asking the more restrictive question might give more bang for the effort. I suspect the answers would diverge a lot more on the question of whether people donate their time to just indy minyanim and minyanim and other Jewish institutions. There are all interesting questions, but a survey should be kept simple.
@renaissanceboy, I frequently hear examples of a problematic or poorly-functioning synagogue held up as evidence of underlying problems in the structure of Jewish communities. Skim the Shefa yahoo group archives for the Conservative movement as one example. I also frequently hear it from indy minyan proponents including on this blog.
@SHLOMO – Which shuls/minyans did you participate in? I think its helpful at some point to cite specific examples to better understand your personal sample.experience.
@Dan – Why not start a directory or website for indie minyans? Has anyone done this?
@Eve – Generally there’s someone in the room who’s found something appealing about the group and happens to have smicha and doesn’t by virtue of that fact expect to get paid by the minyan. I don’t dispute that some indie minyans with paid staff mayu have more focus or stability than others, but does a paid Rabbi and fixed walls absolutely improve things? If a minyan already has Jewishly knowledgeable participants, many of whom already belong to a shul in addition to the minyan, how does hiring another Rabbi help them address their needs?
adam writes:
Why not start a directory or website for indie minyans? Has anyone done this?
Here’s one, though it only includes links to minyanim/havurot with their own websites (and obviously doesn’t include data like how many of their participants donate to Jewish institutions, etc.).
Wow. What an incredibly dismissive piece of shit that article was. (Lurie’s) Good thing she never looked into our minyan here in SF. She’d find people that go EVERY week, are responsible for its financing, and have actual real jobs that pay their bills! Shocker.
She’s just jealous, you know. She just wants to be one of us.
sigh… http://forward.com/articles/135296/