Politics, Religion

Post-Independence Day

(Crossposted to Mah Rabu.)
On April 28, 2001 (Shabbat Tazria-Metzora), about 60 people crowded into an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to participate in a new egalitarian Shabbat morning minyan. This minyan would be named Kehilat Hadar several months later, and it has grown dramatically in both size and influence, becoming a household name around the world and inspiring many spinoffs and imitations. So today we congratulate Kehilat Hadar on reaching its 10th anniversary. (The community celebrated its anniversary several weeks ago, on Shabbat Tazria.) We wish it many more years of success if it continues to meet a need, or a graceful end if it ever outlives its mission.
But today marks an even more important milestone. As of today, according to some (including Hadar founder Rabbi Elie Kaunfer), Kehilat Hadar is no longer an independent minyan.
How is this possible? Let’s look at the evidence.
The 2007 Spiritual Communities Study, sponsored by the S3K Synagogue Studies Institute and Mechon Hadar, restricted its sample of communities based on certain criteria. The report says “For the purposes of this report, we define a qualifying community as one with the following features:”, and among these features is “It was founded in 1996 or later.” (Other features of independent minyanim include “It exists independently of the denominational movements” and “It meets minimally once a month for worship”.) At first it seems like the 1996 cutoff (10 years before the study began) is just about defining the scope of the study and nothing more. But later parts of the report attribute more real-world significance to this categorization, such as the infamous bar graph which illustrates that “these communities … have grown in number more than five-fold”. (Of course you’re going to see huge growth after 1996 if you only include communities founded after 1996! If “synagogues” were defined as “synagogues founded after 1996”, then a graph of the “number of synagogues” in each year would also necessarily show some year x such that the “number of synagogues” increased fivefold between x and the present.) Agree with it or not, the idea here is that the period after 1996 is different in some way from the period before 1996. And because 1996 is in the past, you might think that whatever happened in or around 1996 already happened, and this historical cutoff isn’t going to change.
But you’d be wrong.
In Rabbi Elie Kaunfer’s book Empowered Judaism (published in 2010), he writes “What is an independent minyan? They are defined by the following characteristics:”, followed by a familiar list that includes “No denomination/movement affiliation” and “Meet at least once a month”. But there is one crucial difference between this list and the list in the 2007 report: instead of “founded in 1996 or later”, Kaunfer defines independent minyanim as “founded in the past ten years”. (At the time of publication, that meant founded in 2000 or later.) Since he has essentially adopted the definition from the S3K/Mechon Hadar study, he seems to understand the significance of 1996 not as a specific moment in time, but as 10 years before the study’s data collection. (For the Excel users out there, it’s the difference between E2 and $E$2.) On the next page is another version of the same bar graph, but this time it begins in 2000, and doesn’t claim to be linked to a particular sample, but is instead labeled “Total Number of Minyanim”. (This graph also features the humorous caption “Growth of independent minyanim in the United States, 2000-2009. Includes six minyanim in Israel.”)
So if we extend this dynamic definition of independent minyanim into the present time, then as of today, a community is only an “independent minyan” if it was founded after April 28, 2001. So Kehilat Hadar doesn’t make the cut.
If Kehilat Hadar, once viewed by many as the flagship independent minyan, is no longer an independent minyan, then what is it? Is it a synagogue? Is it a havurah? (Kaunfer writes that the purpose of the 10-year cutoff for independent minyanim is “distinguishing them from the havurah movement”.) Is it something else?
As Kehilat Hadar enters its second decade, it will have to figure out what it is. Either that or it can remain an independent minyan (after all, that’s what it’s good at), and we can stop pigeonholing communities based on an arbitrary chronological cutoff. We can acknowledge that independent minyanim (any way you define that) existed before 2001 (and even before 1996), and at the same time see that this takes nothing away from the significance of the work that a new generation of minyanim has been doing for the last 10.01 years. We can explore the substantive similarities and differences among independent Jewish communities, whether they were founded around the same time or decades apart.
Happy birthday, Hadar!

13 thoughts on “Post-Independence Day

  1. Ben has rightly pointed out the problems with the 10-yr timeline. But I still submit that there is a major cultural and praxis difference between the minyanim of the 2000s (and beyond) and the minyanim of the 60s, 70s and 80s (perhaps the minyanim of the 90s, although fewer in number than the 2000s, but including important ones like KOE, serve as a transition period?). I am open for when the cutoff would be, or if it is some other stylistic difference that happens to overlap dramatically with founding decade, but the differences are important to notice, and go beyond the features of denominational independence and no paid rabbi.

    1. I agree that population differences exist between the set of all minyanim founded in the 20th century and the set of all minyanim founded in the 21st century, but that doesn’t mean that it’s valid to apply these overall differences to draw conclusions about any individual minyan based on its year of founding. There are minyanim founded in the 20th century that use full traditional liturgy and arrange the chairs in straight rows, there are minyanim founded in the 21st century that sit in circles or have formal membership or don’t care about “quality control”, and we coach Little League in the blue states.

  2. If there is a major cultural difference between earlier minyanim and later ones, it would seem more rigorous and more interesting to arrive at it scientifically rather than assuming it as a given.
    To take a perhaps shallow example: One might say that independent communities founded before the 90s tend to be havurot and ones founded after the 90s tend to be minyanim, and that havurot tend to sit in circles and minyanim tend to sit in rows. Rather than just assuming that, why not survey all independent communities that exist (or even better, if possible, also include ones that used to exist but disbanded) to see if they sit in rows or circles?
    If you have data that say that X% of communities founded before the 90s sit in circles but only Y% founded after the 90s, and you can do this along a bunch of different axes besides seating arrangements, and they all seem to correlate, then we’ve learned something really interesting about how communities have changed in the past generation or two! And then we can also stop drawing lines based more strongly on community age than other factors, and we can actually have a conversation about the “exceptions” and how to best categorize them (or not categorize them). About how many communities are like Newton Centre Minyan and look like many newer minyanim (and in what ways they look like those newer minyanim) but are 40 years old, and about how many communities are like Tikkun Leil Shabbat are look like many older havurot (and in what ways they look like those older havurot) but are less than 10 years old.
    And, of course, this would also teach us about similarities. About things that really haven’t changed in independent communities in the past 40 years, and about things that have been “disagreements”, that have been features of many communities but not of many others, for all of the past 40 years.

  3. @BZ, how long did you have this post in the hopper?
    @Desh, exactly right on the general point. Though, to the example, TLS is more of a tweener since it rarely ever (never) meets for things besides davening making it a minyan rather than a havurah.
    @Elie, to be blunt it seems that y’all just decided that “independent minyanim” were a new phenomenon. I suspect a rigorous analysis would suggest that they had heavy roots in models that are much older, in some cases pre-dating the havurah movement. Given how much of the model of moving beyond a rabbi-dominated liberal Judaism was clearly already developed, not acknowledging the ways in which you(we!) are building on a legacy is not only poor form, but just isn’t very Jewish (b’shem omro, etc).

  4. TLS is more of a tweener since it rarely ever (never) meets for things besides davening making it a minyan rather than a havurah.
    Well, if that’s how you define the difference between a minyan and a havurah. My point is that there are lots of ways that these communities differ from each other, regardless of what one calls them or when they were founded, and no one has done the research to help us figure out where to draw lines. Maybe just as many 1970s “havurot” meet/met for non-davening things as 2000s “minyanim” do/did. We just don’t know. I think we all agree that there are some general trends that have changed in 40 years, but there’s no rigorous data to separate out the real ones from the anecdotal ones or to talk about how universal the generalities are.

  5. zt writes:
    @BZ, how long did you have this post in the hopper?
    I wrote it this week, but yes, I’ve had the date marked on my calendar for months. 🙂
    @Desh, exactly right on the general point. Though, to the example, TLS is more of a tweener since it rarely ever (never) meets for things besides davening making it a minyan rather than a havurah.
    That’s not true – TLS meets for Shabbat dinner every time it meets (unlike many other Friday night minyanim). But you’re right, TLS meets for standalone non-davening events much less frequently than, say, Kehilat Hadar.
    Taking a step back, I think trying to classifying a community as either a minyan or a havurah is unproductive. Yes, there are havurot that are definitely not minyanim (e.g. groups that meet only for non-davening activities) and there are minyanim that are definitely not havurot (e.g. the sanctuary minyan at your local synagogue), but there are many communities that can be reasonably categorized as both minyanim and havurot (including, perhaps, most “independent minyanim”).
    Are dolphins mammals, or are they aquatic?
    @Elie, to be blunt it seems that y’all just decided that “independent minyanim” were a new phenomenon. I suspect a rigorous analysis would suggest that they had heavy roots in models that are much older, in some cases pre-dating the havurah movement. Given how much of the model of moving beyond a rabbi-dominated liberal Judaism was clearly already developed, not acknowledging the ways in which you(we!) are building on a legacy is not only poor form, but just isn’t very Jewish (b’shem omro, etc).
    I don’t think that’s entirely fair. Empowered Judaism repeatedly places 21st-century independent minyanim into a history of DIY Jewish communities. The foreword by Jonathan Sarna discusses precedents going back to the 19th century. Kaunfer writes: “The real surprise is not that havurot and minyanim share similarities, but that modern synagogues and other institutions of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Jewish life persist. Judaism has always been a religion of grassroots community organizing, and the rabbinic model of the twentieth-century synagogue is perhaps the most foreign to the traditional Jewish heritage. … The real question is not how are independent minyanim new, but how are suburban synagogues — a product of the early to mid-twentieth-century — a depature from a Jewish organizing heritage shared by minyanim, havurot, and dozens of Jewish communal structures of years past?”
    The problem isn’t failing to acknowledge predecessors, but treating “independent minyanim” and “the havurah movement” as completely disjoint entities (albeit entities with some similarities), and placing the border between them at a single moment in time.

  6. @Desh There isn’t much clarity and precision in the use of “havurah” or “minyan”. I tend towards this approach: (http://divinityisinthedetails.blogspot.com/2006/09/is-it-havurah-or-minyan.html). BZ and I have a long-standing (if highly collegial!) disagreement.
    I absolutely agree with your main premise that there is an imperfect correlation between the old and new groups of organizations. There has been a change over time towards greater prayer focus and less interest in the intimate community or heavily personal models that used to be more common. Obviously there are many clear exceptions as have been noted by y’all above.

  7. I come to this discussion with three strikes against me — I am a synagogue Jew, a movement stalwart, and of a decidedly different age demographic than I assume for the other participants in this discussion. But I am concerned about the direction of Jewish life, just in case I live “biz ahundert n’tzvantzig.”
    First, let me say I find the efforts to define or limit terminology as to what is a minyan, what a chavurah, according to timelines, seating arrangements, or whatever, somewhat akin to the voices that insist that a temple is by definition Reform and a synagogue by definition Conservative. Any group can call itself whatever it wants. But an Orthodox congregation that calls itself Temple Whatever has more explaining to do with potential than if it calls itself Beis Knesses Vodever. And that’s its problem, not that of any outsider.
    Second, this discussion seems to ignore that the institutional synagogue may or not be affiliated with a movement or identified with one of the mainstream ideologies. Nonetheless, independent is as good a word as I can think of to differentiate the communities discussed here from institutional communities (i.e., those with real estate, paid staff, formal membership).
    In my mind, a minyan davens, whatever else they do; a chavurah is friendly, whatever else it is; but neither is independent if it is tied to an institutional parent; and either in effect becomes a synagogue when it relies on paid staff, especially clergy.
    I like the distinction between an intimate community and one where you don’t necessarily know everyone who shows up to daven. In my institutional synagogue, I DO know almost everyone who comes to daven on Saturday morning, but not everyone who comes to daven on Friday night. (Minimal overlap, by the way.)
    I believe that the institutional synagogue will continue to exist, and will learn from the experience of the independent groups. (The mall has both department stores and specialty shops.) In order to obsolete the institutional synagogue, the specialty prayer and/or social groups, minyanim or non-davening chavurot, will have to find other solutions for the synagogue functions that are either not being addressed or not being discussed in the independent communities — life cycle observances, education of children, social action, and maybe sustainable financial/business models.

  8. BZ, as usual, you have started an interesting discussion. I want to throw a couple of more wrenches into the works, or as they say in the po-mo biz, destabilize some more categories. Shtibl is 11 years old so we don’t fit the decade paradigm either. On the one hand we sit in rows, on the other hand we are a consensus based community–all decisions even halakhic ones are dependent on consensus. This model is explicitly based on the havurah model (specifically Havurat Shalom which, I think, is the only legacy havurah which is still consensus based). I would suggest that one aspect of defining a minyan as a havurah is that it is a community which is also interested in alternative models of belonging and leading.
    Shtibl is mainly a davening community if defined by the percentage of what we do together as a community. However, we are the primary community of affiliation for our members in times of joy and of sorrow. Most of our members do their weddings (or at least their aufrufs) within, if not at, Shtibl. we make shiva minyans; we celebrate bnei mitzvah; we organize and cook meals for each other after births and deaths and illnesses. We eat at each others’ houses regularly–both at organized pot-lucks but also, and more often, because we invite each other over.

  9. we sit in rows
    let’s be fair… bendy semi-circular rows and a horse-shoe…
    one aspect of defining a minyan as a havurah is that it is a community which is also interested in alternative models of belonging and leading
    amen.

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