I recently heard a favorite rabbi of mine say that the American Jewish community may have made a mistake early on by placing all of its communal institution eggs in the beit kneset, or synagogue, basket. He suggested that the beit midrash, or house of study might have been a better choice.
What the beit midrash has going for it is the potential to do highly diverse learning that will attract Jews from many background to sit together and learn. What it doesn’t have going for it is its format. It’s formal and it brings to mind all kinds of imagery and connotations that will turn off many contemporary Jews.
But what about a third kind of beit? What about the modern institution known as the Beit Cafe, perhaps better known in America as the Coffee House? It’s place where discussions happen, planned or spontaneous, as well as cultural events like readings and musical performances. In the contemporary American mind, exciting intellectual and cultural movements are associated with coffee shops, a definite plus for this model.
I’ll start by describing the place I’m imagining and then I’ll talk about why it makes sense for the American Jewish community today.
I’m imagining a coffee house on the Upper West Side of New York City, but it could be in any part of any city with a lot of Jews. It’s not big, but it’s big enough that you could hold a lecture inside for 100 or 150 people. By day, it’s just a coffee house. It’s kosher, of course, and it may have Jewish-themed artwork inside, but other than that it would appear for most of the day as a regular neighborhood coffee house.
By night, however, it would be a center of Jewish culture and learning. I imagine a different speaker, panel, discussion, musical performance, reading or movie screening every night. If you want, the folks at the Beit Cafe can help you find a group to study with on your own too. On Friday afternoons or maybe Sunday mornings, there’s probably a weekly study group that meets to talk about the week’s Torah portion.
For the Jews who live in the neighborhood, it would become a gathering place. Though all are welcome, you would know that if you’re looking for some Jewish company, some Jewish discussion, you can always head down to the Beit Cafe and strike up a conversation.
You get the idea.
Here’s why this model of an institution makes sense. First, and most importantly, there is no barrier to entry, real or perceived. On one level it’s just a coffee house, which means a Jew who would never set foot in a Hillel or JCC or synagogue will feel free to come in and enjoy. I mention Hillels and JCCs because I know that many now have coffee shops inside, but they generally don’t feel like real coffee shops and, because they happen to be inside a larger institution, they have immediate barriers to entry. We should face facts: no matter how many programs synagogues create targeted at different demographics, there will always be some Jews who will never step foot in a synagogue, JCC or Hillel. The Beit Cafe I am imagining has no such barriers because it stands alone institutionally.
It is also a highly specific institution. It will do a few things and it will do them well. My grandparents’ model of Jewish community, giant synagogues and giant federations that are all things to all people at all times made sense when they began, but they don’t make sense now. What we are seeing pop up in America’s Jewish population centers are smaller, streamlined organizations that specialize in one thing. (My former employer Limmud NY and the entire Limmud phenomenon across the world is a perfect example.) The Beit Cafe will be one of these institutions.
It is also portable. When Jewish populations in different parts of different cities ebb and flow, it is hard for something as large as a synagogue or a JCC to pick up and move. But for something as small and organizationally lightweight as a coffee house, that kind of move would be easy. Not only is it portable, but, again like Limmud, it is easily reproduced in a new city or neighborhood with a different flavor and different programming to suit that community.
Because the Beit Cafe serves no ritual purpose, it is able to cut across denominational lines in much the way that the world’s many Limmud organizations do. (Thought I won’t preclude the idea that a specific chavurah or minyan [all of the sudden, I find myself desperately wanted something called The Coffee Shop Minyan to exist] might rent the Beit Cafe on Saturday mornings or Friday evenings, but they would not be a program of the Beit Café.) But Limmud is a major undertaking, involving hundreds of small events that come together to build a weekend of non-stop programming. The Beit Cafe can exists year round, but maintains the kind of diversity of programming and constituency that Limmud does by having only three to five programs on all kind of topics and of all kinds of structures and types every week. But when there’s no programming going on, the Beit Cafe is still there serving its informal purpose of providing an accessible (physically and conceptually) place for Jews to gather.
Synagogues don’t do it for a lot of people and I’m one of them. This is not to say that I never go to them, but I do mean that there is no one synagogue I know of—and I make a point of visiting new ones whenever I can—that is sufficient. Synagogues are a part of my Jewish life, but they are not the be all and end all of my Jewish life, which is truer and truer for more and more Jews today. I don’t propose that the Beit Cafe would ever replace or encroach upon synagogues. Rather, it would be a place in the Jewish community that provides one more point of contact for Jews looking for new ways and places to access their tradition and their community.
Sound good?