By: Benjamin Maron

When starting a new havurah or minyan, or getting involved in Havurah Judaism for the first time, many of us are asked by our peers – both synagogue members and unaffiliated Jews alike – how these communities can function without a professional leader, usually a rabbi, in charge.

There are several ways to explain this model, the most common being that with enough knowledge, resources, and support, any of us can lead a community in prayer, any of us can offer a thought-provoking d’var Torah (word of Torah) or text study, any of us can contribute to life-cycle events. In a paper [PDF] presented to a conference of rabbis, Mitch Chefitz framed the history of rabbis’ roles in Jewish communities as learners and teachers of the tradition through study of Talmud and later the Shulchan Aruch, the rise of mysticism, the broadening of religious authority, and the transition of communities led largely by rabbis to other forms of leadership. The paper also addresses the significant changes in religious and spiritual authority from changes such as the proliferation of siddurim (prayer books), the formations of “communities that are sustained by niggunim [songs without words],” JDate, and “Jewish leaders … being tacitly ordained from below rather than from above.” How does this apply to us in the Havurah world? What can we learn about how our members are resources for community leadership? What is, and what should be, our model of religious and spiritual authority? Where might we need leadership, knowledge, or resources not available within our communities, and where might we find people or information to guide us?

Read the paper “Religious and Spiritual Authority in the New Jewish Paradigm” [PDF] in full… and feel free to share thoughts, and any answers to the concluding questions, in the comments.

Benjamin Maron attended his first NHC Summer Institute as an Everett Fellow in 2006. He is on the NHC Board of Directors. He is chairing the 2010 Chesapeake Retreat.

By: Benjamin Maron

Using the Havurah of South Florida as a model, Mitch Chefitz published the Havurah Guide [PDF] in 1990. Twenty years later, the contents are still useful for those looking to start a havurah or minyan or wanting to find suggestions for improving an existing minyan or havurah.

The Havurah Guide provides a comprehensive introduction. Many topics are covered, from how a havurah or miyan could be run to guidelines for fostering a Jewish fellowship; from the role of text study and how to nurture learning to which holidays and life-cycle events can be observed; from how to incorporate social action to other resources for further programming.

While this is a case study of a specific havurah, we can all learn from each other’s communities across the country (and around the world). If you use part of this Havurah Guide, please let us know in the comments. If your havurah or minyan has practices that would complement this resource, please share them!

Benjamin Maron attended his first NHC Summer Institute as an Everett Fellow in 2006. He is on the NHC Board of Directors. He is chairing the 2010 Chesapeake Retreat.

By: Benjamin Maron

The following is an incomplete, and ever-growing, collection of articles about independent Jewish communities, havurot, and minyanim.

• At a recent conference, there was a panel discussion on what role (if any) rabbis should have in an independent minyan or havurah, and a look at their impact.
• JTA gives a general overview of independent minyanim.
• Independent minyanim have become “the new darlings of the Jewish philanthropic establishment,” but the flow of money carries its own risks.
• Joshua Avedon, looking at the new minyanim with regard to the non-Orthodox synagogues, warns: “If the mainstream Jewish community doesn’t get hip to what is driving the new start-ups soon, a whole parallel universe of Jewish communal life might just rise up and make the old structures irrelevant.”
• Will the traditional, egalitarian, lay-led minyan become the wave of the future? Or will “those who create these community minyanim become a self-selected elite?”
• A look at the “partnership minyan,” and some follow-up discussion: 1 [PDF], 2 [PDF], 3 [PDF], 4 [PDF], and 5.
• A look at some havurot which have lasted for more than 20 years.
• A specially commissioned Torah scroll is used by the Mesilat Yesharim Minyan which meets daily aboard a commuter train on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv line.
• As her minyan struggles with what the Prayer for the State of Israel should consist of, Sarah Margles observes, “the question became – How do we pray together even if we don’t pray the same?”
• In a roundtable discussion, Elie Kaunfer (Kehilat Hadar), Rachel Milner-Gillers (Minyan Tehillah), Beth Tritter (DC Minyan), Sarah Lefton (Mission Minyan), Yehuda Kurtzer (Washington Square Minyan), and Ben Dreyfus (Kol Zimrah), discuss why their minyanim were started, how they do or do not characterize their minyanim and their religious services, setting forth policies (or not) on membership and leadership, and more.
• Ilana Kurshan, a long-time organizer of an independent minyan, talks of taking up the task  again in Jerusalem: “my whole life becomes oriented towards Shabbat – which is indeed just what the rabbis mandate.”
• Riv-Ellen Prell’s “Independent Minyanim and Prayer Groups of the 1970s: Historical and Sociological Perspectives” looks at the challenges these posed to the denominations structure of mainstream Judaism, and the dual focus on both prayer and the creation of alternative organizations within American Jewish life.
• In “What Independent Minyanim Teach Us About the Next Generation of Jewish Communities,” Ethan Tucker looks at how such communities can accomplish critical goals: providing “a Jewish life of compelling and of excellent quality,” with a discourse “serious, honest, adaptable, deep and transparent” and the ability to empower, both at the individual and communal levels.
• A self-described Jew, “who lived fully in the 1960s and have been searching for that lost Garden ever since,” finds himself, at age 67, making the “rounds of alternative synagogues, minyanim and havurot in Los Angeles, to see whether any spoke to me.” He finds a remarkably diverse group.
• David Suissa describes the very unconventional “The Happy Minyan,” which has now found a home of its own in a neighborhood with several other Orthodox shuls.
• The New York Times looks at non-synagogue based minyanim and havurot, including DC Minyan and Tikkun Leil Shabbat.
• Another look at lay-led independent communities.
• A synagogue agreed to create what becomes known as “The Library Minyan,” which eventually eclipsed the main sanctuary in attendance, drawing in some very well known Conservative Jews. But as it “gained a reputation as an intellectual sanctuary … some shul-shoppers have expressed concerns about the ‘cliquish’ feeling of the minyan. … For some, what once was spiritual innovation has now become rote.”
• A havurah “community of learning, spirituality, experimentation, and political progressivism” reaches its 36th year, and is still going strong.
• Shawn Landres analyzes the challenge to traditional shuls from “rabbi-led emergent communities and independent minyanimin” by borrowing language from different computer operating systems.
• The Aquarian Minyan, the oldest Renewal congregation in the Bay Area, is not a rabbi-centered community, but now has a new “rabbi-chaver,” or “teacher among peers.”
• The Berman Jewish Policy Archive at NYU has a large collection of articles on the subject of havurot.
• This article, which appeared in CAJE Jewish Education News, discusses the NHC and the founding of Kol Zimrah.
• DC-area minyanim in the Washington Post.
• Hadassah Magazine on independent Jewish communities.
• Independany minyanim in the Forward.
• JTA on the use of the Internet by minyanim/havurot.
• JTA article from 2006 about independent Jewish communities (the 1999 date at the top is an error).
• Another JTA article from 2006 (not 1999), covering the NHC Summer Institute and the Havurah Movement.
• For the 20th anniversary of their minyan, Dorshei Derekh of Germantown Jewish Centre in Philadelphia researched and created a Wikipedia entry.

For extra reading, you might also want to check out the following works in print (try your local library or bookstore):

• Weissler, Chava. “Making Davening Meaningful: Worship in the Havurah Movement.” YIVO Annual, vol. 19 (1990): 255-282.
• Prell, Riv-Ellen. Prayer and Community: the Havurah in American Judaism. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989.

Benjamin Maron attended his first NHC Summer Institute as an Everett Fellow in 2006. He is on the NHC Board of Directors. He is chairing the 2010 Chesapeake Retreat.

By: Harold M. Schulweis [republished, unedited, with permission]

It is now some 20 years since our teacher, Abraham Joshua Heschel, alav ha-shalom, addressed this assembly and spoke these strong words: “The modern temple suffers from a severe cold…the services are prim, the voice is dry, the temple is clean and tidy…no one will cry, the words are still born.” The criticism was directed against the metallic services, against the lugubrious tones of the ritual master of ceremonies intoning the Siddur pagination.

For us, it was neither a novel nor a pleasant criticism. The complaint has long entered the acerbity of folk humor. A penetrating Jewish anecdote tells of a nouveau riche young man who invited his European traditionalist father to his modern temple. The son was proud of the decorum and, indeed, when the rabbi informed the congregation that they were to rise for the silent meditative prayer, there was a silence. With pride the son whispered to his father, “What do you think about that?” Papa responded in Yiddish, “A mechayeh! Der rav steht un zogt gornisht un alle heren zich zu.”

What do they want of us rabbis? Are we not warm enough? The services are cold. Shall we raise the thermostat? The prayers lack relevance. Shall we experiment more? Should we add guitar or flute or harp to the organ? Should we gather new prayers from the liturgy of our Jewish theological trinity — Joan Baez, Rod McKuen and Kahlil Gibran?

Somehow the criticism and the apologia seem misdirected. The remedies fail. All the best intentioned creative efforts, liturgical innovations, and theological reconstruction fail to warm up the frozen pew.

Our creativity and experimentation, I shall argue, are premature. Criticism of the services deals only with symptoms, and symptomology is not etiology. The complaint about the “coldness” of the synagogue points only to the tip of the iceberg. No amount of pulpit charisma will thaw out the frigidity below. Heat rises from below.

I propose that we turn from symptom analysis to character analysis. Whom are we addressing? What nexus is there between them and us? What fidelities to Jewish life and Jewish values have we as leaders the right to assume? [Read more →]

By: Joseph G. Rosenstein [republished from November 9, 2005 article for Encyclopedia Judaica, with minor edits/updates]

The National Havurah Committee (NHC) was founded in 1980 to facilitate the activities of fellowships known as havurot and to spread havurah values and enthusiasm to the larger Jewish community, thereby serving as a model for revitalizing Jewish living and learning in North America.  The NHC was organized following a successful conference at Rutgers University in July 1979 that brought together different groups that shared the name “havurah.”  These included independent havurot that were formed as part of the counterculture of the 1960’s, synagogue havurot that were created within Reform and Conservative synagogues, and Reconstructionist congregations that considered themselves havurot.  Though differently organized, havurot, now as then, share the mission of creating small communities in which all members participate in creating authentic and meaningful Jewish experiences.  Independent havurot also tend to be non-denominational, egalitarian, and inclusive.  Havurah leadership is generally shared by the members; havurot typically do not have professional rabbinic or spiritual leaders.

The first NHC Summer Institute (at the University of Hartford in July 1980) was organized in order to help provide and empower havurah members with the knowledge to grow Jewishly and the skills to enable them to create and sustain such communities.  (The first institute was organized and co-chaired by Joseph G. Rosenstein and Michael Strassfeld who, with Elaine S. Cohen, coordinated the 1979 conference, were the first three chairs of the NHC.)  Annual week-long Summer Institutes have been conducted by the NHC each year since 1980 and have attracted an average of 300 adults (plus many children) of varying Jewish backgrounds and observance.  In 1984 a second Institute was held in Chicago, and the following summer (1985) three institutes were held, in the Northeast, in Chicago, and in Los Angeles.  Courses at the Summer Institute address the variety of Jewish texts, arts, culture, spirituality, issues, and practice from many different perspectives.  Institute teachers are expected to attend as well as to offer courses.  The NHC has inclusively recruited teachers from many backgrounds, and women instructors when that was considered radical, and served as a prominent forum for discussing feminist perspectives of Judaism in the 1980s.  The NHC model of summer programs for lay adults has been adapted by other organizations.  Both the longevity of the Institute and the replication of the model attest to its success.

Since 1993, an important feature of the Summer Institute is the participation of the Everett Fellows, a cohort of future leaders of the Jewish community who participate, often for the first time, in a heterogeneous community that manifests both excitement and commitment about Judaism and that embraces diverse ways of living Jewishly.  (This program is funded by the Everett Foundation, established by Edith and the late Henry Everett.)  Another unique annual feature (since 1995) is the celebratory completion (or siyyum) of a volume of EJ by study groups who have read a page a day (daf yomi) since the last Institute.

The NHC also sponsors regional weekend retreats, including an annual New England retreat (since 1986), an annual Canadian-American retreat (since 1993), and an annual Chesapeake Region retreat (since 2006); publishes newsletters, and maintains on its website a list of havurot.  In the 1990s it published in a number of newspapers a weekly D’var Torah (word of Torah) column that was written by a diverse group of writers representing all branches of Judaism, and that served as a prototype for subsequent d’var torah columns; it also published three issues of a journal with the appropriately oxymoronic title of “New Traditions.”

Although havurot and individuals participate in the NHC, it has not functioned as a membership organization; its programs have been organized by a volunteer board with modest staff assistance.  The NHC has created and sustained programs and promoted values – such as inclusiveness, lay leadership and teaching, involvement, egalitarianism, fellowship – that have had an impact on the wider Jewish community.

Joseph Rosenstein has attended numerous NHC Summer Institutes.