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: 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.