Sunday, March 21, 2010

More on "minyanim" vs. "havurot"

I recently visited a partnership minyan that was founded in 2003 (and has full liturgy, straight rows, etc.). The person giving the d'var torah was comparing the structure of this community with the typical American synagogue, and said "From the perspective of the havurah movement in general and [name of this minyan] in particular..."

7 comments:

  1. So are you saying that the havurah movement defines itself as not having full liturgy, not using straight rows, etc.?

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  2. No, I'm saying that Elie Kaunfer defines the havurah movement that way.

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  3. Might want to check this article from 1997 if you can find access (I couldn't...):

    http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22independent+minyanim%22&scoring=a&hl=en&ned=us&um=1&sa=N&sugg=d&as_ldate=1996&as_hdate=1997&lnav=hist3

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  4. Thanks, Anonymous! I signed up for the free trial, and these articles turn out to be a dead end: Both of these 1997 articles are covering the International Conference on Feminism and Orthodoxy, and one of them mentions "independent prayer groups" (referring to women's tefillah groups), but neither mentions "independent minyanim". They came up on the Google News search because "Independent minyanim filling niche in the Jewish community" (a Jewish Advocate article from 2008) appears at the bottom of each article, under "More articles like this".

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  5. While I have the free trial subscription to HighBeam, I searched for "independent minyan" (and minyans and minyanim), and the only result in 2003 or earlier is the aforementioned Jay Michaelson article.

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  6. but i thought there were no new havuros after 2000?

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  7. one of them mentions "independent prayer groups" (referring to women's tefillah groups)

    ...which, of course, don't consider themselves to be minyanim.

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