Hasty generalization

(Crossposted to Jewschool.)

A wise person I know says “Whenever I read articles where I know something about the content, I always find mistakes or misunderstandings, which makes me wonder how many mistakes there are in articles where I’m not familiar with the topic.” We get to see this principle in action as the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz tackles American independent minyanim.

Over the last 10 years, the massive surge in independent minyanim has attracted media attention from both the American Jewish press and the American secular press. (After a while, this has converged so that they seem to write the same article over and over.) But this Ha’aretz piece might be the first time this phenomenon has reached the Israeli media.

The author of the piece, a self-identified secular Israeli, visited DC Minyan, and apparently did little or no research or fact-checking beyond what she saw and heard there. Thus she arrived at the unsupported conclusion that all or most independent minyanim (which in reality display a great deal of diversity) are similar to DC Minyan.

(However, on the plus side, this may be the first news article on 21st-century independent minyanim that doesn’t include a quote from Jonathan Sarna!)

To set the record straight, I’ll give the article a mild fisking:

At present, some 20,000 people are paying members of independent minyanim

The actual number is probably far less than this (especially since the article seems to adopt the “founded in the last 10 years” definition of “independent minyanim”, which is problematic in itself, of course). The vast majority of this wave of independent minyanim have NO members at all, let alone paying members. DC Minyan (profiled in the article) is on the extreme fringe of post-2000 independent minyanim in this regard, in that they have wholeheartedly embraced a synagogue-style membership structure, with membership dues, activities that are restricted to members or have different prices for members and non-members, etc.

(The havurot of the late 1960s and the ’70s may have been an early precursor of the independent minyanim, but they tended to be more counter-culture in style, and their latter-day heirs are more likely to be found in the Renewal movement.)

In reality, many havurot of the late ’60s and ’70s still exist, and many of their participants are still found in those havurot. “Latter-day heirs” may not be well-defined (and therefore not falsifiable), but the havurot of the ’60s and ’70s rejected rabbinic authority, as do many of the newer independent havurot/minyanim, while the Renewal movement embraces it.

Like many of the independent minyanim, DC Minyan defines itself as a “traditional egalitarian” community; the men and women sit opposite each other, without a partition - but still separately.

Both statements here are true, but the semicolon (suggesting that this is the usual definition of “traditional egalitarian”, and that this practice is “like many of the independent minyanim”) is highly misleading. DC Minyan is one of only two minyanim I know of with this precise set of practices (equal ritual participation by men and women, separate seating); most communities that define themselves as “traditional egalitarian” have mixed seating.

This makes it possible - unlike at typical Conservative and Reform congregations - for Jews of all denominations to take part.

Yeah, try again. The number of self-identified Orthodox Jews who would attend a service led by men and women that has separate seating but no mechitza (but wouldn’t attend such a service with mixed seating) is tiny, and probably much smaller than the number of non-Orthodox Jews who would be put off by the separate seating.

However, DC Minyan’s website does stipulate that people who identify with a different sex from that written on their birth certificates are invited to sit in the section designated for it. “No one will ask what gender you are,” Zuckerman adds.

They’re mixing up sex and gender here, though I wonder if this article was first written in Hebrew and then translated.

UPDATE: The Hebrew version has a number of differences from the English, which seems not to be a direct translation. Did the same writer submit articles in both Hebrew and English, or did a translator exhibit significant editorial license? “Paying members” and the disclaimer about early havurot appear only in the English. The line quoted above about “traditional egalitarian” is even worse in the Hebrew: “DC Minyan defines itself as an egalitarian community, and therefore the men and the women sit side-by-side and without a mechitzah, but separately.”

Linguistic excursus on the name "independent minyan"

My last post, a review of Empowered Judaism, included some discussion of the meaning of the term "independent minyan", so this follow-up post is about the history of the term itself. (To be clear, we're only talking about the collocation "independent minyan" or its plurals "independent minyanim" and "independent minyans". Describing a community just as "independent" or just as a "minyan" doesn't count for the purposes of this post, nor does "This minyan is independent"; just the exact phrase "independent minyan".)

Last year, while working on Empowered Judaism, Elie Kaunfer emailed me and asked if I knew the origin of the term "independent minyan", and said that he had it in his head that I had coined it. My first reaction was complete disbelief - of course I didn't coin "independent minyan"! Whenever I started using the term, I was just using a term that was already out there. My second reaction was that I was unable to find evidence to disprove the claim that I coined it! (Isaac Asimov coined the word "robotics" based on the existing word "robot", but not on purpose -- he thought it was already a word.) I searched through my old email, and the earliest instance I could find was an email I sent on December 30, 2002 to MAIL-HAVURAH (the predecessor to the current NHC email lists), which began "I have been involved in the creation of Kol Zimrah, a new independent minyan in New York City (on the Upper West Side, so far)." (The rest of the email went on to describe and promote Kol Zimrah, and ask questions about how to find davening spaces in New York and how to get people involved in the community.) In Kol Zimrah's next announcement to its email list (sent on January 15, 2003, announcing its January 24 service), it described itself as "NYC's newest independent minyan".

In late January 2003, when Kol Zimrah set up its first website, it included a "Directory of Independent Minyanim in NYC", to keep track of all these minyanim that were sprouting up like weeds. It was an exciting time: at least 8 independent minyanim had started in NYC in 2001 and 2002 alone (4 of which still exist today). And I'll clarify here, since (whether or not I coined the term) it was my idea to start this directory (according to an email to the other KZ organizers dated January 30, 2003), so I have some idea of the original intent. "Independent minyanim", in regard to this directory, was understood in contradistinction to synagogues, or to non-independent (e.g., synagogue-affiliated) minyanim, not in contradistinction to "havurot". The directory didn't include any first-wave havurot, not because we didn't consider them to be "minyanim", but because, as far as I know, none (that qualified as "independent") existed in NYC at that time: the New York Havurah had long since gone the way of Radcliffe College (that is, I hear they still have reunions, but otherwise no longer function actively), and the West Side Minyan and its spinoff Minyan M'at had become part of Congregation Ansche Chesed (and were thus not "independent"). Likewise, the directory was not restricted to minyanim founded after a particular date, though most of the independent minyanim that existed in NYC at that time had in fact been founded after 2000 (the only exception, I believe, was KOE, which was not part of the new tidal wave of minyanim, but not generally considered part of the "havurah movement" either).

Kehilat Hadar's mission statement on its website describes itself as "an independent, egalitarian community committed to spirited traditional prayer, study and social action", so this may have gotten "independent" out there in regard to these communities, though not the exact phrase "independent minyan", since Hadar doesn't officially describe itself as a "minyan" (though its email address was egalminyan at hotmail dot com from before it was called Hadar until not so long ago, making them the last people in the world still using Hotmail). This is explained in Empowered Judaism: "We intentionally did not name the community Minyan Hadar, because we aspired to be something more than just a minyan."

Certain that I couldn't possibly have coined "independent minyan", I asked Facebook if they knew of any uses prior to December 2002, and sure enough, people with LexisNexis access came up with some earlier citations. The first was from the Philadelphia Inquirer on November 17, 1988, in an obituary for one Gerald Margulies: "Mr. Margulies also devoted time to being a leader of an independent minyan, or prayer group, that gathered at the Y.M.H.A. on City Avenue, and was a beloved uncle to his 15 grandnieces and grandnephews, family members said." (Does anyone know anything about this minyan? The Philly people I asked had never heard of it.)

The second was from an article about the Jewish community of Prague in the Jerusalem Report, August 24, 1995. Discussing people who are considered Jewish by Israel's Law of Return but do not have Jewish mothers, the article said: "These Jews are welcome in some of the Jewish cultural organizations and can even find a home in an independent minyan sponsored by the Reform movement called Beit Simcha." Of course, if it's sponsored by the Reform movement, then it's not considered "independent" the way we would generally use that term today. Based on the context, the apparent meaning is that it was independent from the official Jewish community institutions (not a concept that exists in the United States). The article goes on: "While synagogue buildings stand empty or underutilized, Beit Simcha pays rent for a basement room in an apartment building. The atmosphere is reminiscent of an American havurah-style minyan: comfortable chairs arranged in a circle, Zionist posters on the wall."

Still, I haven't found any instances of "independent minyan" in reference to the 21st-century phenomenon earlier than December 2002. The early articles on this wave of minyanim used other terms to describe them. For example, both the August 10, 2001 article in the Forward and the August 2, 2002 article in the Jewish Week referred simply to "new minyans". The former also called the phenomenon a "new havurah movement" (italics in original), and called the minyan that would later be named Hadar a "nondenominational minyan" and a "fortnightly minyan". The first 21st-century use of "independent minyan" in the media might be Jay Michaelson's article in the November 14, 2003 Forward, "A Prayer Group of Their Own: Kol Zimrah and Other Do-It-Yourself Minyans Unite the Independent-Minded", which uses this term repeatedly. As the title suggests, Kol Zimrah is featured prominently in this article.

So the evidence seems to indicate that Kol Zimrah was instrumental (as it were) in establishing the term "independent minyanim", completely by accident. But it's possible that there's still more evidence to be gathered. Do you remember when you started using the term "independent minyan", and where you first heard it? Do you have email correspondence using this term earlier than December 30, 2002?

UPDATE (October 2013): Mark Berch sends us the article "Understanding Synagogue Affiliation" by Steven Huberman, Ph.D., published in the Journal of Jewish Communal Service in 1985.  The relevant paragraph states:

Los Angeles has a variegated network of synagogues.  There are synagogues of every ideology—ranking from large, old, well-established temples to traditional Chassidic Shtiblach.  There are independent minyanim, which serve as alternatives for those seeking religious expression outside of conventional institutions.

From the context, I think it is reasonable to conclude that "independent minyanim" is used here in the same sense that it is used today.  So there's an answer.

Hanhu chavurata #6

We've gotten word of many more stories in the independent minyan world since last fortnight's column!

• This week's top story is Los Angeles's newest prayer community, the Westside Minyan. Founded by people who moved west from New York, it is modeled after Kol Zimrah: full liturgy, guitar accompaniment, mostly singing, two-table potluck, etc. The Westside Minyan is actually the second minyan in LA that can claim lineal descent from Kol Zimrah: Minyan Malei Shirah was inspired by Kol Zimrah Jerusalem z"l (which was founded by people from the original Kol Zimrah in New York, but had a different style from the beginning, hence the two styles now coexisting in LA). As far as I know, there is no connection to the West Side Minyan on the Upper West Side of Manhattan (the minyan founded in the '70s that later became a part of Congregation Ansche Chesed and spun off Minyan M'at).
• In my hometown of Chicago, this past Friday night was the first meeting of the brand-new apartment minyan in Lakeview, a neighborhood with a hopping Jewish scene. It's so new that it doesn't have a name yet, but one of the founders wants to call it Mitzpeh Yam (i.e. Lakeview, or perhaps Seaview, but it's a Great Lake).
• We also hear that there are new minyanim in Charlottesville, Virginia (home of the University of Virginia) and Princeton Junction, New Jersey (home of the Dinky). That's all we know so far.
• Minyan Tehillah in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a "10+10" minyan: they define a quorum as 10 men and 10 women. (This requires twice as many people as either an egal minyan or a conventional non-egal minyan.) For large minyanim that have this policy, such as Shira Hadasha in Jerusalem, a quorum is always present anyway. Smaller "10+10" minyanim can be put to the test when they have to decide what it means for them if they don't have 10 of each: Do they continue as if there is a minyan? Do they continue as if there is no minyan? Do they wait indefinitely? We have previously linked to an account of one minyan's struggle with this issue (the Mission Minyan in San Francisco). Because Tehillah has not always had 20 people of the appropriate genders, they called a town hall meeting for last night to determine what to do in this case. No word yet on the results.
• What we reported last time about the bike ride home from the Hadar Shavuot Retreat was too good to be true; the bike ride was cancelled due to insufficient registration. The same cannot be said for the retreat itself; as usual, it has sold out and there is a waiting list. For some reason, people don't seem to want to bike 50 miles so soon after staying up all night.
  

Hanhu chavurata #5

After a long hiatus, the independent minyan gossip column is back!

• The next big thing in the Boston area is the temporarily-named JP Minyan (not affiliated with JP Morgan), in the southern Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain. JP is a booming area where many young Jews are moving but where not much organized Jewish activity has been happening yet. The new minyan, which has met twice so far, meets on the first Friday night of the month in participants' apartments for services and a potluck Shabbat dinner, and people are explicitly invited to come for either or both.
• Moving further south, to the demilitarized border region between DC and Maryland known to (some of) its residents as "Sheish Esrei Elyon" (Upper 16th St): Minyan Segulah will meet for the first time this coming Shabbat morning. This new project's name alludes to the inchoate Purple Line (currently locked in a tight competition with New York's Second Avenue Subway; which will be finished later?). Segulah will be meeting three times over the next few months in participants' homes for full-liturgy egalitarian services and Shabbat meals. Unlike JP, the neighborhoods of Shepherd Park and Silver Spring have a wide array of Jewish congregations of many flavors, and this adds another option to the mix.
• Further down the pipeline, we hear that a new Friday night thing is starting up in Vancouver. That's all we know for now; let us know if you hear anything.
• There's also something in the works for Shabbat morning in Center City Philadelphia, aiming to start on Shabbat Noach 5770 (October 2009).
• Here in New York, Techiyah of Harlem has been a victim of its own success, attracting not only Harlem residents but people from Morningside Heights, the Upper West Side, and elsewhere. We hear that this has led to communal soul-searching, since the minyan strongly identifies with Harlem (the name means "Renaissance") and meets in apartments, but there is now a shortage of hosts who actually live in Harlem. Techiyah has begun exploring its boundaries and occasionally meeting west of Morningside Park or south of 110th St (though not both, rachamana litzlan).
• People from all these communities and elsewhere will be gathering in New Hampshire at the National Havurah Committee Summer Institute, which is 3 months away and filling up faster than ever. In a year when everyone predicted that attendance would be lower due to the economy, Institute registration has been counterintuitively countercyclical: 205 people have already signed up, and 4 courses are full. The Institute could actually sell out Franklin Pierce University this year! So if you're thinking about going, register ASAP if you want to guarantee a spot.
• Not to be outdone, the Hadar Shavuot Retreat, in cooperation with Hazon, is offering a 50-mile bike ride as one option to get back from the retreat to New York City. I'm so there (and, given today's rain, glad in the end that I didn't register in time for the Five Boro Bike Tour).
  

Independent minyanim in the Washington Post

(Crossposted to Jewschool.)

Today’s Washington Post has a story on independent minyanim, with a focus on communities in DC. There’s no breaking news for those who are familiar with this scene; like the New York Times piece in November 2007, it primarily introduces the phenomenon to a general audience. But this may be the first mainstream (non-Jewish) media source to report on the USCJ grants for minyanim. (This grant program was pooh-poohed to some degree here on Jewschool, but anecdotal reports suggest that it seems to be taking off. Is there any data on how many minyanim are participating so far? What’s the breakdown between previously existing minyanim and new ones?)

Gathering in group homes and college dormitories, in rural woods and apartment buildings, a growing number of young Jews are spurning traditional synagogues and forming worship communities that blend ancient traditions with modern values in ways that religion scholars say could redefine American Judaism.

The young people represent some of the most devout of their generation and, worried that they are being lost, rabbis and other Jewish leaders in the Washington region and elsewhere are working hard to bring them back into the fold, including offering financial grants to independent groups who are willing to create partnerships with traditional worship communities.

This article shares many strengths and weaknesses with the NYT article. The tone is generally positive, stressing that independent minyan participants are committed to Judaism. For the most part, this article addresses independent minyanim on their own terms, and is less caught up in Jewish institutional baggage than are similar treatments in the Jewish press (though somewhat more so than the NYT article).

Then there are the serious problems. As I wrote in regard to the NYT article:

The word “traditional” is being overloaded with at least two different meanings (which is par for the course): “conventional” (as in traditional IRA vs. Roth IRA), vs. “traditional Judaism” (whatever that means). Is a “traditional synagogue” one that has a rabbi and a building and conventional institutional structures, or one that follows “traditional” Jewish practice? There isn’t really a positive or negative correlation here, and there’s no way to tell which is being referred to except from context.

One commenter argued that the NYT article consistently used “traditional” to mean “conventional”, but that’s much harder to argue here. Compare:

• “a growing number of young Jews are spurning traditional synagogues” -> “conventional”
• “independent groups who are willing to create partnerships with traditional worship communities” -> “conventional”
• “the large denominations that have traditionally divided Jewish worship life” -> “conventional”
• (in the same sentence) “Reform, the most liberal, Conservative and Orthodox, the most traditional” -> “traditional Judaism” (probably referring to “Orthodox”, but I initially read it as referring to “Conservative and Orthodox”; this is why God invented the serial comma)
• “in a break with tradition, women lead parts of the service. ” -> “traditional Judaism”
• “the traditional children’s parade that is part of the Jewish festival observing Purim” -> unclear

I’m not just griping about word choice. It’s intellectually sloppy to conflate these two concepts, and a misrepresentation of the significance of the independent minyan phenomenon. In terms of Jewish ideology and practice, independent minyanim are all over the map, and so are synagogues. Independent minyan participants may be “spurning traditional synagogues” in the sense of conventional institutions, but are neither moving (en masse) toward or away from “traditional” Judaism. Some may be moving toward “more traditional” practices and others toward “less traditional” practices (insofar as these comparatives are meaningful) and others neither, but that’s not the interesting story. The interesting story is that people all over the Jewish map are creating active participatory Jewish communities.

Small errors:

DC Minyan and Rosh Pina use the Orthodox liturgy, but some worshipers follow along in the Conservative prayer book. Both have separate seating for women and men, but Rosh Pina uses a partition as in Orthodox services and, in a break with tradition, women lead parts of the service.

I’m not sure the reporter realizes how small the differences between “the Orthodox liturgy” and “the Conservative prayer book” are (though the bring-your-own-siddur trend is significant even when the siddurim share basically the same Hebrew text). DC Minyan also has “women lead parts of the service”. This may be a “break with tradition” within the Orthodox world, but is not so for participants in these minyanim who come from egalitarian backgrounds; rather, the separate seating and fixed gender roles are the real “break with tradition” for those participants.

With the people interviewed for the article, the framing gets worse.

I think it’s the rule that Jonathan Sarna has to be quoted in these articles.

“It is an interesting mix between the egalitarian, pluralistic, inclusive values coming from the left and the values of learning and of observance coming from the right,” said Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University. “They are making a new synthesis of these traditional and modern values that we haven’t seen before.”

GAH! Learning is a value “from the right”?! There’s nothing right-wing about learning, and there’s certainly nothing left-wing about ignorance. This makes me long for the days when, according to the stereotypes, Reform Jews had three Ph.D.’s from German universities and Orthodox Jews were illiterate huddled masses from the shtetl.

Egalitarian pluralistic inclusive left-wing Jews who embrace learning and observance (by the appropriate definition of “observance”) aren’t moving to the right or making a synthesis with right-wing values; they’re becoming serious committed left-wing Jews rather than apathetic left-wing Jews.

Still, some researchers question the future of the groups. A previous generation of independent prayer groups started by baby boomers in the 1970s is still active but has stalled in growth. Some experts wonder whether the current generation of minyanim leaders will move from the urban centers where most minyanim are based when they have children and melt into suburban synagogues, which offer extensive educational programs for Jewish children.

Ah, “some-say” journalism at its finest. Who are these anonymous “some researchers” and “some experts”, what is their agenda, and why aren’t they willing to be quoted by name? (Are they the same ones who appeared in the NYT article? “The minyanim are noticing that some of their worshipers are getting older, and it is unclear how they might evolve as participants have children and move to the suburbs, said members and experts on the movement.”) Let’s examine their claims. What do they mean by “stalled in growth”? Individual groups growing in number of participants, or overall growth in the number of groups? If the former, then the groups that have lasted since the 1970s aren’t necessarily aiming for growth; they may be happy at their current sizes. If the latter, then obviously the number of “independent prayer groups started by baby boomers in the 1970s” isn’t ever going to grow; that number was locked in as soon as the ’70s ended. But if the “started in the 1970s” constraint is removed, then the number of groups continues to grow, and the newest generation of independent minyanim is part of that growth. One longtime NHC veteran posted on NHC-DISCUSS, in response to this line, “These new communities are exactly the growth we hoped for.”

As for the wonderings of “some experts”, why are independent minyan leaders any more likely to “melt into suburban synagogues” than they were to melt into urban synagogues? If anything, “the urban centers where most minyanim are based” offer a much wider range of synagogue options than the suburbs do, and the minyan founders still opted for None Of The Above and started something new instead, and can do the same if (if!) they move to the suburbs. Yes, many suburban synagogues “offer extensive educational programs for Jewish children” (as do many urban synagogues), but these programs wouldn’t necessarily be any more appealing to this crowd than anything else that the synagogues offer. I’m excited about the prospect of exploring new options for Jewish education for my future children beyond what has already been done. These “experts” are hiding their heads in the sand if they think this is a passing fancy.

The article ends on a happy note:

Gil Steinlauf, Adas Israel’s new senior rabbi, said the synagogue has shifted from merely “tolerating these smaller groups to welcoming them. . . . It’s a radical shift, particularly in this congregation.”

Readers, what (if anything) have you noticed on the ground in the way of recent changes in the relations between grassroots communities and established institutions?

Independent Minyan Conference closing plenary

(Crossposted to Jewschool.)

This post is the second in a series responding to sessions from Mechon Hadar’s Independent Minyan Conference last month. Thanks again to Mechon Hadar for placing all the audio online to make this ongoing conversation possible.

This time we’ll look at the closing plenary, “Minyanim and the Contexts of Contemporary Jewish Life”, a panel that included Prof. Jonathan Sarna (Brandeis), Prof. Sylvia Barack Fishman (Brandeis), Rabbi Prof. Art Green (Hebrew College), and Rabbi Elie Kaunfer (founder of the three Hadars).

***

Before looking at what each panelist said, let’s look at terminology. Sarna, a historian, referred repeatedly to the “independent minyan phenomenon”, a term that suggests a particular historical moment, which is the frame he used in his talk. Fishman talked about the “independent minyan movement”. Green avoided a single overarching term. Kaunfer mostly did too, but referred at one point to the “minyan crew” and explicitly said that we’re not calling it a movement.

I think “movement” would have been a fine word to use if it only had its secular meaning and not the meaning it has picked up in Jewish discourse. If we’re talking about social movements, informal grassroots actions along the lines of the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, the Alice’s Restaurant Anti-Massacree Movement, etc., then the independent minyan phenomenon would qualify. But in the Jewish world, the word “movement” has come to be synonymous with “denomination”, and to imply two things that independent minyanim lack: a shared religious ideology, and a shared set of central institutions. (These are two different things, and I have warned that we shouldn’t conflate them.)

Sarna suggests that, even if those institutions don’t exist now, it’s only a matter of time. During the Q&A at the end, he says that there are two views: 1) denominations are in the past and we’re moving into a postdenominational future, 2) (his own view) the other movements won’t go away, but there will be more options. He says that today there’s a minyan conference, and next there will be the United Minyanim, and the Assembly of Leaders of Minyanim, and the Central Conference of American Minyan Leaders, and then you have one more denomination. He draws a parallel from the Reconstructionist movement: Mordecai Kaplan wanted to reconstruct all of American Judaism and ended up with one more Jewish movement.

I think he’s missing two key things here. First of all, in addition to starting a new denominations, Kaplan did reconstruct all of American Judaism; his ideas have taken root in all of the movements. Second of all, this denominationalization could take place for Reconstructionism because Reconstructionist Judaism represents a particular religious ideology that was distinct from the ideologies that the other denominations held at the time. In contrast, what the independent minyanim have in common is the way that the communities are structured, rather than the content of their Jewish belief and practice. The range of Jewish practices in independent minyanim matches the range of Jewish practices in synagogue denominations. In this regard, the “havurah movement” is in the same category as the “independent minyan movement”, insofar as there is a distinction — more on that later — and the Renewal movement is more like the Reconstructionist movement and other denominational movements. The fact that independent communities get together at events sponsored by the National Havurah Committee or Mechon Hadar to talk about their communities and share ideas does not mean that they are moving toward paying dues to a central institution, establishing uniform policies for their communities, or promoting a homogenized form of Judaism.

I would suggest a third view: The other movements won’t go away, but these independent communities do not and will not constitute an (n+1)th movement; there will continue to be movements as well as communities and institutions that exist outside the movements.

***

Sarna spoke first, and began by saying “When we look back on the minyan phenomenon, we will decide that it was the most exciting development in American Judaism since the havurah movement itself 30 years ago.” As I have written before, I take issue with the idea that the havurah movement is something in the past, or that the recent wave of new minyanim is something fundamentally different. The major havurot founded in the ’60s and ’70s still exist, and havurot/minyanim have been founded continuously from that time to the present. (There was another session at the conference all about precedents from the havurah movement, but I haven’t listened to it yet.) Sarna says that this phenomenon brings together many of the trends that have been building during the decade prior to 2001, the “generally stated beginning of the minyan phenomenon.” I would say that what happened in 2001 was not a radical break from the past, but a tipping point. There were independent minyanim/havurot founded during the ’80s and ’90s too, but they were more limited in number and scope, and didn’t have the same widespread impact that the post-2001 minyanim/havurot have had. The significance of the current phenomenon is its magnitude, and the way that it has become a realistic option for Jewish communal life for an entire age demographic, which wasn’t the case during the ’80s and ’90s. Speaking personally, I was fortunate to graduate from college in 2001, so that I could jump on the bandwagon at just the right time.

Sarna lists 7 trends contributing to the explosion of independent minyanim in the last decade:
1) The women’s movement, and the “desire to bring a certain feminist sensitivity into traditional Judaism”. He cites the statistic that the independent minyanim have a 2-to-1 ratio of women to men. (Fishman responds later that this is not unique to the independent minyan scene, but is true of non-Orthodox Judaism in general. It’s not as apparent in the membership rolls of conventional synagogues, because those are composed mainly of families headed by opposite-sex couples, but is apparent in the numbers of who gets involved. I would also respond that gender issues are a significant motivating factor for some minyanim (e.g. the partnership minyanim, as well as minyanim like the Zoo Minyan with a new liturgy) but not others — as I have written, independent minyanim aren’t necessarily more gender-egalitarian or feminist than synagogues.)
2) Jewish spirituality: emphasis on spiritual davening, music, singing, the experience of tefilah. (Agreed. Many of the newer minyanim put more thought into the content of prayer than some of the older ones.)
3) “Back to the sources” movement. Emphasis on high-level learning. The minyanim are now reaping the fruits of an increased emphasis on Jewish education during the 1990s.
4) A reaction against denominational infighting. The infighting between movements that was common during the ’80s and ’90s isn’t happening in the ’00s. Also, funders won’t fund groups that attack other Jews. The minyanim resist denominational labeling, and rather transgress the boundaries.
5) Creation of a new stage of life that didn’t exist before (for Jews and non-Jews): a long stage between college and marriage/children. Back in the day, 3/4 of Americans under age 30 had children. There are no institutions in Jewish life that fill the gap between college (Hillel) and marriage/children (everything else), and the minyanim fill that void.
6) The startup culture. Young people didn’t want to be staid Microsoft, but wanted to be the next Google. Minyanim modeled themselves on startups, and imagined that they would rise or fall like startups, so that something (e.g. KOE) that is the big thing one day might not be the next day.
7) Availability of money. The Jewish community may have made more money in the 1990s than the entire 20th century put together, and this has aided the independent minyan phenomenon. Whereas the havurah movement was anti-establishment and had trouble getting money from the funders, the minyanim became the darlings of the funders and the people they wanted to invest in. Now that the money made in the 1990s was lost in a few weeks in 2008, what will be the impact of the economic downturn on the growth of the independent minyan phenomenon? (Kaunfer responds later that, actually, most minyanim are operating on a shoestring budget, and most have not been successful at getting major grants. I agree that money, though it helps, has not been an indispensable factor — some minyanim operate on no budget at all, and just meet in participants’ homes. So I think independent minyanim will have an easier time than other Jewish organizations in weathering the recession. I would also add that, if some minyanim today have had an easier time attracting funders than the havurah movement of the ’70s, it’s not because today’s minyanim are less “anti-establishment” (after all, they’re still explicitly operating outside the establishment) but because the funders have changed: some of yesterday’s havurah Jews have become today’s establishment Jews, and are thus more inclined to be sympathetic.)

Sarna’s list bears similarities and differences to a list that I made a few years ago. On the occasion of Kol Zimrah’s 3rd anniversary, I listed 12 trends that Kol Zimrah encapsulates:
1) The proliferation of independent minyanim (this isn’t on Sarna’s list because it’s the overall heading of his list).
2) This generation is empowered to be Jewish entrepreneurs (a combination of 3 and 6 on Sarna’s list).
3) More activity outside the denominations (related to 4 on Sarna’s list, though not the same).
4) Communities with no membership or dues, more suited to transient populations.
5) Participatory experience in prayer through music (related to 2 on Sarna’s list)
6) Innovation and experimentation in prayer (also related to 2 on Sarna’s list)
7) Evolving Jewish pluralism, beyond the interdenominational kind
Options for educated liberal Jews who aren’t Jewish professionals
9) Filling the void for people in their 20s and 30s (5 on Sarna’s list)
10) The Internet facilitates rapid communication (within communities)
11) The world is flat - it’s also easier for this phenomenon to spread around the world
12) Growth of liberal Jewish communities in Israel (not on Sarna’s list because he’s just talking about America)

***

Fishman began by talking about distinctions within the independent minyan “movement”. She told a story about when Tova Hartman wrote a book about creating Shira Hadasha. Fishman had wanted to have a panel with people from different denominations as well as leaders of nondenominational independent minyanim. JOFA said no, it had to be Orthodox institutions, because they were advocating for Orthodox independent minyanim and wanted to see Orthodoxy move in that direction, and if non-Orthodox minyanim were on the panel, this would harm JOFA’s case in the Orthodox world. Fishman said they were missing the opportunity to look at the big picture. She said it reminded her of when “the havurah movement … no longer allowed the announcement of mechitza minyanim.” She characterized this as a “non-Orthodox orthodoxy” and a “fascinating mirror image”, saying that “even within a movement attempting to break down barriers, there are internal divisions”.

I would respond that of course there are internal divisions. Any time you set up a community or organization with certain values, you are making a distinction between yourself and other communities that don’t share those values. Sometimes communities that share some values and differ on others can work together on the things that they share, and sometimes they can’t. But I don’t think the examples that she cites are particularly problematic.

Those who are closer to this scene can correct me if I’m wrong, but it was always my understanding that the partnership minyan phenomenon has been primarily about the ritual inclusion of women and men in an Orthodox milieu, and about the “independent minyan” structure only as a byproduct. That is, the original teshuva that inspired many of these minyanim said that this type of service was permissible for new communities, but that existing communities should not change their established minhagim. Furthermore, the Orthodox institutions never would have stood for it. So that’s why this happened first in grassroots lay-led minyanim rather than in Orthodox synagogues. This has little in common with the motivating factors behind other independent minyanim — the issues in the non-Orthodox world, where educated young adults feel that they don’t have a place in established synagogues, etc., have not been such a problem in the Orthodox world. So it doesn’t surprise me that JOFA would want to associate with communities that share their primary mission, rather than with communities that share a structure but for unrelated reasons.

As for the other incident: Fishman isn’t talking about “the havurah movement” (which is a decentralized grassroots movement, not an institution) but about the National Havurah Committee, a specific organization, and specifically about prayer services at its annual Summer Institute (not about year-round minyanim). I’ve been involved in the organization since 2002 and on the board since 2004, so I wasn’t around when this cataclysmic event happened in the 1980s, but this event has clearly had a long-lasting impact on many people, both those who are still involved in the NHC and those who are now scattered all over the Jewish world. (Was Fishman herself involved in those days? Is she speaking from personal experience?) The policy that I inherited when I joined the board is that all services organized by the Institute planning committee are egalitarian, but individuals who want to organize their own services are free to do so and will be provided with a space. Many people (including people such as Fishman who seem critical of it, as well as people who support such a policy over the current policy) remember a different policy enacted during this cataclysm, involving a blanket ban on mechitza minyanim. I’ve heard this from enough sources that I don’t think they’re all hallucinating, so I can only conclude that the policy was changed sometime between the 1980s and when I came on board, but no one can identify a point in time when this change happened. So I think the NHC may have to set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to figure out exactly what happened when and begin to heal the wounds; there’s no way we can have an intelligent discussion about this without knowing all the facts. As for what the policy should be, there are significant pros and cons to each. But I take issue with Fishman’s implication of hypocrisy. She refers to “non-Orthodox orthodoxy” as if it is problematic for a non-Orthodox community to set boundaries of communal practice, and such boundaries should only be for the Orthodox. If we were to take this attitude to heart, we would end up with the “liberal talk radio problem”. In addition to pluralistic Jewish communities, there also need to be communities that promote progressive Jewish values, and I don’t have a problem with the NHC being one (though the way it makes the most sense to implement those values has probably changed in the last 25 years).

Fishman then talks about how the minyanim define themselves in relation to synagogues. She says that synagogues are not appropriate places for the population attracted to independent minyanim because they have flaws. Synagogues are:
* too married. Single people are uncomfortable.
* too non-egalitarian, either through gender or financial issues. People who can’t contribute financially perceive themselves to be less important.
* too inexpert. Fishman considers this a big difference between the havurah movement and the independent minyan movement, saying that the latter has an emphasis on quality control and doing everything the right way. (I disagree. Hadar, one of the most prominent of the new generation of independent minyanim, has an emphasis on quality control, but many other new independent minyanim do not (much to my disappointment). And many of the older havurot/minyanim have/had their own standards of how things should be done, though these standards are along different axes than the newer minyanim’s standards.) Fishman gives this approach the unintentionally humorous characterization of “If you’re not ready for prime time, you’re not there on the bimah.”
* lacking in authenticity. This authenticity is “double-edged” - doing things in a way that feel authentic historically and Jewishly, as well as morally. This includes the attraction to social justice.
* too large. Part of the attraction of independent minyanim is praying with a group of people whom you know, and there is a desire not to be flooded with more people who are “from the outside”. (I disagree with this characterization of independent minyanim. Most of the newer independent minyanim serve a transient population, and welcome a constant inflow of people. They may not be taking out ads in the Jewish newspaper, but the doors are open. This is a meaningful distinction from the older havurot, with a defined membership.)
* too complacent. Not willing to upset the status quo.

Fishman says that the independent minyanim are a “movement that saved a generation”, and this “highly sophisticated generation, which might have found their spiritual fufillment in other ways” is “now intensely and passionately tied to Judaism” because of independent minyanim. I agree. Without the opportunity to be involved in these communities, we wouldn’t necessarily have stuck around patiently until we had children.

But then Fishman immediately contradicts herself, as she begins discussing the challenges facing the “movement”. She asks what is happening to denominational Judaism, and says that she sees independent minyanim as a commitment drain, attracting the young people who in another historical period would have become the “elite” of the Conservative and Reform movements. How can both this and the preceding paragraph be true? I think the preceding paragraph is more on the mark, and the denominational movements were wrong to take us for granted.

Another challenge she mentions is communities becoming cliques: there are many stories about people who showed up at independent minyanim, weren’t greeted, and were not made to feel they were part of what was going on. I would respond that this is not unique to independent minyanim, but can characterize Jewish communities of all shapes and sizes. It’s something for all Jewish communities to work on (while avoiding the whiff of desperation associated with being too friendly to newcomers).

The last challenge she discusses is the “rhetoric of disdain for conventional Judaism and conventional Jewish leaders”, and says that conventional Jewish leaders deal with lived Judaism through times such as childbearing, illness, and end-of-life issues.

***

Rabbi Green shared some stories about the founding of Havurat Shalom in 1968. He ran into Abbie Hoffman, who invited him to go stir up trouble at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, but he said he couldn’t, he was busy with this new Jewish thing (which didn’t have a name yet). Initially they were thinking about calling it “Kehilat Kodesh”, until Rabbi Dick Israel z”l said “That’s the most pretentious thing I’ve ever heard”.

Green talked mostly about rabbinic leadership (which was also the topic of another conference session which I haven’t listed to). In the old days, he and his cohort didn’t believe in earning a living as a rabbi, and looked to Rabbi Yochanan haSandlar (the shoemaker) as a model. But he left Havurat Shalom (which had been more or less a full-time job for him) in 1973 because he couldn’t afford to stay. So he’s still been thinking about the role of rabbis, especially now that he’s training rabbis. He says that most non-Orthodox rabbis are there to reach out to the Jewish periphery, to keep people from falling off, and bring people at the edges to a greater interest in Jewish life. But at the same time, the “elites” reject that model and would rather be in do-it-yourself minyanim/havurot without rabbinic leadership. So he asked if there can be a balance. The role of rabbis in these communities has been the subject of an acrimonious conversation here at Jewschool.

I have to say that I don’t find Green’s arguments in favor of rabbinic leadership to be very convincing. I think there are more compelling arguments out there, such as the one that Fishman refers to: we need structures in place to deal with unanticipated emergencies, such as serious illness and death. We can do DIY weddings and bar/bat mitzvahs just fine, but funerals would be unrealistic.

Green refers first to the personal pain of rabbis “who feel rejected by the kind of Jews they’d like to be part of.” He says that his students ask “Am I going to wind up being rabbi of a synagogue I’d never join if I weren’t its rabbi? Can’t I be rabbi of a community I’d like to be part of, and be part of it at the same time?”. I would respond that that’s no reason for communities that have previously gone without rabbinic leadership to get a rabbi. If a community is going to have a rabbi, it should be because the rabbi meets a communal need, not because the community meets the rabbi’s personal need.

Green then tells a parable from his Havurat Shalom days. In those days, you had to apply to join, and a “serious young man” with all the right qualifications but an obnoxious personality applied for membership and was rejected twice. Green says that this was like a fraternity blackball, and feels that he failed by not saying that they couldn’t reject this person. If he had been the rabbi of the group, he could have said “This is a principled stand we have to take; we’re not just here to have fun,” but he didn’t feel that he could do that, because he was just one of the group, which didn’t believe in professional leadership. Green thinks that this demonstrated the need for a rabbi, someone who can combine chesed and din and can say “This is not about me; this is not about my needs” and can make sure that the community lives up to its values.

I don’t think this issue is really about the presence or absence of a rabbi. First of all, most newer independent minyanim avoid the specific issue from this anecdote by not having selective membership, and often not having membership at all, so this situation would never come up. Of course, there are other times when the community’s inclusive values come into tension with other concerns. But it doesn’t seem self-evident to me that rabbis are more likely than other people to stand up for these values. On the contrary, if a rabbi is brought in from the outside (the way rabbinic employment typically works), then the rabbi may be less in sync with the community’s values than are those who founded the community on those values. There is an argument here in favor of having a leadership structure that isn’t completely flat, and having some designated people whose role it is to make sure the community lives up to its values, but the job title that goes with this role isn’t necessarily “rabbi” — it might be “president”, or “gabbai”, or “steering committee”. It doesn’t take a rabbinic education or a salary to give someone a sense of responsibility for their community. I have been involved in internal discussions for a number of communities without rabbinic leadership, and these discussions often explicitly hinge on the community’s values.

Green then repeats the common charge that these communities are “elitist”, and not worried about people who need to have pages announced. He says that the fact that they don’t announce pages is a statement of who is welcome and who isn’t, and a rabbi could make these announcements so that the community is more welcoming. We’ve had another discussion here about stage directions during prayer. It’s a complicated question, but two things are clear: 1) Communities that don’t make these announcements aren’t necessarily trying to keep people away, and 2) If the community does decide to announce page numbers, this task doesn’t require 5 years of post-graduate education.

Finally, Green says that Jewish learning has become more democratized, and the difference between those with rabbinic education and those without has become smaller, but the rabbi has to foster the growth of the havurah/minyan as beit midrash. He says that Jewish life will not thrive if its central institution is primarily for davening on Shabbat, and there needs to be an active commitment to Jewish learning. I agree that the commitment to Jewish learning is essential. But this doesn’t need to happen through the same communities where we go to daven; in areas with a large enough Jewish population, Jewish community can be more a la carte, and Jewish learning can happen through separate organizations. Also, most liberal American synagogues cannot be characterized as batei midrash, even if they have a rabbi on staff, or multiple rabbis. Many independent minyanim (without rabbis) have more of a culture of serious Jewish learning than many synagogues (with rabbis). So having a rabbi is not sufficient.

***

Rabbi Kaunfer began by saying thank you to all the Jewish institutions and people who “paved the way for this moment in Jewish life”. He echoed previous speakers who said that this investment has paid off.

Kaunfer responds to people including ZT about the use of the word “independent” to describe minyanim. He says that it doesn’t mean we are independent of all other Jewish structures, history, and tradition. He draws an analogy to the American political system, with Republicans, Democrats, and independents: independents don’t claim that they invented the voting booth, and will reinvent American government as a parallel. Rather, it’s about seeking out our own place. He says that we don’t mean independent from the heritage that we come from, but we’re about being a next chapter in that book.

Kaunfer says that the minyanim themselves are means to an end. If we go out of existence in 15 years, he’ll say “Thank God” only if something better comes along. If we come back in 15 years and none of specific minyanim are around, but something has replaced them, that is the original Jewish way of moving through history. We’re in a world where it’s difficult to move beyond an institution, and that’s anathema to what the Jewish people are. (Is he channeling Rushkoff?) He hopes that the end result is not the specific communities, etc., but the idea that empowered Jews can stand up and build their own Jewish communities.

Kaunfer closes with two frames of analysis of what the minyanim represent:

1) The “narrow view”. The minyanim are reacting to a demographic space that didn’t exist before. It’s the new Hillel. Hillel has a constant inflow and outflow in a narrow age band, and no one would ask a Hillel student “What are you going to do at Hillel when you start to have kids?”. Now that people delay marriage for longer, minyanim step in at a particular demographic moment. This age band of people also cycles in and out. Due to economic pressures of real estate in urban areas, people can’t sustain families there even if they’d like to. So the question of “What happens when you have kids?” is irrelevant, because by the time you’re at that age, you’re out of those minyanim. (I’ve been saying this too.) As a narrow view, we’ve been successful, and this is an important step. It’s not threatening, because it’s just filling a void. (I would note that many have felt threatened anyway.)

2) Is there a larger frame? This is an unanswered question. Is there a legacy beyond creating community for people in a 10-year space? What happens when you move to new places? Will these minyanim offer an empowered model of Judaism for people who have cycled out of the original minyanim?

I say yes. We can look at the original havurot (which are now 30-40 years older than when they started) for precedents, both positive and negative. They’ve dealt with these issues before and have collected wisdom over time; on the other hand, there’s a reason why my generation started new communities rather than just joining the existing havurot. The question of how to keep this empowered model going is a question to keep working on — not necessarily for the specific minyanim that will continue to operate in their geographical areas, but for those of us who move to and already live in places where these communities don’t exist (yet).

More independent minyan inside baseball

I make a point of being on the email list of every independent minyan in New York City. (There are around 10 right now.) That is, even though I'm temporarily living outside NYC, I haven't unsubscribed from any of them because it would be too much effort to resubscribe in a few months, and besides, there's always the possibility that something interesting will come up.

For example, the latest email from Darkhei Noam contained this interesting locution:

Darkhei Noam is delighted to welcome to the community Rabbi Dr. Elie Holzer, founder of Congregation Shira Chadasha in Jerusalem, who will be visiting us on Shabbat January 25-26, and will be addressing the kehila several times.

At a special Friday Night Tefila in the Chapel at Heschel, Rabbi Holzer will speak before he leads us in a "Shira Chadasha style" Kabbalat Shabbat. [emphasis added]

Why is this interesting? Because "Shira Chadasha style" generally has only one meaning (and a google search for this and other variant spellings confirms this): partnership minyanim, i.e. a service in which men and women participate equally in Torah reading, women may/must lead parts of the service in which the sheliach tzibbur has no formal role, and men lead parts of the service in which the sheliach tzibbur has a formal role.

But this can't possibly be what Darkhei Noam meant in the email, for two reasons:
1) Darkhei Noam is always in this format. And they wouldn't label their usual minhag as "Shira Chadasha style" (as would minyanim that are explicit offshoots of Shira Chadasha), since Darkhei Noam and Shira Chadasha started within a few months of each other, and developed independently.
2) Rabbi Holzer is a dude, and "Shira Chadasha style Kabbalat Shabbat" (in reference to a one-time event) pretty much definitionally means that a woman is leading.

Ergo, "Shira Chadasha style" must be referring to the actual style of prayer (which I assume is different from Darkhei Noam's typical style, though I haven't been to either minyan frequently enough to judge for myself), a trait that is sometimes forgotten when minyanim are defined only or primarily on gender-based axes. The style of prayer is often orthogonal to these gender issues; e.g., here in Jerusalem, there are at least 3 partnership minyanim with very different styles: one is done in 1 hour 45 minutes or less on Shabbat morning, one takes at least 5 hours, and Shira Chadasha itself is in the middle. So Darkhei Noam is making an interesting statement by reassigning this label to refer to a new characteristic. It's important to remember that people who agree on egalitarianism, lack thereof, or degree thereof may agree on little else in their prayer preferences.

The results are in: Take III

(Crossposted to Jewschool)

Last week I posted some initial thoughts on the Spiritual Communities Study survey results, and then ZT posted a second round. Since then, they’ve made some revisions to the report, incorporating suggestions from us and other bloggers, so the squeaky wheel has gotten the grease. As crazy as it sounds, I’m now posting a third round of commentary on the survey.

As Desh has pointed out, these results should silence those who claim that independent minyan participants are motivated by selfishness and narcissism, in contrast with conventional synagogues and their participants who are committed to the broader community. In addition to the data that Desh cites, the results show that independent minyan participants have higher “yes” rates than synagogue members on the questions “I have a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people” and “I have a special responsibility to take care of Jews in need around the world”. (The report didn’t list the results for the question “I have a Jewish responsibility to care for people in trouble (as with Darfur or Katrina)”, which would also be interesting to see.) Moreover, though there are no comparable numbers for synagogue members, the survey also shows that 95% of independent minyan participants have been invited to a Shabbat meal by someone in their community in the last year, and 86% have invited others. These results come within a few days of another study showing that people are leaving conventional congregations because this sense of community is missing. (Of course, this isn’t true of all synagogues. Kol hakavod to any community of whatever structure whose participants are committed to each other and to the larger world.)

Next, another word on the Reform stuff. I’m particularly interested in this, as someone who definitely marked “Reform” for the first question (in which denomination were you raised?) and probably was among the 3% who marked “Reform” for the second question (what do you consider yourself now?) but I’m not certain. I’m not connected to any Reform-affiliated institutions, but I still think of myself as a Reform expat; the synagogue I don’t go to is Reform. But the fact that I’m not certain highlights the fact that the answer to this second question doesn’t necessarily have any direct real-world manifestations (i.e. affiliations, behaviors, etc.) and is all in the respondent’s head (and might not be in the respondent’s head very often except when s/he is answering surveys like this). But the results are still very interesting and worthy of study. Pardon me if, in the next few paragraphs, I blur the lines between Reform Judaism (which can mean a number of things - ideology, aesthetics, etc.) and the Reform movement (a set of institutions), which I generally try to avoid, but this blurring is an essential aspect of the topic at hand (Reform self-identification). The same, of course, is true about Conservative Judaism (again, defined in a number of ways) and the Conservative movement. (This latter blurring leads at times to serious logical inconsistencies. The report (p. 4-5) says that Conservative leaders claim that independent minyanim are “Conservative congregations flying a Liberian flag”, presumably basing this claim on traits of the minyanim that they would identify as “Conservative”, and/or the fact that participants in the minyanim grew up in the Conservative movement. But the same Conservative leaders would claim that Conservative central institutions, such as the CJLS, have the authority to determine policies and halacha that Conservative congregations should aspire to. Does this include “Conservative congregations flying a Liberian flag”? If so, then they seem to be making the absurd claim that the CJLS (etc.) automatically has plenary jurisdiction over any Jewish community that davens in Hebrew without a mechitza (or whatever criteria they’re using) or has Ramah alumni among its participants, regardless of whether that community ever consented to this.)

In my last post, I wrote about people who grew up in a particular denomination and still consider themselves to be carrying out that denomination’s values even when they’re not affiliated with it or with something with superficial similarities to it. I admit that this is somewhat of an elite position that doesn’t necessarily reflect most people’s experiences. Would I still identify myself as “Reform” (based on background and ideology, but not institutional affiliation or aesthetics) if I weren’t a fifth-generation Reform Jew, a third-generation NFTY alum, and generally descended from Reform nobility? Less clear. Denominational self-identification (which, again, only really comes up for this crowd when we’re taking surveys) is based on a combination of many factors.

The numbers from the survey (p. 16) appear to suggest that the majority of people raised Reform now identify as something else (presumably “Other Jewish”, which has the largest gain), while the majority of people raised Conservative still identify as Conservative. But all we know is the numbers - we don’t know whether the people who identify as Conservative are the same people who were raised Conservative. However, this information is available in the raw data, so in the next report, I’d be interested in seeing these results further broken down — what percent of people raised x now identify as y, etc. In the absence of this additional information, I’m going to propose a hypothesis that might be confirmed or refuted when we see that data: perhaps there is a shift from Reform to Conservative, and from Conservative to Other Jewish.

A possible mechanism for these shifts: Suppose Reuven grew up in a Reform congregation, and Chana grew up in a Conservative congregation, and now they both participate in a (let’s say) “traditional egalitarian” independent minyan and like it better than what they grew up with. Reuven says “Huh. I like this minyan, with its all-Hebrew prayers, better than my family’s congregation, with its English responsive readings. I guess that means I’m Conservative.” Chana says “No way. I know the Conservative movement, and it doesn’t look anything like this. You can call me ‘Other Jewish’.”

(Reuven and Chana don’t represent everyone. There are certainly people who are Reform->Other Jewish, and for the numbers to make sense, there must still be some Conservative->Conservative. But perhaps they represent some people.)

One more question to consider: So why is it in the first place that plenty of independent minyanim are mistaken for Conservative, while there are few to no independent minyanim (of the type studied in this survey) accused of being “Reform congregations flying a Liberian flag”? I’ve already said that lots of independent minyanim represent Reform ideals of informed autonomy, but why aren’t there more independent minyanim that display superficial traits commonly associated with “Reform” (in the same superficial way that Hebrew+egalitarian = “Conservative”, and thus Kol Haneshama “isn’t really Reform”)? (Or why is it that, as the report says on p. 18, “few emergent communities take a Reform-style approach”, except that I would limit “Reform-style” to these aesthetic elements.) Some might chalk this up to “increased interest in tradition”, whatever that means. I disagree. While this may be true of some minyanim, there are others whose participants and general communal outlooks are “progressive” on a number of axes, and still pray in a way that would be somewhat alien to the typical person coming from an exclusively Reform-affiliated background — generally involving an unchanging macroscopic liturgical structure, and prayers all in Hebrew. I think it has more to do with the participatory havurah ethic that characterizes many independent minyanim. The prayer leader is seen as truly a sheliach tzibbur (representative of the community), rather than as a top-down leader. Any of these “Reform” elements that are missing from independent minyanim — and I’m not talking about musical instruments or “Reform” melodies, which are used in some independent minyanim, but I’m talking about English readings and explanations of the prayers and changes in macroscopic liturgy from week to week — require top-down leadership in order to be implemented. Participants can’t simply daven on their own, since there’s no way to know what’s coming next until the leader says so. Thus, the use of a style sometimes characterized as “traditional” isn’t always motivated by “traditional” concerns, but may be motivated by a desire to maximize individual freedom and participation.

Yes, there are also Conservative congregations with heavy-handed top-down prayer leadership, with which independent minyan prayer has little in common. But there are also counterexamples in the Conservative movement, in Ramah and USY, which may be very different stylistically from most independent minyanim, but perhaps have a similar approach to the role of the sheliach tzibbur — similar enough that people aren’t as quick to characterize independent minyan prayer as “not Conservative” the way they characterize it as “not Reform”. Services at URJ camps and NFTY, though different from the typical Reform congregation, still require some degree of top-down leadership, even if it’s coming from a songleader or RCVP rather than a rabbi or cantor.

If the Reform movement is at all concerned about the fact that so many people who grew up in it are ceasing to identify as Reform, then as I’ve said before, the solution is to expand the horizons of what Reform prayer and Reform communities look like, and to create a vision of what a Reform community would look like if its participants were not dependent on top-down leadership.

So what about the “rabbi-led emergent communities”, which do have a rabbi, and tend to have more top-down prayer leadership? In those communities, it’s more likely that the style of prayer might be superficially recognizable as “Reform”. And indeed, more rabbi-led emergent participants (7%) identify as Reform than independent minyan participants (3%). But why is it still only 7%? This is in part because the communities happen to have other leanings — e.g., Kehilat Romemu (NYC) identifies itself with Jewish Renewal (”Other Jewish”), Kol Tsedek (Philly) is affiliated Reconstructionist (also “Other Jewish”), and Ikar (Los Angeles) is unaffilated but led by a Conservative-ordained rabbi. As the report says, “Most emergent community leaders see formal denominationalism as a barrier to entry and as connoting the types of congregations from which they seek to differentiate themselves.” (p. 17)

One more thing: for the record, I think it's dumb that denominational self-identification (for individuals and communities) is so tied to prayer, at the expense of all the other aspects of Judaism. (This is even more true of the border, or "mechitza" if you will, between Conservative and Orthodox identification.) But that's the way it is.

The results are in

(Crossposted to Jewschool)

This will probably be the first of multiple posts about the Preliminary Findings from the 2007 National Spiritual Communities Study (by the S3K Synagogue Studies Institute and Mechon Hadar), since everyone has something to say about it. The JTA and Ha’aretz have already run stories summarizing the results, so I’m going to focus on color commentary here. For the play-by-play, I recommend going to the report itself.

The survey organizers have said that this report is just the beginning, and that more detailed analysis will be released later, including data about individual communities. This is good news, because even though this survey provides valuable information about a demographic that has not been studied quantitatively before, the value of lumping Kol Zimrah and Darkhei Noam together into the same pool is still limited. I eagerly await the fuller results, so that we can read about the diversity among independent minyanim, just as we have now had a chance to see how their populations differ from synagogue populations.

I was involved in publicizing the survey, as an organizer (at the time) of Kol Zimrah, and as a blogger on Jewschool and Mah Rabu. We weren’t thrilled with the survey when we first saw it, because a number of the questions reflected frames that are foreign to the communities being studied. This was in part to enable comparison of the results with the National Jewish Population Survey and other previous surveys, and in part simply because the survey authors were operating in those frames. Fortunately, the survey organizers made edits to the survey in response to feedback from concerned communities. The two most significant changes were: 1) The original draft of the survey required respondents to select only one primary community about which to answer the survey. The problem is that this doesn’t reflect the reality of these new communities, in which it is commonplace for people to participate in more than one. The survey organizers graciously added the capability to answer the survey about more than one community, despite the technological hurdles in making this possible, and the results show that this was the right thing to do: 66% of respondents involved with independent minyanim identified themselves as part of 2 or more communities. 2) The original draft had the choices for the movement self-identification question listed “in order”, from “Orthodox” to “Not Jewish”. This presents an obvious bias towards a frame that places all Jewish denominations on a linear spectrum from 1 to Orthodox, a frame that many of these new communities reject. Before the survey went out, the choices were rearranged into a more neutral ordering. Many thanks to the survey organizers for their flexibility! The final version of the survey wasn’t perfect, but is good enough to provide lots of valuable data.

So here we go.

The survey deals with what it calls “emergent sacred communities”, a term borrowed from the emerging church. I’m not going to address whether this term or categorization is accurate or appropriate, but perhaps other Jewschool contributors will.

These communities are divided into three categories: “independent minyanim”, “rabbi-led emergent communities”, and “alternative emergent communities”. As Desh points out, the third category might as well have been called “other”. It includes communities that don’t qualify as independent minyanim because they aren’t independent (because they’re sponsored by a synagogue; note to ZT: there’s a big difference between this and communities that have relationships with synagogues or whose participants once belonged to synagogues) and/or aren’t minyanim (because their primary activity isn’t prayer). I’m very glad to see that the report distinguished between independent minyanim and rabbi-led communities. Media coverage and the Jewish establishment have often conflated these into a single phenomenon, but the structures of the communities are significantly different, and as the survey shows, so are the participants. The report also makes a point of saying that the second category is led by “rabbis functioning as rabbis”. The word rabbi has two meanings — an honorific title signifying a level of educational achievement, and a job description — and when we confuse these meanings, a breakdown in communication ensues. Whether or not a community’s leadership includes the first type of rabbi is of no more significance to the community's definition ("rabbi-led" vs "lay-led", etc.) than whether the sheliach tzibbur has a Ph.D. or an actuarial license. However, it makes a big difference when the community includes a job description of “rabbi”, perhaps especially when the rabbi founded the community (as in many “rabbi-led emergent communities”) rather than being hired by a pre-existing community (as in many conventional synagogues). The report also notes that these three categories “all fall under the more general rubric of ‘emergent Jewish spiritual communities,’ which can also be extended to include conventional synagogues that have been transformed under the leadership of an emergent rabbi, a group that falls outside the purview of this report.” What is an “emergent rabbi”? Is “emergent” (as some have suggested) just a synonym for “cool”?

The introduction to the report heavily cites articles from the Spring 2007 issue of Zeek, which was devoted in part to independent minyanim. Since these articles were only in the print edition and not online, they have been deprived of the additional attention that they would receive from various Jewish online communities, but the footnotes to the report have alerted me to the fact that Mechon Hadar has made some of the articles available online. Perhaps when the dust clears from this survey report, some of those articles will be blogged in greater depth.

There’s a paragraph on page 4 whose content is interesting if you get past the inappropriate frames. It says “An important pattern which appears is one of religious traditionalism and social progressivism”. Unfortunate assumptions in this phrasing include 1) these “social” issues have nothing to do with religious values; 2) ritual practices that converge with “traditional” practices are undertaken for reasons of “traditionalism”. However, the specific examples in the paragraph are enlightening, and underscore the fact that the new independent communities don’t fit into the linear spectrum of “left” to “right” that many people in the establishment (including, apparently, the author of this paragraph) take for granted. The paragraph goes on to refer to “this decoupling of religious and social traditionalism”, but perhaps nothing is being “decoupled” at all — perhaps someone’s strict kashrut practices and his/her stance on the equality of all people regardless of gender and sexual orientation stem from the same religious value system. This paragraph demonstrates its bias more explicitly in the last sentence when it uses the language of “more observant” (a category that is presumed to be well-defined across different groups of Jews, and to exclude “social issues”). But again, if we hold our noses and look at the actual phenomena being described, this describes an important trend that may confound people from another generation (including the people in the Conservative movement who really thought that the people advocating LGBT equality are less fill-in-the-blank).

Page 5 says “From another quarter, former members of the chavurah movement of the 1960s and 1970s, will no doubt seek and perceive parallels with their own endeavors a generation and more ago. At the same time, leaders of emergent communities are just as likely to see and emphasize that which differentiates current efforts at Jewish spiritual community‐building from those that their parents’ generation initiated.” I’d be the first to point out that there are differences between the grassroots efforts of the 1960s and ’70s and those of today; I’m conscious of these differences all the time as a National Havurah Committee board member. But the fact that I’m in that position highlights that the first sentence in this paragraph is inaccurate and unnecessarily nasty. “Former members”? Certainly there are people who were involved in the chavurah movement a generation ago and have moved on, some of them to influential places in the Jewish establishment. (I hear that another Jewschool contributor is working on a “Where are they now?” feature.) But, as I wrote last week in connection with the New York Times article, “the chavurah movement” is not a thing of the past. Many of the chavurot founded in the ’60s and ’70s still exist, so these “former members” are in fact current members of those communities. The National Havurah Committee still exists, and (as the JTA has reported) has become a hub for networking among some of the new “independent minyanim”. So it’s not just the aging hippies who are seeing a fundamental similarity (despite the differences) between the new communities and the older ones; it’s the participants in the new “independent minyanim” themselves. I would go so far as to suggest that the “independent minyanim” in the study have more in common with the first-wave chavurot than with the “rabbi-led emergent communities” in the study.

Page 8 has a list of the 15 communities with the largest number of respondents in the survey. I’d be interested to know whether this is the total number of people who put each community down on their survey, or just the number who marked it as their “primary community”. Four communities on the list are in New York City, and there is overlap between all of them. (Four, not five. The Washington Square Minyan is actually in this Washington Square, not this one. Except that I heard that it’s not in that one either. I’ll let the Boston locals sort it out.) There’s no difference for the purposes of this preliminary report, but this will become relevant for future analyses that look at individual communities. I think it makes the most sense not to restrict it to people who identified something as their primary community, since that’s somewhat arbitrary. For instance, if someone goes to Hadar every time it meets (2-3 Saturdays a month) and to Kol Zimrah every time it meets (1 Friday a month), which do they identify as their primary community? It probably depends on who their social network is, and who they associate with outside of those 1-3 times a month, but they might in fact be fully involved in both communities.

Another interesting thing about this chart, noted on page 9, is that “[t]he only countable number of participants, and a very crude approximation of participant numbers, is found in the number of entries on these communities’ e‐mail lists.” (I’d be interested in seeing statistics on how many of the communities do and don’t have a formal category of “membership”.) Page 10 says that it is “impossible, at this point, to make an accurate estimate of the total number of people encompassed by these dozens of communities”, since many people who participate in the communities never join the email lists, and conversely, many people are on the email lists even though they don’t participate or don’t even live in the same city. (I make a point of being on the email list of every independent minyan in NYC (where I don’t even live this year, but I’ll be back there soon enough) and several in other cities too. As a result, I’m on the email lists of at least 15 independent Jewish communities. I wonder how much I singlehandedly skew the data. So it’s a good thing they didn’t try to draw any conclusions from these numbers!)

As Desh points out, the graph on page 11 (showing the number of “emergent communities” that existed in each year) is misleading — if “emergent communities” are defined as communities founded in 1996 or later, then of course the number is going to shoot up after 1996! Certainly independent Jewish communities have multiplied since 1996, but not by the factor that this graph suggests. It would be interesting to see such a graph going back to the ’60s, though I’m sure it would be much harder to gather that sort of data, in part because of all the communities that have ceased operation. (Side note: the JTA article uses the verb “fail” to describe such a cessation of operations. I think that verb represents an institutional mentality that is not shared by these grassroots communities. These communities aren’t trying to build something that will last forever; they’re trying to build something to meet a need at a particular time. Kol hakavod to those communities that have had the flexibility to shut down when it was time, rather than keeping things going longer than they should have. Cf. the recent discussion about Jews In The Woods. Were the Jewish communities of Sura and Pumbedita “failures”?) Desh says “There is some useful data in there, but it’s hidden in the second derivative.” I wouldn’t go quite that far - I think the first derivative is also useful, showing a steady growth in these communities by whatever definition.

If we look at the second derivative, we can see that the tipping point is right after 2001. My Urban Kvetch insinuates, and a December 2004 article in the Jewish Week says explicitly, that this is due to an interest in spirituality following 9/11. I disagree. The founding of Kehilat Hadar (in New York) and the teshuva that led to the founding of Shira Hadasha (in Jerusalem, thus not included in the survey, but relevant because of the many American communities patterned after it) were both in spring 2001, back when the Empire State Building was still just the third-tallest building in NYC. Both of these communities are perceived as flagships in their particular subgenres of minyanim, and though many of the factors for this explosion in new communities were already in place, the influence of these specific communities as successful proofs-of-concept lowered the barriers to the creation of other independent communities. This process was already chugging along before 9/11.

Page 12-13 shows that women outnumber men by 2 to 1 in the new communities, compared to nearly 50-50 in conventional congregations. An explanation for the latter is that synagogues are made up largely of heterosexual couples (which are 50-50 by definition) and children (50-50 because they have no choice about whether to be members, so they’re randomized). Since independent communities have large numbers of unattached individuals, this explains why their ratios don’t have the same reasons for being 50-50, and could potentially be anything. However, I haven’t yet seen a satisfactory explanation of why they are skewed so much in this particular direction (a trend that has already been noted anecdotally). Any thoughts?

Page 13-14 shows the demographics that we all know: independent minyanim have more young adults and unmarried people than synagogues.

The title of the chart on page 15 (”Shifts in Denominational Affiliation”) is highly misleading. The survey question asked “Regarding Jewish religious denominations, in which of the following were you raised, and what do you consider yourself now?”. The first question is indeed asking about denominational affiliation, but the second is asking about self-identification. Insofar as people affiliate only with these “emergent communities”, their current denominational affiliation is… nothing at all! The heading on page 16 (”very few are Reform”) is similarly misleading — what does “are” really mean?

Now let’s look at the data. As the report points out on page 14, the breakdown of what denominations independent minyan participants grew up in is essentially the same as the breakdown for synagogue members in the NJPS. Unsurprisingly, among all the groups of “emergent communities”, there is a massive shift away from denominational self-identification and toward identification as “other Jewish”. A surprising result is that, among independent minyan participants, Reform self-identification drops from 18% raised to 3% current, with a much smaller drop in Conservative self-identification. I disagree with the report’s suggestion (p. 17) that there is a “basic incompatibility between Reform identity and emergent participants’ Jewish identity”. I would argue that many independent communities actualize the Reform movement’s professed ideals of informed autonomy much more effectively than do most Reform-affiliated congregations. The problem is that the “Reform” label has been affixed to a particular set of styles which are strongly associated with top-down synagogue worship and thus in opposition to what grassroots communities do, rather than to an aspiration that can be realized in a fully informed and participatory community. And as I have written before, the leaders of the Reform movement are complicit in this.

Suppose someone grows up in the Conservative movement, internalizes its values, and then joins an independent minyan that s/he feels best actualizes those values (perhaps better than a Conservative-affiliated synagogue). Then the vibe s/he gets from the Conservative movement is that this independent minyan is really Conservative deep down and why won’t they admit it, thus s/he is still living a Conservative Jewish life, just in a different framework. (This view about independent minyanim, which has been stated by Conservative leaders in various public forums, is inaccurate for a number of reasons, including 1) Conservative Jewish identity is tied to institutions, with which these minyanim are not affiliated, 2) this ignores the many other participants in the minyanim who have different perspectives and are there for different reasons, etc. etc., but that’s not relevant here; what is relevant is that these people can see that, justifiably or not, the Conservative movement is leaving the light on for them.) In contrast, suppose someone else grows up in the Reform movement, internalizes its values, and then joins an independent minyan that s/he feels best actualizes those values (perhaps better than a Reform-affiliated synagogue). Then the vibe s/he gets from the Reform movement is that s/he has left the fold. I mean, the whole service is in Hebrew, for crying out loud! Many in the Reform movement would see independent minyanim as something thoroughly alien to Reform, rather than as a vision of what Reform communities could look like if their participants were more informed and autonomous. So it’s no wonder that the independent minyan participants start to see their own Jewish identity as something other than Reform. I hope that Reform leaders are looking carefully at this survey and thinking about its consequences.

The data on p. 19 shows that independent minyan participants attend services more often than synagogue members. But this may actually be understated, due to a problematic question. The report shows how many people attend services more than once a month, and how many people attend services in their community more than once a month. The problem: some of these communities only meet once a month! So a respondent might attend a particular minyan every single time it meets and still be placed in the “no” category for this question. When the detailed analysis comes out with information about specific communities, I hope that the frequency of the communities’ services is taken into account when analyzing the frequency of participants’ attendance.

Page 21 shows data about Jewish educational background. Discussions of independent minyanim in the press and elsewhere often emphasize day school backgrounds, but I must say that this doesn’t seem to be supported by the data. Yes, independent minyan participants attended day school at higher rates than synagogue members, but the same is true for all of the other educational contexts in the survey. The data shows that 40% of independent minyan participants attended Jewish day school for elementary school and 29% for high school, which, last I checked, is still a minority. In contrast, significant majorities participated in Jewish youth groups, Jewish camps, and Hillel or other college organizations, compared with minorities of synagogue members for all of these, so it would seem that these have had a greater impact on independent minyanim and their participants. I’ll freely admit that my skepticism about the day school claims is motivated by a pro-public-school agenda, and I ask that anyone analyzing the data with a pro-day-school agenda admit that as well.

Also in the chart on p.21, with analysis on p.22, there is discussion about those who have “participated on a program in Israel lasting four months or more”. That’s not what the survey asks at all. The actual question was “Since graduating high school, have you spent 4 months or more at one time in Israel?”, and doesn’t say anything about a program. I write this as someone who answered “yes” to this question, but would have said “no” if it had asked about a program. Now anecdotally, based on my experience as a member of the American independent minyan demographic living temporarily in Israel, I would conjecture that there wouldn’t be a huge difference between the results of these two questions (that is, when I was in Israel outside of an organized program, I felt like an outlier). But if we’re going to draw conclusions based on anecdotal conjectures, then what’s the point of having a quantitative survey?

I’ll leave the discussion about marriage and dating to someone else.

Page 28 shows that participants in the new communities are less likely than synagogue members to say that they always feel proud about Israel. Given that a far higher number of independent minyan participants have been to Israel (p.22) or plan to visit in the next 3 years (p. 28), I would conclude that this means that they have a more mature relationship with Israel. It’s easy to feel proud of Israel all the time when you’re sitting in the US; it’s much harder when you’re actually there.

I was shocked by the result on p. 30 that independent minyan participants give to UJA-Federation at the same rate as synagogue members. Given that the question was phrased “In 2006, did you or anyone in your household make a financial contribution to a UJA-Federation campaign?”, I wonder if some of this was due to confusion about the question — perhaps some single 20something independent minyan participants saw “household” and reflexively thought of their parents.

Page 34 shows that a relatively small number of people said social justice was a reason for their participating in these communities. We should not infer from this that participants in these communities aren’t interested in social justice, but merely that this isn’t an organizational focus. These communities operate within a more a-la-carte understanding of Jewish community, and don’t attempt to cover all elements of Jewish life. Therefore it’s quite possible that the survey respondents are committed to social justice through other venues, but the survey didn’t ask about this.

So that’s just a first look at the survey results. Despite these minor criticisms (which are offered in a constructive spirit), the survey really is an amazing piece of research, which reaches over 1000 participants in 58 communities in 28 states. Many thanks to the survey organizers (Steven M. Cohen, J. Shawn Landres, Elie Kaunfer, and Michelle Shain) for all their work in shedding light on an important and growing Jewish meta-community.

There's more to come from other Jewschool contributors in the next few days. What are your thoughts?