How will the independent minyan movement affect the traditional American Jewish community? What does this new movement imply for the future of synagogues and Jewish education? Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, Rabbi Ayelet S. Cohen, and Professor Steven M. Cohen will discuss these issues and Rabbi Kaunfer’s new book Empowered Judaism: What Independent Minyanim Can Teach Us about Building Vibrant Jewish Communities on Tuesday, April 27, 7:30 p.m., at The Jewish Theological Seminary, 3080 Broadway, New York City. JTS Chancellor Arnold M. Eisen will moderate the discussion. The program is cosponsored by JTS and the Berman Jewish Policy Archive @NYU Wagner.
Admission is free but reservations are required. For more information and to register, please email publicevents@jtsa.edu or call the JTS Department of Public Events at (212) 280-6093. Attendees are asked to bring photo identification.
This is bunch of hooey! The truth is that the majority of people forming and participating in these independent minyanim are Conservative Jews and the minhag at each is mostly Conservative. I believe they are mostly egalitarian, use Conservative siddurim, observe kashrut, etc. The “independent” part is their lack of wanting to pay USCJ dues and the distaste this generation has for “joining” anything. Eisen should “claim” these minyanim and declare (and celebrate) them as examples of Conservative Judaism succeeding.
Glenn
Serious Conservative Jews don’t worship at the regular Shabbat morning service. That service – usually featuring a bar/bat miyzvah – is a meaningless show that most thinking Jews disdain. Independent minyanim are simply a reaction to the failure of normative Conservative Judaism to inspire and motivate people to live a traditional Jewish life. Time for the Chancellor to go back to the drawing board and come up with something that works for American Jews.
I am in back of this plan. We just need wrap this step into a logical process: Why,How, When, What and Who. The Conservative Rabbis in this country have not been taught to do this.Statements are made but nobody knows how to impliment or who will do the work or who will sell the concept to the congregation.
The following are my suggestions:
bring in the Clergy from B’nai Jeshurum;
bring in Ron Wolfson
bring in Hayim Herring
bring in Debbie Friedman
bring in Craig Taubman
bring in Rabbi Artson
bring in Cantor George Mordachi
Leave these people in a room charge them with developing a process and a method of selling the concept and you will have something that can work.
As the Clergy from BJ like to say:
People do not join unless you touch their hearts
Everyone is seeking
To go forwardthere must be a shared vision between everyone
If you don’t like touchy feely go to a cemetery.
The institutional synagogue is like a department store — some people shop in the worship department, others in the religious school department, or the life cycle event department, or the tikkun olam department. And the overhead thus tends to be higher than that of the specialty shop (whether the specialty shop sells davening, as in the indy minyan, or adult education, as in Limmud, or social action, as in any number of guises).
Meanwhile, if Glenn and Rob are right about the population at indy minyans, the Conservative movement should take pride in having created these serious Jews, as it devises new business strategies to get them back.
Just give the independent minyanim a few years when their kids become bar mitzvah age, want to join the youth group that their parents’ enjoyed, crave the desire to expand beyond a Shabbat community for limud or tikun olam, and need funds to support their activities….. they’ll look (and be) just like the synagogue they are trying not to be.
As I wrote on the Reform Judaism blog (www.rj.org), it’s a mistake to stereotype the population of the indy minyan as 20-somethings or 30-somethings without kids. The kind of people serious enough about davening to seek out an indy minyan tend to be serious enough about Jewish education to send their kids to day schools.
Granted, the people I know in this scene are more likely to come out of the Reform movement than the Conservative — but where they came from is not as germane as where they’re going. And that’s probably going to morph the Jewish community into a different shape than the ones us seniors have lived through.
My prior comments at http://blogs.rj.org/reform/2010/01/my-foray-into-independent-miny.html