Admin update October 18, 2006
Posted by uricohen in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
Hi all,
Just by way of an update – I’m hoping we can now move towards more of the serious content, having constructed a reasonable history. However, there is a lot left of that history to reconstruct. If you’ve got comments to make, events or items to fill in, please do so at any time, and I’ll add it to the appropriate places in the history.
If you’ve got recommendations for how to organize the information better, please let me know.
Uri
Coming together October 18, 2006
Posted by uricohen in Darkhei Noam, General, Kehilat Hadar, Kol Zimrah, Minyanim, New York City, Synagogues.add a comment
By the end of 2003 Kol Zimrah, Kehilat Hadar and Darkhei Noam had begun, stabilized, and developed as individual prayer communities. They got better and better at serving the needs of their constituents, and the communities flourished on the upper west side, surrounded by the synagogues and other groups which had preceded them.In March of 2004 a new group came on the scene, bent on giving the UWS Jewish community an opportunity to expand its horizons.
Tikvat Yisrael was formed in late 2003 by 8 post-college individuals who had moved to New York City. I was one of them. We had enjoyed our college experiences, which were based on our experiences on our campuses, mostly in Hillel environments. We had enjoyed the opportunity to celebrate shabbat and other Jewish commonalities with others on the campus, and really understand what it means to be a Jewish community made up of a multitude of backgrounds.
When we moved to New York we had a whole new experience. No longer were we limited in our prayer options to the two or three or four services which were sustainable in our Hillels. In New York each person could come as close as is possible anywhere to finding a prayer service which meets their exact needs and interests. Floating from shul to shul, minyan to minyan was possible, and we enjoyed it. By the end of 2003, however, we realized that the community aspect was missing, and we felt that lack quite strongly.
We organized in late 2003, incorporated in January 2004, and had our first program in March of the same year. Our core model involved multiple prayer services operating simultaneously, yet independently under one roof in the same building. Housed in the Abraham Joshua Heschel lower school on 89th and Broadway, we operated three services which we called “liberal”, “traditional egalitarian” and “orthodox”. We stayed away from “conservative” and “reform” because it was our experience that many people felt pigeon-holed rather than described by these titles, and that those terms carried associations that were more harmful than helpful. On the other hand, we felt that we should call the third minyan “orthodox” to serve as a “hekhsher” of some kind for the attendees who would be looking for assurance that the service would meet their needs.
Following the services (held along the same hallway on the first floor), we devised a communal shabbat dinner, to be held upstairs in the gym. The idea was to provide an opportunity for everyone who attended to see, not just hear about others who were dedicated to prayer. To experience community, rather than just read or think about it. The doors on the service rooms were open, melodies flowed out as people could see in. We were hoping that this would be an attractive model, and one that would draw at least 10 people per service (and at least 10 men for the orthodox service).
We were absolutely shocked by the result. We took registrations for the dinner (and charged a nominal fee) and we sold out a week in advance with 140 registrants. We had been hoping to hit 40. We were hoping for 40-50 people come to services, and we were thrilled to see 200. There were people asking if they could come for dinner at the last minute, and we sat as many as we could.
The traditional egalitarian and orthodox services each saw around 80 attendees. The services were lay-led, and featured a traditional liturgy and a devar torah. The traditional egalitarian service featured mixed seating and full participation for women, and the orthodox service featured male-led prayer and a mehitzah. The liberal service was led by an accomplished service leader who led a beautiful non-traditional service using a guitar, with the chairs formed in a circle. This service had around 50 attendees.
For this first event we had men lead kiddush (blessings over the wine) and birkat hamazon (the grace after meals). A woman led the hamotzi (blessing over the bread). While we knew that this could not be a long-term solution to the gender participation issue, we thought that people would allow us some leeway in using this relatively mainstream approach. Though we did get some feedback about this, for the most part people were satisfied with this solution – for now.
The feedback was wonderful. People enjoyed the services, the experiences and the meal. People told us how they had missed these experiences and had really enjoyed them in their college lives. They were grateful to have such an opportunity and were excited for the next one to take place.
Meanwhile, we got press in the Jewish Week, and word began to spread…
Darkhei Noam background September 14, 2006
Posted by uricohen in Darkhei Noam, General, Minyanim, Synagogues.add a comment
Thanks to co-founder Jonathan Stein for this:
“Rodeph Sholom deserves a ton of credit for giving us space at cost. I just
cold called them out of the blue and their desire for real
inter-denominational interaction was very genuine. We even had their Rabbi
speak at DN once. So the back story about institutional versus
non-institutional minyanim needs more nuance. The Reform establishment was
backing some upstarts from the Modern Orthodox community.
And while DN certainly fits within the independent minyan framework, it also grew
out of stirrings within the Modern Orthodox community for something more
egalitarian, e.g., Rabbi Silber and the Drisha Minyan, the Edah Journal
article by Mendel Shaprio, etc.
I think that explains why DN attracts relatively more families than some of
the other ind. minyanim. And that demographic in turn explains some aspects
of how DN grew and didn’t grow, its fundraising, its later ties with
Heschel, etc.
And something I’d love to clarify for posterity: DN developed completely
independently of Shira Hadashah in Jerusalem, though SH’s larger numbers and
earlier launch date have often meant that DN is viewed as the UWS version of
SH. I’m not sure I mind the label, but the goings on in Jerusalem did not
have any direct impact on the development of DN.”
Thanks, Jon!
I’d love to get some more information on the cooperation between Rodeph Sholom and Darkhei Noam here. Can anyone elaborate on the methodology and/or thinking that contributed here?
Corrections, 2003-2004 update and KOE developments September 13, 2006
Posted by uricohen in Darkhei Noam, KOE, Kehilat Hadar, Kol Zimrah, Minyanim.add a comment
Some corrections:
The Hadar Shavuot retreat in 2002 was actually from May 16-19, Thursday through Sunday. The all-night learning sessions (Tikkun Leil Shavuot) began at 11pm, and the davening at 5AM was led by another Hadar co-founder Mara Benjamin. Julia Andelman davened on the morning of the second day, not the first.
The success of this retreat was a shocker to the organizers, as well as everyone else. Originally planning the retreat for 75 participants, the eventual 230 participants blew those expectations out the door. There was a waiting list and plenty who were not able to attend because there were not enough accomodations.
This first retreat set the tone for the retreats to follow, as well as for the programming over the rest of the year and also in other locations. Participants from this retreat returned to their homes in Washington, Boston, and elsewhere to begin similar minyanim with similar programs and retreats! I’d love to include some of that background here as well…
As the calendar turned to 2003, the minyanim continued to move forward. As Ben noted in his comment, Kol Zimrah underwent an “IPO” and more firmly established its role in the community. Hadar continued to grow and stabilize not only its prayer services and locations, but also the Beit Midrash program and began its Social Justice activities. Can we get some details on this?
Darkhei Noam continued to grow as well, and used multiple facilities from Rodeph Shalom for their services. Its leadership core continued to define the minyan’s objectives as well as directions for the future.
KOE continued to meet as usual, though at some point in here (not sure when exactly) Rabbi Halivny-Weiss announced his impending move to Israel, which required the community to consider the options for its next era.
Also in this timeframe (2003-2004) KOE had discussions about the issue of women’s roles in the Torah service. As is their custom, KOE took a poll of its membership, and then presented Rabbi Halivny-Weiss with the issue for consideration. The result of these discussion was that for the most part the status quo – women did not participate in reading torah or having aliyyot – would stand. There were opportunities for all-women’s torah readings in a separate room. On certain occasions, however, there would be an option in yet another room for “mixed keriyya” – where men and women would participate equally. More details?
Entrance of Kol Zimrah September 6, 2006
Posted by uricohen in Kol Zimrah, Minyanim, Synagogues.add a comment
Courtesy of Ben Dreyfus’ “Comment”:
- Kol Zimrah (before it had a name) began with an email, announcing “A heavily musical Shabbat service. The service will include the full kabbalat shabbat and maariv liturgy, and will be accompanied by acoustic guitar. It will include melodies from Debbie Friedman to Shlomo Carlebach to ‘Traditional’ to never-before-sung, and the harmonies will be spectacular. Bring your favorite siddur, and your voice.” People forwarded this email to their friends and their lists, and their friends forwarded it to their friends, and 67 people showed up to that first service, and the rest was history. The first service was in the playroom at the aforementioned Key West. (The use of the playroom was unauthorized, and the doorman told our Key West liaison “Don’t do this again.”)
After soliciting suggestions for names, we named Kol Zimrah quickly, so that it could develop a community identity. (We were afraid that if the minyan didn’t have a name, then people would refer to it as “BZ’s minyan”, or by the names of one of the other leaders, in the same way that Kehilat Kedem in Jerusalem was known colloquially as “Philip’s minyan” for a long time before it had a name. We didn’t want Kol Zimrah to be seen as an oligarchy.)
Even though KZ is not that much younger than the other minyanim mentioned, it represents a new generation in some ways, because by the time we started, there was already an active independent minyan scene in place, and we saw Kol Zimrah as self-consciously fitting into the independent minyan ecosystem. So we started off meeting one Friday night a month (which is approximately true to this day), with the understanding that we could hop around to other ongoing minyanim (or ad hoc apartment davening) the other 3 Friday nights, or on Shabbat morning.
When we first envisioned Kol Zimrah, I anticipated that it would appeal only to a very narrow slice of the Jewish community, since some people would not go for a service with instruments on Shabbat, and others would not go for a service all in Hebrew. Instead, KZ has attracted an incredibly diverse community, with a wide range of backgrounds and practices. We have had the opportunity to explore pluralism within our community. For example, our services adhere to the macroscopic structure of the traditional liturgy, but the leader can incorporate whatever microscopic variations s/he wants, from any siddur, with the understanding that each participant is also free to relate to the service in different ways.
For the first year, Kol Zimrah was highly mobile, operating on a $0 budget and meeting wherever we could find space. After that first service in the Key West playroom, we met a few times in various spaces at JTS, a few times in a large (but not large enough) apartment still in the Key West, and in the basement of another apartment building. Eventually we largely stabilized, meeting in Riverside Park in the summer, at the SAJ (with whom we have built a positive relationship) during the year, and at the Jewish Home & Hospital on occasion.
In late 2003, Kol Zimrah incorporated as a religious corporation, and had an “IPO“, asking for voluntary contributions from people in the KZ community. This made it possible to pay for space, and we now have a potluck Shabbat dinner after services each month (using the two-table system). To this day, Kol Zimrah is run entirely by volunteers, and funded entirely by contributions from the KZ community (with no membership dues, and no membership).
Hadar drill-down 2002 September 6, 2006
Posted by uricohen in Kehilat Hadar, Minyanim, New York City, Synagogues.add a comment
Here are some more details on the development of Hadar in 2002.
Here are the places that Hadar met for Shabbat morning services through August 2002:
Ethan Tucker’s apartment (Apr 28, 01)
Len Sharzer’s apartment (5/12/01-6/23/01)
113th St. Apartment (6/30/01)
El Taller (7/14/01-1/29/02)
Claremont Children’s School (7/28/01)
Franciscan Community Center (12/1/01-12/29/01)
Advent Lutheran (1/12/02)
JTS- Stein Chapel (1/26/02)
NY Buddhist Church (2/9/02)
Barnard (James Room) (2/23/02)
Ansche Chesed 6th Fl (3/9/02)
2nd Pres Church (3/23/02)
Various Friday night services also took place, utilizing spaces such as: Central Park, Key West; and then other holidays: 7th day Pesah in conjunction with Congregation Shaare Zedek, Tisha B’Av at Congregation Habonim, Simhat Torah at Congregation Ansche Chesed, Purim and High Holiday services at Trinity Church, St Lukes Hospital, and JTS.
2002 also saw the beginnings of three key programs which have remained as mainstays of Hadar’s operations to this day:
1. The Shavuot Retreat: May 2002 saw the first Hadar Shavuot Retreat at Camp Ramah in the Berkshires. The retreat occurred on Friday and Saturday May 17-18, and featured an all-night Tikkun Leil Shavuot – a full night of study lasting from after dinner (around 10PM) through dawn, culminating in what was, perhaps, the most spiritual davening of the whole year. Julia Andelman led Shacharit beginning at 5AM capping off the night. The remainder of the retreat featured various classes, outdoor activities, meals, and other activities.
2. High Holiday Services: Hadar held its first ever Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services in the fall of 2002. Preceded by Selichot services led by Rabbi Ebn Leader, the services set a new precedent for High Holiday services, requiring no ticket purchases, only preregistration and a suggested donation to keep Hadar operational. As I heard from people who attended services not that year but in the years that followed, “it’s the longest, fastest Yom Kippur services ever.” The length of the full liturgy was enhanced by the spirituality of the singing and unison of voices.
3. The Hadar Beit Midrash: Hadar began its first official education program in 2002. The program, held at the JCC in Manhattan, was a diverse array of teachers speaking on a more diverse array of topics to a fascinated audience. The program has seen different topics (Parashat Hashavuah, the weekly Torah portion), philosophy, history and other topics.
By 2002 Hadar had also seen its first lunch and learn program and its first aufruf.
The Second Presbyterian Church became the regular home of Hadar in 2002, which put an end to the multiplicity of locations. One could now attend Hadar on a given week without any question as to where it would be held. This was a new stage in Hadar’s development – attachment to a space (while not a permanent or residential arrangement) added a permanence and a dependability which heretofore had only been associated with synagoguges. Now the only question was not where, but WHEN Hadar would meet. Two times a month at that stage…
Stabilization period and entry of a third… August 30, 2006
Posted by uricohen in Darkhei Noam, Kehilat Hadar, Kol Zimrah, Minyanim.3 comments
As 2002 wore on, Kehilat Hadar and Darkhei Noam stabilized their meeting schedules, always meeting on each other’s off-weeks.
Hadar tried many different meeting spaces – from the El Taller Art studio on 104th and Broadway, to the church on 115th and Riverside. Finally, Hadar settled on the Second Presbyterian Church at 96th Street as its regular home, while it searched for more permanent space. The summer location became the Kraft Center at Columbia University. Can anyone help fill other details of the space search?
Darkhei Noam continued to meet in the school on 78th street, and then moved to the gym in the Rodeph Shalom building itself on 84th street.
There was a period (how long?) when the minyanim were each meeting 2 weeks per month mostly on alternating weeks. Can we get some specifics?
In November of 2002, a new minyan came on the scene. Kol Zimrah began its series of Friday night services utilizing a traditional all-Hebrew liturgy with the additions of guitar and drums.
Please help me fill in the gaps here!
Edits and 2 new minyanim August 29, 2006
Posted by uricohen in Darkhei Noam, Kehilat Hadar, Minyanim.1 comment so far
From emails and posts, a few edits:
As BZ correctly suggests, the events previously recorded as happening in the Spring of 2002 were actually the Fall of 2001 (how time flies!). That Friday night on the Key West roof was September 21, 2001, and the traditional egalitarian minyan was, in fact named “Kehilat Hadar” around October of 2001.
Hadar founder Elie Kaunfer suggests “I don’t remember when the 113
minyan ended, but it definitely was going on in Spring 01 – that was its
heyday. As for Hadar’s tipping point, that is up for debate, but i always
thought it was Tisha B’Av 01, when we thought 40 people would come and 180
did. It was in central park.”
Kehilat Hadar (known as Hadar, for short) was an innovation in traditional egalitarian service options on the UWS. It featured a serious approach to tradition and liturgy, coupled with a demand for spirituality, song and energy. There was no talking ever to be heard at Hadar services, and the services became known for their high-caliber leaders, readers of the Torah and teachers. So punctilious was Hadar about the quality of the services that they started a practice of sending detailed guidelines to each person who would be playing a role during services. Those leading were required to be “listened to” by one of the gabbaim (organizers) or a deputized representative. The rationale was, to my mind, that Hadar felt that the community was tired of low-quality poorly planned “ad hoc” services. It was time to get back to basics, and this approach worked well. Partially as a result, Hadar needed to focus on being warm and welcoming, as their demand for quality also produced a perception of eliteness – a challenge that they have worked hard to combat ever since. However, this did not impact its success in numbers, as Hadar quickly grew, regularly drawing 200 people on a monthly and then semi-monthly basis. The founders and first gabbaim of Hadar included Elie Kaunfer, Mara Benjamin, Ethan Tucker, Josh Greenfield, Adam Wall, Debbie Bohnen, and Debbie Kaufman.
As for other happenings as of the Spring of 2002, another minyan had begun. Meeting in the Rodeph Shalom school building on 78th Street, a minyan featuring a low mehitzah (separation between men and women) and an unprecedented role for women in prayer services (that is, on the UWS in an “orthodox-affiliating” setting). Women could lead Pesukei Dezimrah (the preliminary section of the traditional liturgy), Seder Hotza’at veHakhnasat Hatorah (the service surrounding the taking out, reading and return of the Torah scroll to the ark), read from the Torah, come up for aliyyot, read the haftarah (section from the prophets), lead a study session and other things during services.
As Jeremy points out, this minyan, later named Darkhei Noam, had an immediate audience and impact. 75-100 people attended this service once a month right from the start. The original leaders of this minyan were Tamara Charm, Lisa Schlaff, Scott Lipson, and Jonathan Stein.
One more interesting phenomonen to note here – Hadar and Darkhei Noam were in much collaboration. Sharing documents, ideas, and strategies, they helped each other and also arranged their schedules so as not to conflict. This shared interest in mutual success was the first of its kind, to my mind, and served as an important baseline for what would come later, resulting in my assertion later on that the independent minyanim today are more similar to each other (horizontally) than they are to their respective “movement” associations, if those are even possible…
In the beginning August 28, 2006
Posted by uricohen in General, KOE.5 comments
In the beginning (September 2001), there were synagogues. Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, BJ and others. Each had its membership, its Rabbi, its building and such. The synagogues in my rotation were:
Ohab Zedek (Rabbi Allen Schwartz): OZ world served as the center of the Upper West Side universe. Friday night was a madhouse, as hundreds and hundreds of “young professionals” would crowd into the synagogue (men downstairs, women upstairs in the balcony) for, what is still, one of the best Friday night services. The big attraction, however, was afterwards, when these hundreds of young folk would stand around for an hour or so, clogging the exits, blocking the streets, and forming the greatest singles event of the year – every week. Schmoozing, catching up, and the like, meeting new people – a very important feature of the Upper West Side.
Shaarei Zedek (Rabbis Hillel Norry, Mark Ankcorn and Julia Andelman, in succession): A Conservative synagogue just 25 blocks from the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS). My understanding was that the community had just (in the past couple of years) become egalitarian, which had caused quite a rift in the congregation, and there was a rebuilding process in place.
Ansche Chesed (Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky): A Conservative synagogue which was (and is still) made up of a number of separate prayer services which meet in the building. Besides this unique feature of the synagogue, it ran (and runs) its own homeless shelter, which really serves to integrate social justice values into the normative life of the constituents in a unique way to the Upper West Side.
There was (and is) also Ramath Orah (Rabbi Friedman), Shearit Israel (the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue) (Rabbi Hayyim Angel), Lincoln Square (then Rabbi Alan Mintz), and Congregation Habonim (Rabbi Joanna Samuels), all of whom I went to on an infrequent basis. The Jewish Center (Rabbi Berman), Rodeph Shalom (Rabbi Levine), the Society for the Advancement of Judaism (SAJ, Rabbi Michael Strassfeld) and the Reconstructionist Synagogue of the West Side, BJ, the Carlebach Synagogue, Young Israel of the West Side, Ohab Shalom and others were on the radar, though I never attended services there as a resident of the UWS. Nor had I attended services at JTS.
AND THEN there was KOE (Kehilat Orach Eliezer). An anomaly, in the sense that it was a prayer group which was nota synagogue, but rather an independent group of people who had secured their own rental space (not in a synagogue) yet met every week and had Rabbi Weiss-Halivni to serve as its leader. Services were (and are) lay-led. At the time I moved to the Upper West Side, we considered KOE as the cutting edge of the Orthodox UWS presence. Its opportunities for the participation of women in an orthodox environment were unparalleled, and it had a large constituency. Another known and unique feature was the focus on prayer as an activity to be enjoyed – hence a slower (sometimes too slow) pace. i always found KOE to be quite warm and welcoming, and a pleasant place to go.
Then, one week a friend mentioned to me that a traditional egalitarian minyan was going to be meeting on my roof (the Key West, where else?), and it had wonderful prayer services, but didn’t have a name… this was the spring of 2002.
Comments? Questions? What have I left out or misrepresented? Please help paint the picture of the history prior to the spring of 2002.
The Plan August 28, 2006
Posted by uricohen in General, Minyanim.add a comment
Here is the initial plan for how this site will work:
Each month there will be a theme, introduced by a question and/or statement relating to that theme. I expect that the content of the themes will overlap at various points, and I anticipate lots of tangents and digressions. However, we’ll do our best to keep the conversations on topic so that we get thorough conversations of each topic.
The topics will begin with the recent history of independent Minyanim, and we will branch out from there. Please give your comments and supplement the perspective(s) given. While New York may well end up taking the bulk of the conversation, communities and minyanim outside of the New York area are of great interest, so please share information in their regard!
