THE APERTURE by Uri Cohen

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.