THE APERTURE by Uri Cohen

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…