Jewish Communities Worldwide

In Search of Authenticity: New Expressions of Jewish life in North America

A comprehensive overview of Jewish identity and cultural renewal initiatives underway in North America.

In Search of Authenticity: New Expressions of Jewish life in North America

The seven JEN communities might garner more attention and be among the more successful emergent communities, but they are not the only ones. A full mapping that includes every emergent community is tricky to execute. Where does one draw the line between an emergent community and a decades-old independent synagogue? Where does one place non-spiritual innovative Jewish communities, or inventive projects from within establishment organizations?

The Kenissa Network, a “communities of meaning network,” is attempting to unify Jewish organizations that see themselves as innovative (trying to “reimagine Jewish life and community”),98. It comprises hundreds of organizations, some of which are emergent communities, others in the independent minyanim world, and still others that focus on environmental or progressive advocacy. Kenissa has compiled a comprehensive directory of these organizations.

Another network is the Open Dor Project, a collective of “emerging spiritual communities” who share many traits with the JEN communities. These include: the Jewish Studio Project in Berkeley, CA, which combines an art studio and Jewish spirituality; At The Well in Detroit, which does young adult engagement; Cohere in Chicago, which caters to interfaith families or those on the outskirts of organized Jewish life, and helps guide and educate them for home-based Jewish practice; Beloved in Brooklyn, which works to build home-based meaningful Jewish experiences; Malkhut in Queens, an inclusive, progressive and meditative spiritual community; The Open Temple in Venice, CA, which attempts to “re-enchant” Judaism through reinventing ritual, creative arts, and a wholly “21st century vibe”; The Den Collective, a young-adult engagement program in Washington DC (more about this later); and the New Synagogue Project in Washington DC, which combines spirituality with activist progressive politics and radical inclusivity.

Emergent Projects and Young Adult Outreach in Establishment Institutions and Denominational Synagogues

There are also numerous highly successful innovative young adult outreach programs within established organizations and denominational congregations. Some of these can be described as emergent projects, while others have adopted successful strategies in engaging with young adults. These include, among others: the 92nd St. Y in Manhattan; Riverway Project in Boston; Kehillat Israel in Brookline; The DEN Collective in Washington DC; Emanu El in San Francisco; and more.,100

92nd St. Y – New York

The 92nd St. Y is a unique feature of the Jewish organizational landscape. Founded in the 1930s, it has acted for decades as a “bridge” institution between the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds, hosting Jewish cultural but also non-Jewish secular cultural events that engage the larger community. Rabbi Scott Perlo, was the associate head of the Bronfman Center for Jewish Life at the 92nd St. Y (when interviewed). He previously served as the JEN rabbinic fellow at Sixth & I. Perlo now heads the new Romemu location in Brooklyn.

According to Perlo, the Bronfman Center is in many ways an emergent community within an established institution. Perlo believes, Jewish outreach is inherently different from working with engaged Jews. While this might sound obvious, its implementation is not always so. Synagogues, he explained, are institutions designed for stability, and geared to those already a part of the Jewish community. They are, however, largely irrelevant to those on the outside of the Jewish community, the majority of American Jews today. Institutions such as his focus on drawing such people in and offering them the fundamentals of Jewish education so they can transition to established Jewish institutions. Emergents are more successful at engaging disaffected Jews because they focus on the “UX” – the User Experience, and design engagement “products,” or initiatives to fit user needs.

Perlo described a range of such educational products, from a 23-week introduction to Judaism class, in which many non-Jewish partners of Jews participate, to a Jewish parenting class for non-Jewish parents of Jewish children. He added that the 92nd St. Y also engages in some religious experimentation, such as on Purim when they hosted a “roast of Haman” with Jewish comedians at a bookstore. “This was not religious per se,” he noted, “but very Purim and very Jewish.” This combination of accessibility and authenticity are crucial, and is why he thinks Chabad and Aish HaTorah, the two most prominent Orthodox outreach programs, seem to be so successful.

Perlo echoed many of the studies of young adult Jews, that found they do not see their Jewish identities as exclusive. He reflected that young Jews do not view their relationships with non-Jews as evidence of a choice to leave Judaism or a weakened Jewish identity. They are therefore puzzled that the established Jewish community views them as such. Therefore, while many rabbis and communities struggle to stem the flow of intermarriage, Perlo seems less alarmed by the phenomenon, and considers it as a sign of broader social acceptance of Jews in America. “It can’t be that being accepted into society is the biggest challenge for contemporary Jews,” he added.

The Riverway Project

The Riverway Project, headed by Rabbi Jennifer Gubitz (at time of writing, Gubitz is no longer with Riverway), is a young adult outreach program based out of Temple Israel (Reform) in Boston. This too acts very much like an emergent community within an established denominational synagogue. While Riverway Project does not have membership, Gubtiz estimated that pre-covid, 150 people attended their monthly Shabbat dinner and prayer service (around 30% of those attending each Shabbat are newcomers), and 1400-2000 attended High Holiday services.

With an approach like the JEN communities, Riverway Project at times conducts programming in the Temple building, or rents cafes, bars, pizza shops or churches in various neighborhoods around Boston and Cambridge, or partners with the local “Moishe House” (more on this later). Riverway also makes use of shared office spaces to conduct educational programs in other parts of the city (“people don’t like to commute,” Gubitz noted).

Gubitz rejects the common impression that millennials are not interested in Jewish life. Rather, she insists, they are often uninterested in established institutions, which tend to cater to families and the family life cycle, what she and others termed as “Judaism for children” or “pediatric Judaism” as others have termed it. Millennials are delaying starting families, or forgoing them altogether, and have a hard time connecting to institutions geared to families and children.

Gubtiz discussed some of the keys to Riverway’s success, including its focus on programs with religious content (Riverway does not hold secular-social events), no formal membership with only voluntary fees (which millennials are happy to pay), outreach and relationship building (“think Reform Chabad”), active use of social media and alumni networks to spread the word (summer camps, Hillels, etc.), and leaving the synagogue walls to meet young adults where they live. She suggested that the “big parties” with shallow content many outreach organizations employ fail in further engaging young Jews. Rather, programs must be of high quality with serious content, intimate in nature, and radically welcoming (“not test Jewish levels at the door”).

From Gubitz’s perspective, the challenge is not in reaching out to young adult Jews but in working to effectively engage them, so they wish to become members of the main congregation. The congregations that invest significant resources in young-adult outreach projects invest significant resources hope to realize long-term gains in congregational continuity (and that of the larger Jewish community).

Kehillath Israel – Brookline MA

Kehillath Israel (KI) in Brookline, Massachusetts, offers another innovative model. Rabbi William Hamilton, who has served as senior rabbi of this historic Conservative synagogue for over two decades, described his community as carrying on a legacy of inclusion, communal unity, and forward thinking. KI is located in an historic semi-urban area outside Boston with significant Jewish life (around 50,000 young Jewish adults). Understanding the generational shifts taking place generally, and in his community specifically, Hamilton has initiated cooperation with an array of Jewish groups and initiatives that share KI’s vision.

Hamilton opened the KI campus and extended its facilities to a handful of religious and social Jewish communities who share the space and cooperate in various ways. Alongside KI’s 450 member households, the campus is home to Congregation Mishkan Tefila with its estimated 230 member households, Washington Square Minyan with about 150 member households, Minyan Kol Rina with roughly 50 member households and Minyan Shaleym with around 40 households. The campus also houses a range of other groups: Russian speaking Jews – nearly 500 families who make up this community; people with disabilities; Israeli-Americans; and Jewish seniors (a senior residence is being built on the campus). KI is also pursuing a partnership with Base Hillel, a young adult engagement program (discussed later).

Beyond its regular partners, KI hosts a broad range of social, cultural, and religious initiatives, and collaborates with various organizations, such as the Jewish Community Center (JCC), Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), different leadership programs and more. On any given Shabbat, KI hosts five different prayer services with roughly 500 individuals attending a number of services happening simultaneously. Larger events, like Tikkun Leil Shavuot (a traditional and recently revived tradition of learning Torah in groups during the night of the Shavuot holiday), which KI hosts each year, can draw close to 1000 young adults from the broader community. Hamilton further noted that KI community members often attend en masse events held by other communities, out of a sense of solidarity with the wider Jewish community.

Communities that partner with KI are as independent as they wish to be. Young adult engagement is conducted by each sub-community with its own unique approach and young-adult cohort. Hamilton believes that having such varied approaches increases the chances that different kinds of people can be engaged (“five prayer experiences can reach five different kinds of Jews…”).

This partnership model is based on Hamilton’s reading of trends in American Jewry, especially among millennials. Aware of the challenge in engaging this growing demographic (post college, pre-family), Hamilton described his mission as making Judaism attractive by making it a force for good in the world. Hamilton’s idea of partnering with different groups sprang from his understanding that the Jewish world is excessively institutionalized and organized, and that American Jews have become accustomed to defining themselves in terms of their organizations instead of focusing on their goals vis-à-vis the larger world.

Hamilton stressed that empowerment was key within the larger community – millennials want to “belong” but not necessarily “fit in,” meaning they want a place where they feel welcome and included without relinquishing their sense of self. Communities that allow individual expression to flourish and encourage their smaller sub-communities to find their own clear visions and voices, achieve this goal. Each community needs to be energetic about what it is doing, and about fulfilling its larger purpose in the world.

KI’s vision has three fundamental aspects: empowerment, inclusion, and partnership. Empowerment, Hamilton explained, is having and expressing a clear identity, voice, and vision (intentionality). Inclusion refers to a willingness to accept various, dynamic and creative expressions of Judaism, and realizing that different modalities work with different people. Partnership refers to a model in which a larger community can host smaller, individual and unique groups, who come together and pool resources and efforts when it makes sense, and remain independent when it does not.

This has had significant logistical and practical benefits as well, although Hamilton stressed this were not the initial goal of partnering with the communities included in KI. There are many aspects of efficiency involved in such a move: spaces are flexible by design, and shared by the various partner communities; larger-scale programs, such as early childhood education, are also shared, as it would make little sense to have five different, small programs. Larger programs based on holiday celebrations are also cooperative in nature and draw in outside communities. The individual groups choose when to remain autonomous, such as for prayer services. This also has the welcomed effect of overflow between the KI’s constituent congregations, leading to a larger, healthier, and more dynamic community overall.

Community Sponsored Emergent Programs

Another model of young adult outreach and engagement is broader sponsorship of community-wide young adult engagement programs.

The Den Collective in Washington, DC is essentially an emergent project that works to engage with young adults and connect them to the Jewish community. The Den Collective hosts a range of activities from Shabbat and holiday meals and prayer services, Jewish study, life cycle events, rabbinic guidance and more, “meeting people where they are.”

Rabbi Josh Rabin of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ – the Conservative movement) shared that this project was an initiative of DC area Conservative synagogues and was supported by the USCJ. Rabin described the program as having completely different success metrics from standard synagogues and has proven itself as the most viable young-adult engagement model he has worked with, which could be emulated in other areas.

Denominational Synagogues with Thriving Young Adult Engagement Programs

As emergent communities have recently generated significant hype, media attention, and philanthropy, some denominational rabbis have felt overlooked. While there are a handful of successful emergent congregations, which draw hundreds of participants on a weekly basis and thousands on high holidays, and a few hundred independent synagogues and minyanim around North America, the Union of Reform Judaism (URJ) comprises close to 900 synagogues with almost 900,000 adult members. The Conservative movement, despite its decline, still maintains close to 600 synagogues across North America. Despite the innovation happening in independent communities, as well as the decline in denominational identity and the shrinking of many U.S. synagogues, the existing network of denominational synagogues remains the dominant framework for most American Jews.

There is no shortage of highly successful and thriving denominational synagogues across the country. We spoke to denominational rabbis of such thriving congregations that are located near well-known emergent synagogues. Specifically, we spoke with rabbis in San Francisco, New York, and Chicago, near The Kitchen, Lab/Shul, Romemu, and Mishkan, respectively.

San Francisco/ Bay Area

Senior Rabbi Jonathan Singer of Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco described a thriving Reform synagogue with 2100 household members and the largest young adult engagement program on the West Coast. He attributes this success to Emanu-El’s approach to making the synagogue a center for Jewish life – cultural, social, and spiritual.

Singer was somewhat skeptical of the notion that emergent communities are changing the face of the Jewish community, echoing what others we have interviewed have pointed out – “ultimately they’re a synagogue and will seek some kind of affiliation.” Like other denominational rabbis, Singer stressed the importance of Jews affiliating with national denominations, which connect congregations to one another and have long established rabbinic seminaries, camp systems, youth organizations, Israel programs, and more. Denominational organizations are critically important for these connections. However, discussing emergent communities such as The Kitchen, also in San Francisco, Singer appreciates their entrepreneurial creativity and energy. At the end of the day, he noted, there is always a need for more synagogues and rabbis to reach out to people.

Emanu-El hosts around 200 participants for any given Shabbat service, and 300 young adults for the monthly “late Shabbat” young adult service. The congregation has roughly 600 young adult members. Singer rejected the notion that young adults are not interested in the Jewish community, noting that Emau-El is undertaking a massive multi-million dollar building project, in which young adults are heavily involved.

Many of the trends affecting synagogue membership and attendance numbers, he points out, are related to demographic shifts that go beyond the Jewish community, such as re-urbanization and delayed marriage and child rearing. Singer stressed that the bigger challenge many congregations face at the moment is the popularity of DIY (do it yourself) Judaism, which encourages many of the lesser committed Jews to leave the organized Jewish community, and thus weaken it. This is a relatively new trend in American Jewish life whereby people feel less compelled to belong to an organized Jewish community. Rather, they might hire freelance clergy or engage with a Jewish community when it suits them to conduct their lifecycle event or find resources on the internet to “do it yourself,” regarding ritual observance.

Anshe Emet Synagogue – Chicago

Anshe Emet is a “booming” Conservative synagogue in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago’s North Side (near Mishkan) with 1200 member families and many more non-member participants. Rabbi David Russo, who heads its young adult engagement efforts, notes that Anshe Emet is lucky to be a part of a diverse urban congregation and thriving Jewish area.

Anshe Emet is known for its active young adult community, which meets once a month for a young-adult service, in addition to the regular alternative minyanim held in parallel to the main service, and which attracts a generally younger audience of 50-100 each Shabbat morning. On High Holidays, the congregation hosts around 4,000 attendees.

Russo, like Singer in San Francisco, describes Anshe Emet’s success in terms of the principle of being a “center for Jewish life,” and for creating multiple access and entry points beyond worship. In addition to multiple prayer service options each week, Anshe Emet conducts a range of social, intellectual and educational activities, including a Jewish text study program and educational opportunities in cooperation with the Hartman Institute classes for different segments of the community, a weekly basketball night,  programming for the 50+ cohort such as trivia night and musical outings, a choir, a youth movement, social justice work, and more. Russo attributed this to the synagogue leadership’s vision and willingness to take risks. This also requires a significant investment in full-time staff dedicated to such programming.

While Anshe Emet strives to be inclusive, including of interfaith couples, it is not in competition with nearby Mishkan, as there are “so many Jews” to engage with, and the demographic that seems to be drawn to communities like Mishkan is often more disengaged or estranged from the Jewish community. Russo noted that there is a culture of cooperation between Anshe Emet and Mishkan (which at times uses space in their synagogue) and other synagogues in the area.

Park Avenue Synagogue – Manhattan

Park Avenue Synagogue (PAS) is a thriving Conservative congregation on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. With 1800 member families, it is often described as one of the flagship Conservative congregations in the United States.

Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, who has been the senior rabbi at PAS for the past 14 years, described his congregation as unique within its surroundings. The congregation is situated in a part of the city that offers every conceivable Jewish experience, from more traditional Orthodox communities to start-up communities like Romemu and Hadar. Cosgrove reflected that due to this, he does not see himself as being in competition with these communities and celebrates their success. Unlike emergent communities, PAS focuses on retaining the younger generations within its community, rather than reaching out to those unengaged from Jewish life, for whom there are plenty of other organizations.

The existence of a variety of Jewish institutions and options allows Cosgrove to be more selective in his programming and funding allocations. If the nearby 92nd St. Y regularly hosts big-name speakers, he doesn’t feel the need to compete, but rather asks what specific and unique value PAS can contribute to New York Jewish life. This is similar to the questions various successful innovative and emergent communities are asking. It is, however, admittedly, a luxury of those communities that live in populous and diverse Jewish centers.

Cosgrove discussed the status of non-Orthodox denominations and the uncertain future of denominationalism generally. Ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Cosgrove is proud to be a Conservative rabbi, although he recognizes that denominational labels do not serve the same purpose or carry the same weight they once did. In the end, he explained, people will make decisions about which communities suit them best, whether they are based on the social scene, the rabbi’s sermons, the cantor’s voice, the quality of early childhood care, etc. He added, however, that we cannot dismiss the importance of denominational labels altogether, as they help define a certain package of communal expectations: the nature of its leadership, its red lines, and parameters for membership.

Despite being an unapologetic Conservative institution with its expected norms, hashkafa (Jewish outlook), and style, Cosgrove attributed his community’s success in engaging existing and new members to its offering a non-judgmental expression of Jewish life. The community “meets people where they are” and positively helps them grow in their Jewish lives. “Guilt, fire and brimstone do not sell,” Cosgrove added.

Cosgrove and his community are unique in their ability to straddle the fine line between maintaining tradition and adapting to change. Cosgrove credits his community’s success in maintaining a multi-generational membership with being able to negotiate this balance.

Independent Minyanim Revisited

Independent minyanim (prayer groups) refer to a separate and earlier development within the contemporary Jewish innovation ecosystem. Although independent minyanim differ from emergent communities (they are lay led, more grassroots in their founding and organization, tend to be more observant, and usually cater to more highly literate Jews), they are similarly an important aspect of post-modern, post-denominational, and post-institutional trends in American Jewish life.,101

The independent minyan movement developed in the late 1990s and early 2000s to fill a need within a different underserved Jewish demographic – primarily highly engaged Jews from liberal backgrounds along with some Modern Orthodox Jews seeking an outlet for more liberal and individualistic Jewish expression. The independent minyan movement tends to draw participants with Conservative (and Reform to a lesser extent) backgrounds seeking an intense and observant egalitarian prayer community, and to a lesser extent participants with Orthodox backgrounds seeking a prayer experience that allows for the greater participation of women and LGBTQ Jews while remaining within a halachic framework, and in some cases, within the boundaries of Orthodoxy.

For those coming from Conservative (or Reform) backgrounds, this is in part due to the fact that the elites of the Conservative movement are often observant and Jewishly literate while the majority of congregants are less so. Sociologist Charles Liebman (whose theory is summarized by Wertheimer) explains this as the gap between “folk” and “elite” religion in Conservative Judaism today. That is, the “folk” accept the “‘symbols and rituals and beliefs which the leaders acknowledge as legitimate, and also the hierarchical authority structure of the movement itself. However, ‘folk religion is…rooted in superstitions.’” These beliefs are often “distorted understandings of elite religion.” Liebman goes on to explain that “Folk religion tends to accept the organizational structure of elite religion, but to be indifferent to the elite belief structure.”,102 This might be similarly compared to how “traditional” Israelis still approach religious life.

Wertheimer, in offering an example of this folk/elite gap, describes a typical Conservative family who eats in a non-kosher restaurant and mistakenly receives cheeseburgers. They then proceed to use their understanding of religious law to determine the best course of action (scrape off the cheese, ask for new burgers without cheese, etc.) to adhere to their understanding of tradition. However, from an elite religion point of view, the entire debate would be nonsensical as the restaurant and hamburger meat itself were not kosher to begin with.

Thus, for the elites of Conservative Judaism, raised in the Schechter Day Schools and Ramah summer camps, their understanding of religion and how religious communal life should play out does not mesh with the majority of Conservative congregants today. This has long-term significance for the Conservative movement, which is essentially losing some of its potential future leadership to these new independent frameworks. In fact, many of the founders and leaders of independent minyanim and emergent communities have Conservative backgrounds and were educated in Conservative institutions.

As Rabbi Elie Kaunfer explains in his book Empowered Judaism, the minyan movement began to fill a need its participants felt was not being met by the existing community. The m inyan Movement, however, was never intended to compete with the existing community but rather to act as a part of it or a compliment to it. A key aspect of this desire to be a part of the community is the insistence on being free from labels or official denominations, despite that many of the independent minyanim have their own standards. Therefore, free of denominational labels, the minyan movement often refers to itself as outside Jewish organizational politics.

Simultaneously, while Orthodox synagogues, for the most part, offer an intense prayer experience and most congregants are observant and understand religion from the “elite” perspective, there is little room for women or LGBTQ individuals in synagogue and ritual life.

Therefore, two kinds of independent minyanim have emerged in North American Jewish communities (and now in Israel): egalitarian minyanim and partnership minyanim. Both fill a space that falls between Conservative and Orthodox Judaism and tend to draw from both denominations. However, there is a thin but important dividing line between the two with respect to Jewish law. Egalitarian minyanim allow for full gender and LGBTQ equality, thus placing themselves outside of Orthodoxy, while partnership minyanim “bend” the limits of female participation to remain within the boundaries of Orthodoxy, at least according to liberal halachic interpretations.

Aided by the growing internet access and start-up culture of the late 1990s, a growing group of young knowledgeable Jews began developing independent minyanim. They created the experience they felt was missing – in some cases a traditional but egalitarian, energized prayer experience with like-minded young people, in other cases an Orthodox space that allows for greater participation of women. One of the key trends at play here is the growing realization that niche communities can be formed without needing to cater to a broad community consensus.

A few of the larger, more established independent minyanim own their spaces, while most others rent or borrow space from larger Jewish institutions, sometimes synagogues, use other rented spaces, or meet in people’s homes. They are lay-led and volunteer-driven. Membership costs, when applicable, are low (hundreds of dollars per year, as opposed to thousands for membership in established synagogues). For the more urban minyanim that cater primarily to young adults, there is little demand for a full-service community replete with building costs, educational and social programming for children, or salaried leaders. For many suburban minyanim that cater to families, the participants tend to be members of established synagogues that offer the services the minyanim do not.

Kaunfer is also one of the founders of Kehilat Hadar and of the minyan movement. Since then, the Hadar brand has expanded to include Mechon Hadar (the Hadar Institute), which he heads, and Yeshivat Hadar, a center for high-level Jewish textual study that attracts both Orthodox and non-Orthodox students. Through these efforts, Kaunfer has essentially helped usher in a new stream of Judaism that flows somewhere between Conservative and Orthodox Judaism – Halachic, composed of highly literate Jews, observant yet egalitarian, often with a more liberal political bent – despite that it calls itself non-denominational and avoids labels.

Kaunfer described around 60 active independent minyanim in 2009 (around the time he published a book and a study on the topic, Empowered Judaism: What Independent Minyanim Can Teach Us about Building Vibrant Jewish Communities), serving around 20,000 mostly young urban individuals. Today we succeeded in counting around 110 throughout North America, the majority being egalitarian independent minyanim and roughly a quarter of which are partnership minyanim.

Explaining the difference between independent minyanim and emergent synagogues, Kaunfer noted that from his perspective, emergents are synagogues built around young, talented and charismatic rabbis who are allowed to flourish, something they cannot always do in established synagogues (“essentially, they’re excellent synagogues”). Their common denominator is that they involve (mostly) young Jews willing to adapt Jewish expression to the start-up culture outside of the established organizations.

Kaunfer placed the appearance of independent minyanim and later emergent synagogues within a historical perspective of generational innovation, much as the Chavurah movement appeared in the 1960s. While the Chavurah Movement never took over as the dominant model, Kaunfer observes that it helped shape the culture in mainstream institutions, as it influenced many future leaders. He noted that if Ikar and the emergent communities, or Kehilat Hadar and the minyanim were doing something, you could expect mainstream institutions to adopt such practices a decade later. More than one person interviewed described the capacity of the various independent communities for experimentation, something many establishment synagogues are less flexible in doing, but will often later adopt those successful experiments. For example, he mentioned that the Conservative Cantors Assembly put out a publication called “Music of the independent minyanim” of the original music developed for the independent minyan Movement.

As we review the landscape of creative religious energy, where do independent minyanim stand in 2020? We reached out to over 100 North American minyanim and received responses from 18, who participated in our survey. Responding minyanim included larger, smaller and mid-sized minyanim, from across the U.S. (and one in Canada) in urban and suburban (and rural) areas. Twelve were Egalitarian (a few not halachic) and six were partnership minyanim. The full list of participating minyanim and their answers can be found in Appendix 3.

What did we find out? In short, we saw that if early on minyanim were primarily an urban phenomenon, they have since spread to the suburbs. If early on, this phenomenon was centered around pre-family young adults, today the urban minyanim are split between those still geared to young adults and those that include a range of ages and stages of life. The independent minyan model, both partnership and egalitarian, is increasingly taking hold on college campuses. We also see that if early on, minyanim were people’s (primarily young adults) main mode of Jewish engagement, today, and especially among adults with families, a majority of minyan participants also hold membership in established synagogues and play active roles in the established Jewish community.

The minyanim, in large part, still attract those who are Jewishly literate and who seek a deeper and more intense prayer experience they find unavailable in large Conservative synagogues but with higher and varying levels of female participation not found in Orthodox congregations. Unlike emergent communities, however, they do not usually attract nor seek to attract those with little Jewish literacy or those on the margins of the Jewish community. Many participants, especially those with membership in larger communities, seek the intimacy of the minyanim – the small group, lay-led, and volunteer-driven atmosphere. No responding minyanim reported having paid professional leadership.

In part to encourage minyan-goers to maintain membership in the broader community, and in part to meet demand, few minyanim reported holding regular weekly services with most having between one and three regular monthly meetings in addition to holidays and other learning events. Some groups meet on Friday nights only, others only on Saturday mornings, but most offered a mix. None conduct daily services, and few offer early childhood education. Some offer High Holiday services, others do not. Many of the minyanim interviewed noted a high level of cooperation with the established Jewish community in their area, and many rent space in Reform or Conservative synagogues.

Some two decades after the formation of the first independent minyanim, we can summarize their influence on mainstream synagogues. Many denominational rabbinical students partake in these Jewish expressions and bring with them key defining characteristics of the minyan movement – such as the music, the concept of “havruta” text study (small, intimate group study), and the participatory style. It is too early to tell if the concept of halachic egalitarian Judaism will remain within the Conservative and Orthodox gap, or if it will eventually merge with more liberal factions in the Orthodox world.

A conversation with a Minyan Member

Rebecca Remis, 31, lives in Western Massachusetts and connects to Jewish life primarily through a grassroots, independent traditional egalitarian minyan. Like many American Jews, Remis grew up enjoying Jewish camp and her Jewish education, but was less inspired by synagogue life. While living on the West Coast, Remis connected to Jewish life through informal means, such as having Shabbat or holiday meals with friends.

Remis would later reconnect to Jewish life through Eden Village, a pluralistic Jewish camp in New York State that places an emphasis on organic agriculture, Jewish spirituality, and progressive values.

Remis described her difficulty in finding her place in the Jewish community but cannot seem to find the right combination of elements. One the one hand, she seeks a synagogue that has a more traditional, Hebrew-intensive prayer service with fewer alternative readings. On the other, she seeks a setting that would be accessible for her husband, who although Jewish does not read Hebrew. Moreover, Remis explained that she seeks a community that is focused on social justice issues and matters like climate change. While not necessarily anti-Zionist, Remis considers herself “Zionist-agnostic.” She explained this means a community that eschews things such as the prayer for the State of Israel and acknowledges Palestinian human rights and self-determination. While Remis believes in a Jewish state, she also believes in Palestinian human rights, and therefore feels lost in the Zionist/anti-Zionist debate. In general, she added, at the end of the day, she feels more comfortable in anti-Zionist spaces as she is often hesitant to speak critically of Israel in Zionist spaces. Federations especially, she pointed out, seem to focus many of their efforts on fundraising for Israel, and that is not where she wants to be. It is unclear to her, she noted, why American Jewish communal life needs to be wrapped up in Israel, celebrating Yom HaAtzmaut (Israel Independence Day), or saying a prayer for the State of Israel, especially if Palestine and the “messiness of the conflict” are not discussed or acknowledged.

Remis described her frustration with establishment institutions like federations or mainstream synagogues, which tend to be very Zionist, and from her experience, uninterested in nuanced discussion of Israel-Palestine, which she sees as alienating. Remis pointed out that ideally she would seek a community such as Ikar or a large and vibrant independent minyan, that offers traditional Judaism, is welcoming and inclusive of Jews of all kinds (Jews of color, Jews by choice, etc.), and speaks compassionately about Israel-Palestine, or minimizes Israel’s role in congregational life and focuses on American Judaism. She added that many synagogues she has visited tend to have a mostly older membership and lack energy and vibrancy, and that she has yet to find a synagogue that offers the combination of values she seeks.

On the Outskirts of Orthodoxy

Despite appearances from the outside, the Orthodox world in the United States is hardly monolithic. Like the non-Orthodox world, it is broad, diverse, and complex.,107 Although a comprehensive survey of the Orthodox landscape is beyond the scope of this work, it would be useful to briefly discuss some of the trends taking place in what some academics refer to as “fringe Orthodoxy” or “not-so-Orthodox.” Significant developments are taking place on the liberal edge of Orthodoxy and influence the development of the independent and post denominational frameworks discussed in this study.

Orthodox “Kiruv”

Jack Wertheimer, in his 2018 book, The New American Judaism, offers an overview of the world of Orthodox outreach and engagement (“kiruv”) with non-Orthodox Jews. According to his estimates, Chabad engages weekly with around 55,000 mostly non-Orthodox adults for text study. As of 2016, there were 1,700 Chabad emissary couples in the United States (4,400 worldwide) and an additional Chabad presence on 150 college campuses (mostly in the U.S.).,108 Many individual Chabad centers are estimated to reach out to a few thousand individuals a year. Similarly, Aish HaTorah has a presence in 15 cities across the U.S. and on many campuses, with 65 centers of Jewish study. Another organization, Meor, claims to reach 10,000 Jewish students annually on 21 U.S. campuses.,109 Momentum (previously the Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project) is a successful kiruv program that works with mothers. Since its founding in 2008, Momentum has brought 18,000 women from 29 countries to Israel, on a sort of “Birthright for moms” program, with the intention of strengthening their Jewish identities, and by extension the Jewish identity of their families. They participate in a full year of educational programming after their trip. Part of their funding comes from the Israeli government (much like Birthright).,111

In all, Wertheimer estimates that there are between six and seven thousand Orthodox outreach workers across the United States, double the number of Conservative, Reform and other liberal congregational rabbis combined. Most of the non-Orthodox Jews who engage with kiruv programs do not become Orthodox themselves,,112 but many do end up strengthening their engagement with other forms of Jewish life and bring in new perspectives and experiences.

Many of the rabbis and Jewish communal professionals interviewed referenced “Chabad outreach methods” and “membership models” (form relationships, be non-judgmental, offer a positive Judaism, no membership or hybrid membership, voluntary donations). The innovative methods, aggressive outreach, and nimbleness Chabad introduced to American Judaism, from an organizational and practical perspective, have certainly influenced the non-Orthodox world.

Liberal Edges of Orthodoxy

According to Wertheimer, Modern Orthodox Jews in North America exhibit a combination of the fullest commitment to an intense Jewish life, the highest levels of secular education, the highest income levels, and significant success in societal integration. According to the 2013 Pew Research Center study of American Jewry, Modern Orthodox Jews constitute 3% of American Jewry (versus 6% who identify as ultra-Orthodox).

The Modern Orthodox community, however, is currently enduring pressures from both right and left. From the right, as the ultra-Orthodox grow more self-confident, some norms and approaches to Jewish life have begun to “infiltrate” Modern Orthodox institutions.

The challenges that most interest us, however, are from the left of Orthodoxy. A majority of Modern Orthodox Jews (70 percent) study at secular universities, where they encounter non-Orthodox Jews and non-Jews, and take courses that may challenge their world views. Moreover, the growing centrality of the internet, with its range of opinions and platforms, and the success of the religious education most Modern Orthodox individuals receive, has empowered the individual at the expense of traditional rabbinic authority. Intense and spirited debates within Modern Orthodoxy over the role of women and, to a lesser extent the inclusion of LGBTQ individuals, are commonplace. Some 12% of those raised Modern Orthodox eventually head in a more liberal direction to the emerging post-Orthodox, non-denominational space discussed throughout this study.

One aspect challenging Modern Orthodoxy from the left is referred to by some as “Open Orthodoxy.” This refers to the liberal edges of the Orthodox world, halachically observant people who seek to be more inclusive and intellectually open, especially regarding the role of women and LGBTQ individuals. Although not fully egalitarian like most of the independent minyanim (partnership minyanim are not fully egalitarian), Open Orthodoxy takes a more flexible approach to Halacha. The progenitor of this movement, Rabbi Avi Weiss, founded the Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (“enthusiasts” of Torah in Hebrew) (YCT) seminary in 1999 in New York, as an alternative, more liberal rabbinic studies program than that of Yeshiva University, the mainstream home of Modern Orthodox Judaism in the United States.

Taking things a step further, Weiss and Rabbi Daniel Sperber founded, in 2009, Yeshivat Maharat, also in New York, to offer a form of Orthodox rabbinic ordination to women.,115 Highly controversial in the Orthodox world, in the past decade, Maharat has ordained over 49 women, with 60 more currently enrolled in the program.

Many Orthodox critics do not recognize YCT, Weiss, or Open Orthodoxy as Orthodox at all. Ironically, perhaps, Kaunfer points out that it is only within Orthodoxy that breakaway movements wish to maintain their connection to the original denominational brand. By contrast, non-denominational ventures that stemmed from Reform, Conservative, or Reconstructionist Judaism seem to seek total independence from organizational or denominational labels.,116

Jonathan Sarna and others are convinced that the emergence of Open Orthodoxy, a partly egalitarian yet Orthodox framework for Jewish expression is a third piece of a nascent middle ground between Conservative and Orthodox Judaism, alongside independent minyanim and partnership minyanim. Together with the emergent communities, these are forming and shaping what he termed a “new Jewish middle.”

Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, of Ohev Shalom in Washington, DC, is an Open Orthodox rabbi, and one of the founders of Start-Up Shul, an organization that brands itself as an “Open Orthodox Chabad.” Start-Up Shul provides seed funding and mentoring for YCT and Maharat graduates to start their own synagogues in areas with growing liberal Orthodox communities. It envisions dozens of such communities popping up over the next few years and is supported by private foundations like Aviv Foundation with guidance from Hillel International.

In an historic development worth noting, a synagogue was recently (July 2019) founded by a Maharat graduate, Rabbanit (female rabbi) Dasi Fruchter, as a part of Start-Up Shul’s efforts. Until then, 11 Maharat graduates had served in rabbinic roles throughout the country, but this was the first time a woman opened and led an Orthodox synagogue. As this and similar congregations and leaders consider themselves Orthodox, women cannot lead prayers or read from the Torah with men present, but they can teach, make halachic decisions and provide pastoral support for the congregation.,117

The South Philadelphia Shtiebel is a synagogue that employs much of the same terminology used by emergent congregations and promoted by Open Orthodoxy, as can be seen on their website (“creating new access points to Jewish life, etc.”),118.

According to Sylvia Barack Fishman, an expert on contemporary Jewish life at Brandeis University, efforts to increase women’s inclusion in Orthodoxy go back decades, to the emergence of Jewish feminism as part of American Second Wave Feminism (1960s-1980s). Orthodox Women’s prayer groups began to appear in the early 1970s across the United States, and the number of Orthodox women with liturgical fluency and access to participatory prayer grew. Orthodox girls and women began to study Talmud and rabbinics, expanding the background many already had in biblical texts and Hebrew. Educational institutions expanded and diversified to accommodate them, and Orthodox gap year programs in Israel also expanded, leading to growing numbers of Orthodox female scholars of rabbinics.

Blu Greenberg, considered by many the founder of Orthodox feminism in the United States, wrote and advocated for these and other evolving changes within Orthodox Judaism in her iconic 1981 book of essays, On Women and Judaism: A View from Tradition. One of Greenberg’s most quoted contributions is the assertion that throughout Jewish history, “where there was a rabbinic will, there was a halachic way.” Essentially, she argued that Jewish tradition has wrestled throughout history with knotty problems and has found strategies to update itself when the need to do so felt sufficiently compelling.

Fishman describes Greenberg as a key player in the creation of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) in 1997, one of the milestones in the burgeoning American Orthodox feminist movement. From its very first conference, JOFA has brought together thousands of Orthodox feminists from diverse American locales as well as Israel. JOFA continues to provide important resources for change from within the framework of tradition; it publishes scholarly works, hosts webinars, and produces blogs and podcasts. JOFA focuses especially on issues such as “chained women” (agunot), women’s interaction with the Torah, participation in certain prayers and other areas of Jewish ritual where Jewish law does not explicitly exclude female participation. Other JOFA leaders, such as the late Belda Lindenbaum, helped to found educational institutions like Midreshet Lindenbaum (Lindenbaum Seminary) in Israel, which educates women in high level rabbinic studies.

JOFA leaders have been crucial supporters of the partnership minyan movement, and of the growing number of Orthodox institutions that ordain female clergy, including Maharat. Together with the parallel Israeli Orthodox feminist organization, Kolech, JOFA has provided an important “address” for the legitimacy of Orthodox feminist change.

Non-Spiritual Innovative Communities

The communities and organizations discussed until now were primarily spiritual in nature, or new expressions of synagogue life, even if a few focused more on learning or community building than prayer. However, many young adult Jews do not connect (primarily) to the spiritual aspects of Jewish life. A number of innovative organizations have popped up to engage with young adults in other ways. Some are undergirded by the concept of intentional communities and offer young Jews the chance to engage in Jewish life in ways they are passionate about. Other initiatives offer engagement through participation in informal and intimate communities, whether professionally or lay-led, and still others offer deep Jewish text and content engagement in pluralistic settings.

Hazon is one of the leaders of Jewish innovation in a non-religious setting. Billing itself as a “Jewish lab for sustainability,” it seeks to engage young Jews and repair the world, through a Jewish framework. Founded in 2000, Hazon plans to engage 50,000 individuals in meaningful Jewish experiences and build a network of 600 “JOFEE” (Jewish, outdoor, food, farming and environmental education) leaders by 2022. (at least, it had espoused these goals prior to the covid pandemic).,123

Rabbi Nate DeGroot, Hazon’s associate Director and spiritual and program director for the Detroit area, and a previous JEN rabbinic fellow at Ikar, saw Hazon as a unique and meaningful way to engage with young Jews – through bringing together something near and dear to many. DeGroot believes that sustainability will have to be the next major revolution (industrial, digital, etc.) and that Judaism and Jews can be at its forefront.

Jewish Sustainability: Agriculture and the Environment

Chelsea Taxman, 34, currently lives in Western Massachusetts. She was raised in a Reform household in a smaller Jewish community, and was involved in childhood in Jewish camp, Hebrew school, and a youth group, all of which she enjoyed.,124

After attempting to fit in with mainstream Reform and Conservative synagogues, Taxman disengaged from Jewish life for several reasons. Today, she is a regular participant in the Ohel Minyan, a traditional, egalitarian independent minyan formed during the Covid pandemic “in a tent, literally.” The group has around 40 members who participate and holds at least one minyan (quorum of 10) on any given weekday. She also partakes in a Torah study group with a social and racial justice focus and an LGBTQ lens that meets virtually each week. Taxman identifies as queer and noted the importance to her of being a part of a community that is LGBTQ friendly or queer-literate.

After returning to her hometown in her early 20s, she tried to connect to Jewish life and synagogue life, but there was not “much to offer.” It felt to her that most synagogue life was either for older adults or families with children. For single, childless adults in their 20s and 30s, there was not much of a crowd. She eventually gave up on Jewish life, and mostly celebrated Shabbat and holidays with her family. Taxman noted a resentment and frustration at becoming “one of those Jews who only attends on high holidays.”

She described a sense of frustration with her lack of Jewish literacy, an overwhelming feeling that she did not know enough to participate in Jewish life, and which caused her to further retreat. She felt she did “not know where to begin” and that she would be judged in Jewish settings.

It was by chance that she connected to Jewish life through her expertise and involvement in environmentalism and sustainable agriculture. She was hired to work at Eden Village – a pluralistic, inclusive, agriculture/ environmental Jewish camp in upstate New York. Eden Village is a kosher and shabbat observant and has traditional egalitarian prayer – but it is not affiliated with any religious movement. Taxman described being exposed to a Jewish world in which she felt very much at home. Moreover, and for the first time, she partook in an LGBTQ inclusive, pluralistic, environmentalist space that was not Zionist and not Israel focused. She described her initial reaction in thinking “what is this sanctuary of Judaism I’ve never seen before?” It was not “the white boxy cooky cutter thing.” Rather, it was very land based and spiritual, the “Judaism I didn’t know I wanted….a breath of fresh air.” It was open to other conversations and “very Diaspora focused.”,125

Taxman, like one other interviewee, described a relationship with Israel that can be described as “Zionist agnostic.” She feels no desire to make Aliyah, and noted that Zionist spaces make her and others feel “not Jewish enough.” And so, she described a sense of feeling that she would never be “Jewish enough” unless she lived in Israel, or that to be fully Jewish one had to live in Israel.

Taxman is more interested in applying Judaism to her life “where she is.” Unlike much of the binary language used today, she describes herself as not anti-Israel or anti-Zionist, but noted that she doesn’t want her Judaism or Jewish identity to revolve around the State of Israel.

Eden Village introduced her to the broader world of Jewish environmentalism and organizations such as Hazon and Adamah. Coincidentally, this allowed Taxman to connect to her own Jewish roots as a descendant of the Ba’al Shem Tov (the founder of the Chassidic movement and an 18th century herbalist in Ukraine). This experience would lead her to a fellowship with the JOFFE (Jewish Outdoor, Food, Farming & Environmental Education) program, a part of Hazon. Today, Taxman combines her knowledge of sustainable agriculture and herbalism with Judaism and Jewish life.

Taxman recalled additional factors that turned her off from mainstream Jewish communal and synagogue life. In addition to her sense of feeling out of place as a childless young adult, she also pointed out that most spaces she attended were “not very spiritual” and seemed more of a “country club” focused on politics and appointing board members who make decisions, and less with spirituality and Jewish life.

Prohibitive synagogue membership fees also kept her away from joining a synagogue. Like many her age, Taxman noted not being financially stable. Some synagogues are more flexible in providing financial aid or accepting those who cannot afford dues to be members anyway, but she felt this placed her in an uncomfortable situation.

Having lived in a number of places, Taxman described a few synagogues that she has attended that did speak to her, such as the New Synagogue Project in the DC area, Hinenu in Baltimore and Tsedek in Philadelphia; all are either lay-led or have young rabbis, are LGBTQ and racial justice focused, and offer a higher spiritual engagement.

Moishe House

Moishe House engages young adults in grassroots community building. Moishe House began in 2006, by a group of young adults who felt they were too old for Jewish life on campus but not old enough for institutional Jewish life. Together with a philanthropist, a group of young leaders came together to host a Shabbat dinner, which evolved into a variety of Jewish programs and activities led by young adults. The concept formed whereby the young adult “community leaders” would live together and use their house as an informal center for Jewish programming and community building. The philanthropic element of the organization offers these leaders subsidies for rent and programming. Today, there are more than 100 Moishe Houses in 27 countries around the world, 84 in North America. It is estimated that the franchise engages with over 60,000 individuals annually in over 10,000 programs.,126

Moishe House’s success is in large measure the result of empowering young Jewish leaders to define for themselves the needs of the local community. They offer a range of programs, among them Shabbat dinners, holiday related learning and celebrations, cooking, and artistic and cultural activities. Like  other innovative organizations, Moishe Houses organize “pop-up” events as a response to the tendency of young adults to avoid membership or commitment, despite that they still seek out Jewish community and participating in Jewish social programs and events.,127

According to one Moishe House resident, Hanah Cytron, 26, from Minneapolis, the more events a community holds, the higher the rent subsidy it receives; holding 4-5 events a month means receiving a 50% rent subsidy.,128 Monthly Shabbat dinners are popular at many Moishe Houses. Other events include learning encounters, guest speakers, cooking workshops, and celebrating holidays together. Cytron described her engagement with Moishe House as finally being in a Jewish space that “did not have an adult in the room,”  where the participants could determine the programming that best suited their needs, rather than being dictated by donors.

Base Hillel

Hitting on some of the successful aspects of Chabad’s “shluchim” (outreach emissaries) approach combined with the Moishe House concept, Base Hillel was launched in 2015 by Hillel International, the Jewish university campus organization.,129 Whereas Moishe House sponsors non-professional young adults to organize and host other young adults in their homes, and whereas Chabad is an ultra-Orthodox organization at heart, Base Hillel is run out of the homes of professional pluralistic outreach rabbis (including liberal Orthodox). The rabbinic couple that runs each Base organizes programs relating to Jewish ritual, study, and community service, offering the low-key Jewish connection many seek at this stage in life.

Through its nine locations (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Miami, Ithaca, Harlem and Berlin) Base Hillel is estimated to have served around 10,000 young adult Jews.,130 The founders, all young pluralistic rabbis and their spouses, got the idea to launch the program realizing they were already doing this outreach work informally in their communities. They approached Hillel International, which has since adopted the organization, and lent its name. Base Hillel is a play on words – “base” is an Ashkenazi Jewish pronunciation of bait, the Hebrew word for house.

Base Hillel manages to attract a wide range of young Jews through its unique approach of offering depth and authenticity while remaining intimate, inclusive, and informal. A 2018 study commissioned by the organization (conducted by researcher Steven M. Cohen) showed that 13% of those who participated came from non-Jewish homes, 21% from Orthodox homes; a third were raised with a Jewish education, while a fifth grew up with no Jewish education.,131

Jewish Text Study and Jewish Learning

One of the defining characteristics and areas of activity helping shape the emergent and independent space is the growth of Jewish textual learning programs and the growing popularity of Jewish learning among non-Orthodox Jews. Much of this activity has not taken place in traditional institutions of learning but rather through various creative initiatives and start-ups.

Hadar Institute

The Hadar Institute is perhaps the flagship Jewish learning institution in the world of emergent and independent Judaism in North America. Having branched off from the successful minyan of the same name, Hadar has helped shape the concept of serious Jewish text study in an egalitarian framework for people with diverse backgrounds – Orthodox and non-Orthodox. Hadar started in 2007 with 18 students in a summer learning program and now operates dozens of education programs throughout the year, ranging from multi-day immersive programs in New York and Washington DC that attract over 700 people each year (between 2500 – 3000 so far in all), to their highly popular online learning platform with two million content downloads annually. Additionally, Hadar announced plans to ramp up its activity in Washington DC, including a yeshiva and dormitory housing to be headed by Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld (who appeared in the section about Open Orthodoxy). Hadar will also expand its reach to Chicago with local classes and community events.,132  The faculty comes from a range of denominational backgrounds but are all committed to traditional and deep egalitarian Judaism. Through its various programs, Hadar directly and physically engages with 20,000 individuals annually and hundreds of thousands more through their online digital content.,133

According to Kaunfer, who co-heads the Hadar Institute, the growing exposure among young Jews to in-depth Jewish education is making an impact. In a recent study, evaluators found that these experiences “reverberate with meaning and concrete Jewish ‘takeaways’ even eight months later.”,134 In addition, Hadar’s content, consumed mainly through online distribution (but also in traditional modes such as books and CDs) offers participants “a way to think about Judaism differently from before” and also “create tangible changes in their lives.”

Hadar differs from other Jewish learning and rabbinic studies institutions that offer deep Jewish textual study from a halachic but egalitarian perspective. Unlike Jewish Theological Seminary, for example, the main rabbinic and Jewish studies institution of Conservative Judaism, Hadar began as an “institution for lay people, for grassroots practice, commitment and learning, and it remains that,” according to Rabbi Ethan Tucker, one of its co-founders.,135 This is, as Tucker and Kaunfer (both ordained at JTS) point out, to build a committed and knowledgeable base of lay leaders, much as exists in the Orthodox world today.

Moreover, Hadar differs from the major rabbinic education programs because its approach is not academic, but rather focuses on independent text study, based on the “yeshiva model,” as opposed to the “university model” most programs emphasize today.,136

Svara

A “traditionally radical yeshiva,” Svara was founded in 2003 by Rabbi Benay Lappe in Chicago, bringing together serious and advanced Talmudic study with the LGBTQ experience and identity.,137 Svara can be translated as “moral intuition” in Aramaic.

While being ordained as a rabbi at JTS, Lappe discovered the world and wisdom of the Talmud. However, as an LGBTQ individual, she felt she could not engage with her “whole self in the room,” as openly LGBTQ students were not accepted at JTS at the time. To her surprise, her experience engaging in Talmudic study was the opposite of what she had been taught growing up; that the Torah was not the “immutable world of God, fixed, unchanging and eternal.”,138

Lappe found that the Talmud was essentially a book compiled by those who had been on the margins of society. She notes that “Judaism survived because of a small fringe group of queer, weird, hippie guys said, ‘we love this tradition, it’s gonna look a little different in the future… we can make it better’ – and I think we’re in another one of those moments today.” When the religious tradition is in the hands of those who have experienced such profound affronts, whether racism, homophobia or others, their use of “svara” can help transform the world. This, she claims, is the essence of Judaism, “shaping a certain kind of human being who will naturally make the world a better place, sensitive to the oppression of others.” In many ways, Lappe explains, “to be Jewish is to be queer.”,139

Lappe started Svara in 2003. Soon after, more mainstream and heteronormative Jews began to attend as well. Today, when the LGBTQ community is more fully accepted in the non-Orthodox world, Svara is no longer singularly focused on that community.,140 According to Lappe, it turned out, the “queer” experience was something that could benefit a crowd much larger than the LGBTQ community itself. According to the website, “Svara is the only source of law that can overturn even the Torah itself. SVARA’s work follows the direction of Chazal, the Rabbis of the Talmud, who were willing to make radical moves – sometimes uprooting the Torah Itself – to make Judaism more meaningful, compassionate, and responsive to the human condition. When you have Svara (moral intuition) and Gemara (learning), you are qualified to be a player, changemaker, and radical innovator in the Jewish project and the world at large.”,141, ,142,

In 2019, 3500 people were learning at Svara. With the Covid pandemic and the addition of online learning options, roughly 7000 people enrolled in Svara in 2020 with offerings ranging from intense multi-year study to introductory programs.,143

Svara takes traditional Jewish text learning, often reserved for the Orthodox, to audiences that do not necessarily have a strong Jewish background, and to audiences who might have been left out of the world of Talmudic learning, queer or straight. The theme is similar to what we see in emergent communities – making “deep Judaism” accessible to newcomers.,144

Other Examples

Kaunfer, Green and others noted a resurgence of interest in Jewish learning and deep Jewish text study in pluralistic and sometimes marginal spaces. Within this sphere, Romemu, discussed earlier, initiated a program focusing on Jewish mystical text learning. Also, while not technically part of the North American Jewish environment, the Pardes Institute of Jewish Learning in Jerusalem serves a primarily English-speaking audience, offering high-level Jewish text study in a pluralistic environment.

Similarly, we can follow the spread of learning festivals like Limmud, online learning platforms like 929, or Shalom Hartman North America, which works with numerous communities to enrich Jewish life and knowledge including through a distance-learning program. These are in addition to various learning frameworks mentioned that function on a local level, like Sixth & I or 92nd St. Y, and the various opportunities provided by individual synagogues of all denominations. Beyond this, more American Jews than ever are studying Jewish history, thought, and texts in universities; over 70 academic institutions have Jewish Studies departments today. This is, in addition to the tens of thousands of non-Orthodox Jews who study with Chabad or other Orthodox outreach programs, like the Jewish Learning Institute (which reported 60,000 people enrolled in 2015).,146

During the Covid lockdowns, a TikTok influencer in her mid-30’s named Miriam Anzovin made Jewish world headlines for her Daf Yomi (daily page of Talmud), where she brings her daily text study to life in ways that are accessible to young people less familiar with the world of Jewish text study. Anzovin has drawn the ire of many in the Orthodox world with takes such as this, which paraphrased one Talmudic sage’s reaction as: ”Oh my god! What the actual fuck is wrong with you, you misogynistic ageist dipshits.”,147 As her online defenders and roughly 31,500 followers would have it (Anzovin has 17,000 TikTok followers and another 14,500 Instagram followers. When the article about her was first published, she had 7,000 followers), her language and regular use of sarcasm and humor are not meant to be disrespectful, but are way to engage with sometimes misogynistic, racist, or homophobic texts, while translating their core messages into contemporary language. Anzovin’s use of TikTok connects to a broader trend of dozens of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok pages and groups devoted to Jewish text study, often using these unorthodox methods.

Incubators, Accelerators and Hubs

In the world of social and religious innovation, there are a handful of Jewish innovation incubators, accelerators, and hubs working to identify, develop, fund, and promote the next innovative Jewish engagement projects. Some of these are independent organizations like UpStart or Hakhel, which we will now discuss, or Start-Up Shul, discussed in the previous section. Others work from within established organizations, such as the Schusterman Foundation, Hillel International, and some of the major federations.

UpStart

UpStart is one such organization seeking to identify, grow and accelerate innovative Jewish projects that seek to redefine community in a contemporary setting. Founded over a decade ago, UpStart has been in its current form for the past two years, and is the product of a merger of innovation hubs such as Joshua Venture, Bikkurim, Present Tense, and Innovation Lab.

According to Aliza Mazor, UpStart’s chief field building officer, UpStart and others in this field have adapted models from the hi-tech and secular worlds to Jewish communal life. One such innovation is the use of UX – user experience or user design thinking – and involves approaching Jewish life with a problem-solving mindset. Mazor sees her organization’s role as being the R&D shop of Jewish life in North America and beyond. Some of what UpStart does can be characterized as entrepreneurship – launching new projects and organizations. UpStart also works in what Mazor dubbed “intrapraneurship,” assisting existing organizations to adapt and modernize incrementally.

Mazor explained that ideas accepted by the accelerator, 10 projects every 18 months, receive $100,000 in seed funding, mentoring, and networking. UpStart has helped launch over 100 such organizations and projects since it began.

According to Mazor, the innovative Jewish ecosystem is struggling with gaining access to new funding sources. She noted that the current pool of funders with an interest in Jewish communal innovation is limited to those who came to the table early – funders such as the Jim Joseph Foundation, Natan, Covenant Foundation and others. There are few “seed funders” for projects in the early stages. Mazor is not alone in asserting that Jewish organizations need to start thinking and working with innovative hybrid non-profit/profit funding models.

Hakhel

Hakhel, the Jewish intentional communities incubator, was founded in 2014, inspired by the intentional communities that have succeeded in Israel since the 1980s. According to its director Aharon Ariel Lavi, Hakhel is a joint partnership between Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Hazon in the U.S. (discussed earlier), with the intention of strengthening Jewish life in the Diaspora and its connections with Israel. According to Hakhel, as economic and social forms of organizing have shifted from centralized and hierarchical structures to more dispersed, shared models (Uber, AirBnB, etc.), so have communal structures. Hakhel offers nascent communal initiatives professional guidance, seed funding, resource and skill building assistance, trips to Israel to learn from existing communities, and, most importantly, to network with each other. Hakhel has seeded over 135 such young communities in 30 countries as of early 2021. Within the incubator, Hakhel maintains multiple community sub-categories, such as those dealing with sustainability and environmental matters, culture and the arts, Israelis abroad and more.

Hakhel commissioned a study of its participants, which found that only a third of the millennials involved had any interest in joining a synagogue, and only 7.5% in participating in activities in traditional Jewish institutions like federations or community centers. Rather, millennials seem to prefer small, intimate, and intentional communities, such as those promoted by Hakhel. Thus, nearly 80% of participants in intentional communities were young adults (under 45, including some with children).

The study’s findings reflected what community studies have shown – that young Jews are interested in Jewish learning, celebrating holidays, and life-cycle events (84%), Jewish education (70%), Jewish art and culture (nearly half), social justice (over a quarter) and sustainability (15%). Notably, the study also found that millennials are growing more disconnected and less committed to Israel – partly due to lack of knowledge.

Hakhel’s director, Aharon Ariel Lavi, explained that the formation of such communities is intended to meet a natural and growing need people have for community. They do this by connecting each community’s focus to the Jewish world. Many of the communities that form under Hakhel do not necessarily engage in identifiably “Jewish” activity. Rather, they coalesce around issues members are passionate about. By connecting millennials’ need for intentional communities to Jewish life, Hakhel offers a starting point for engagement with Jewish life, and perhaps eventually with the broader established Jewish community. However, Lavi pointed out that Hakhel communities are not intended to replace the established Jewish world rather to work alongside it. The challenge will be to connect them to the institutionalized Jewish world.

SketchPad

Founded in Chicago in 2015, SketchPad is a shared workspace for Jewish nonprofit start-ups. Its intention is to serve the Jewish non-profit world, as an “intellectual, cultural, spiritual and socially conscious hub, promoting collaboration and providing an appealing space open to the public.”,150

Aside from hosting independent or small start-ups, SketchPad also hosts a “beit midrash” (Jewish library and place of study). The initiative partners with a number of socially progressive and active Jewish organizations in Chicago. One of these, Avodah Chicago’s community director noted that, “intentional, Jewish, innovative collaboration is the future of Jewish social justice.” UpStart and Svara, two organizations mentioned previously, are also among the partner organizations.

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