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choices: how time is spent, what tunes are
chosen, how spaces are created so as to
maximize interaction with God and prayer;
An emphasis on the experience rather
than the number of the people present;
A move away from reliance on the elite;
spreading responsibility among all
minyan-goers, genuine and frequent ac-
knowledgement of volunteers, and delib-
erately honoring newcomers; and
True ownership of the community by its
constituents, a rejection of the 1950s con-
sumer orientation to religious life, and a
move away from communal norms of par-
ticipation dictated by others — to a com-
munity’s culture mutually created.
Beth Cousens, PhD, is the
director of the Meyerhoff
Center for Jewish Experience
for Hillel: The Foundation for
Jewish Campus Life. She is
also the education coordinator
of the DC Minyan.
Empowering Judaism
Empowered Judaism: What Independent Minyanim Can Teach Us about Building Vibrant
Jewish Communities, by Rabbi Elie Kaunfer; Jewish Lights Publishing, 2010, $18.99, 197 pp.
REVIEWED BY BETH COUSENS
When many of us think of the American synagogue, we think of the good times: the times in the
1950s when pews were fuller than ever, more
synagogues were built and built more lavishly
than ever before, and the synagogue — like the
church — was the center of religious and family life in America. Romanticizing this period
leads us to view this apex of synagogue membership and financial investment as the norm
in American Jewish history rather than the exception, which is the case. It also leads us to
assume that the religious participation of that
time — paid-for membership in a formal organization, and receipt of religious wisdom or
instruction from a distant bimah in a building
we went (drove) to — was normative. Rabbi
Elie Kaunfer’s Empowered Judaism challenges
these assumptions and shifts our attention to
what religious participation should be in a new
and more engaged Jewish communal future.
Empowered Judaism comes from Kaunfer’s
extensive experience with independent
minyanim. Kehilat Hadar, the community that
Kaunfer co-founded in 2001, was one of the first
such minyanim, a regularly meeting religious
community not attached to a synagogue or
other organization. Almost ten years later,
Hadar is now joined by more than 60 such independent religious communities across the
country. According to Kaunfer, it is estimated
that more than 20,000 people attend independent minyanim during a year. There are approximately 1,200 people on the mailing list of the
DC Minyan in Washington alone.
Until now, to a great extent, this movement
was essentially known for being independent
(and, therefore, somewhat countercultural) and
populated primarily by under-40s (a counter-intuitive population primarily absent from synagogues). Kaunfer provides a clearer definition
of this movement as well as the model that it
hopes to advance. Independent minyanim are
not faux synagogues, but rather embodiments
of several ideals:
● The self-management of religious life and
the participation of as many “congregants”
as possible in the leadership and organization of the community;
● A sense of intentionality related to all
●
●
●
That Kaunfer advocates self-leadership is
not surprising; he is the product of an increasingly robust system of American Jewish education: a graduate of day school and summer
programs and a rich Hillel experience. After college, Kaunfer realized that what he knew best
was how to lead (rather than participate passively in) religious communities. He also realized that he had never explored the meaning of
Jewish life for himself — had never experienced
an adult sense of God. When he didn’t find an
opportunity to explore that adult identity or a
vibrant congregation offering any opportunities
for prayer leadership, he absented himself from
formal Jewish life until he could create a community that offered the chance to produce deep
meaning for himself and his peers.
Kaunfer redefines religious participation as
an experience that we claim for ourselves.
Childhood activism and subsequent loyalty do
not lead to affiliation, and affiliation is not a dichotomous state. New religious participation
does not have an “in” or “out,” nor is it premised
on a membership form. Instead, according to
Kaunfer, we find Jewish community when we
find joy in God and prayer and the opportunity to
exercise our voice and heart with others. Kaunfer
demonstrates that independent minyanim are
more than just “not synagogues.” They represent
an important sociological shift: from organization
to network, from reliance to self-direction, from
the top-down synagogue of the 1950s to a model
of empowered Jewish life for a new century.
