Empowered Judaism: What Independent Minyanim Can Teach Us about Building Vibrant Jewish Communities

People want deep meaning and connection, but they move through life thinking of Judaism’s contribution to the world as Seinfeld and guilt.

we had no compulsion to try to be what we’re not. The freedom to say about a program, “That worked one year, it doesn’t work now,” is incredibly liberating.

At the end of the day, the prayer leader is a functionary, whose role is to facilitate an experience that wouldn’t happen without her: making a group entreaty to the Divine Presence.

prayer is not meant to be seen as a flat statement of belief. It is a literary creation with all the power, nuance, and complexity of literary creations. As Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky has written: “Prayer had better be poetry, not prose; it had better be mythic poetry at that, correlating the mortal human heart and the eternal divine spirit.”

even for the leaders of this form of Judaism, life is not linear, and serious progress is often the result of messy journeys.

Jews who are deeply engaged in traditional language and practice, knowledgeable in their textual heritage, and open to the wider world have the power to alter the course of contemporary Jewish life. They may never be the majority in the Jewish community, but they have the potential to engage the majority of Jews in a deep way.

With its dedicated volunteer culture, focus on inspiring traditional davening, high-level Torah study, and egalitarian, universal outlook, Kehilat Hadar attempts to live out a world of Empowered Judaism.

The culture of meal hosting has turned out to be one of the defining features of the independent minyanim nationwide, with more than 90 percent of people who responded to a national survey reporting that they had been hosted by their peers through the minyan.

shifting the operative frame of the American Jewish experience from one of institutional preservation to one of communal empowerment.