Indie minyaners: Where do we go next?

One of the issues I hope to address in this blog is the looming question of the next stage for the members of Independent Minyanim. With all of the fanfare and newspaper coverage, and even a conference and a sociological study, we hear a lot about the successes of these minyanim. We are also aware that most of them are driven by a narrow demographic – singles and young families, mostly 20s and 30s. The young demographic is related to (part cause, part effect) three other aspects of these minyanim: most are "lay-led" (I'll have more to say about the deceptive nature of that term later); in high-rent urban areas; and not encumbered by celebrations for people who aren't already firmly part of the community. But it's not only the critics who know that this is transient – many of us are now starting families and looking for the place we're going to settle down. In New York, that means we're looking at Riverdale, Teaneck, Washington Heights, etc., trying to figure out where we can find the right balance of comfort and community. And it raises the question of where we can go.

The problem is particularly acute for those of us looking for egalitarian communities. Conservative shuls and rabbis often suggest that we should obviously be joining them. But it is not so simple. Most Conservative shuls are not located in the neighborhoods where shomer shabbat people tend to live, nor do they have more than a handful of families who walk to shul. The norm for Conservative shuls is a very frontal prayer experience, with the rabbi literally 'directing' the service and a Hazzan leading most or all Shabbat services, a model that is a major turn-off for Indies looking for a more communal, participatory setting. And since most of the membership of many of them are not observant or Jewishly educated, the vast majority of shuls' and rabbis' energy and resources are aimed at them and are of limited interest to most of us.

We could all just start Indie minyanim in the suburbs or wherever we move to. That is already happening in some places – Koleinu at Beth Shalom in Teaneck, Pico Egal in LA, Segula at the northern edge of DC, to name just a few. But they're not the solution. Families do want shuls, more formal communities. They need rabbis and good children's services and learning etc. There are enough families today that would strongly prefer an egal community to build on. What it will take is a few shuls who are in the right locations to decide to rethink what they're doing and offer a real opening. And it will take some of these families taking the offer seriously enough to decide to make the long-term investment to build it up into what we all think it can become. The question is, how do we make that happen. How do we convince people who have done things one way for a long time to be open to significant cultural change? And how do we organize a core of families prepared to reward them for that openness?