Rabbi Elie Kaunfer’s “Empowered Judaism” challenges the institution
Lose your synagogue, lose your rabbi, go to a church basement and start singing payers in Hebrew—whether you understand it or not. There you will find yourself.
This is the thesis of Rabbi Elie Kaunfer’s “Empowered Judaism,” which advocates for and analyzes the effect of independent minyanim, or prayer groups. Volunteer-led and unaffiliated with any denomination, most independent minyanim observe traditional halakha while supporting progressive ideas such as gender equality and openness to the queer community.
Kaunfer says that independent minyanim can transform and save American Judaism. He observes that the traditional synagogue structure does not speak to unmarried Jews in their 20s and 30s and that independent minyanim offer a spiritual product that keeps the post-college population in Jewish life by making observance relevant.
The book does not, however, explain the larger implications of that transformation: there is little discussion of congregants’ Jewish observance, and although Kaunfer discusses existing Jewish institutions at length, it seems as though he is more interested in building up the independent minyan movement than he is in investing energy to fix synagogues. He has little faith that the Jewish community that others have built can serve the next generation.
Kaunfer constructs a model of the successful independent minyan using Kehilat Hadar, which he cofounded in New York in 2001. The traditional Jewish prayer service is key to that model: Kaunfer discourages cutting prayers or the torah reading, and asserts that a richer service leads to a richer Jewish experience. He instead advocates making traditional liturgy more efficient, cutting out the “dead time” transitions and shortening the sermon.
Much of the book reads as a how-to guide for setting up and running one’s own independent minyan. Aside from passages in the first and last chapters, Kaunfer eschews broad ideas and focuses on details for running an effective meeting, soliciting donations, identifying appropriate prayer leaders and other such logistical concerns.
As a result of its focus on leadership, the book provides few entry points to the movement: it has little to say about what independent minyanim expect from their participants or how someone interested in such minyanim can get involved, aside from finding information on Kehilat Hadar’s website. Kaunfer also assumes that readers are familiar with Jewish prayer, tradition and law; he includes a glossary, but his target audience has had some formal Jewish education.
Kaunfer presents independent minyanim as the nascent denomination of Empowered Judaism: Mechon Hadar, his foundation in New York, provides resources for the 60-plus independent minyanim nationwide and has started a yeshiva—giving Empowered Judaism a national center, a network of congregations and its own institution of learning. But Kaunfer does not spend time on what the ordinary Empowered Jew should look like. Unlike the foundational texts of other denominations, such as the Conservative movement’s “Emet Ve-emunah” or the primal Orthodox writings of Samson Raphael Hirsch, “Empowered Judaism” says little about philosophical positions or about participants’ everyday Jewish observance.
Kaunfer writes that independent minyanim are growing because the existing model of synagogues and synagogue membership is tired, arcane and narrow-minded. He finds most synagogue services to be inefficient and boring and most rabbis not concerned enough with education. He adds that today’s unmarried, post-college crowd is too mobile to pay membership dues to one synagogue.
Empowered Judaism defines itself through effectiveness. Independent minyanim are compelling, says Kaunfer, not because they do something different from synagogues but because they claim to do the same thing better. Kaunfer writes, “If institutions are performing their mission well, and their mission is still relevant, they will thrive. If either of these is not the case, let’s not put them on life support.” While this sentiment of free-market Judaism is appealing, large institutions such as synagogues have much more capacity to serve the community than does Mechon Hadar, both in terms of infrastructure and finances. If Kaunfer is really concerned with making the community more efficient and effective, why not work within the existing institutions?
But Kaunfer’s vanguard may itself become an institution. Kehilat Hadar in New York draws hundreds of people every week. Mechon Hadar and its yeshiva are blossoming and the independent minyan movement is proliferating. Kaunfer’s vision seems to be succeeding. Any institution is good that can engage so many people with so little bureaucracy and make them passionate about Judaism in the process.
Empowered Judaism is on the rise, and it will be exciting to watch where it goes in the next decade. How it chooses to interact with the existing network of synagogues, as well as how it defines its participant base, will determine whether it becomes yet another option among the several existing denominations or whether it has the ability to change the future of the Jewish community.
