Community Meanings

Figuring out what kind of community is being constituted, under what rules and expectations, across what kind of timeline, and for what purpose, is a constant challenge — in- and outside of Judaism. As the high holidays approach, and we prepare to declare our collective sins and beg forgiveness, it’s worth considering what and who we mean when we say “forgive us.”

Another part of Calendar Notes for a Summer of Collapse (series).

Community Scholarship

Decades back, Riv-Ellen Prell — anthropologist, Professor Emerita of American Studies at the U. of Minnesota; bio at Jewish Women’s Archives — published a book of scholarship on the Havurah movement. Prayer & Community: The Havurah in American Judaism centers on a community to which Prell had belonged and obtained permission to study. What she found back in 1989 still has great relevance to communities struggling at the intersection of politics and worship.

The entire book is available in digital form through Wayne State University Press website. Excerpts are offered below in PDF form.

For anyone who wants to dig really deep, check out The Papers of Riv-Ellen Prell” (research, fieldwork, and correspondence regarding Westwood Free Minyan in Los Angeles and related studies.)

Related RoundTable on Do-It-Yourself Judaism, 2007

See also: Empowered Judaism : what independent minyanim can teach us about building vibrant Jewish communities. Rabbi Ellie Kaunfer. Jewish Lights Publishing, Woodstock, Vt., 2010

Community Words

Jewish liturgy is filled with references to “the People” [העם, ha-am] or “Your People” [עםך, amkhah, commonly with masculine singular suffix], sometimes “the people Yisrael” or “Jewish people” [עם ישראל, am yisrael]. Biblically — and so in the prayerbook — am can also mean “nation,” as in Yisraelites, or as in “other nation.” Related expressions in bible and prayer including adah [עדה, congregation], kahal or kehillah [קהילה, community], and tzibur [צבור, public/worship gathering]. In addition, Jewish tradition speaks of minyan [מנין, quorum] and havurah [חברה, fellowship].

Jewish prayer often situates “us” in a group that extends beyond any present gathering, physical or virtual — far into the past and into a hoped-for future.

Community Questions

Questions of alignment with larger movements, in- and outside of Judaism, are always present for individual Jewish communities. In these days of collapse, however, as individual congregations and groups become unmoored from anchoring umbrella-institutions, the questions become more complicated.

• What is the community’s relationship to political movements in, and beyond, the US?
• What is communal relationship to principles of labor and abolitionist organizing?
• How do fundamental values — egalitarianism, transparency, mutual aid, collective decision-making, e.g. — manifest in our communities?
• What can we expect of one another in a time of so much collapse?

These and so many other questions need asking, just at a time when so many of us — individually and in our collectives — have very little capacity. What’s a community to do?

Excerpts from Prayer and Community

Image description: Hebrew and English words: Tzibur — public group. community — kehillah. Folk [Latin and Hebrew characters] Minyan — quorum. Adah — congregation. Fellowship — havurah.