Minyan of Thinkers - Our Blog

We Finished Our Cohort Year!

11/11/2015

Congratulations to all of the members of the Minyan of Thinkers this year on a hugely successful year. We met for ten months between 2014 and 2015, read a variety of articles on Jewish identity, and came up with a collection of reflection pieces on the topic that we are proud of.

The collection's pieces vary in topic and tone, and reflect the diversity of perspectives in our group. We hope that you can read them and email us to share your thoughts. We look forward to hearing from you!

Our finals session took place in September and October where we shared our pieces, gave each other feedback, and reflected on our cohort year together. What did we learn? What did we get out of this experience?

We talked about how much we all appreciated having a space to think, read, discuss, and reflect together in a safe space. We like each other and enjoyed getting to know each other. We are still figuring out how to share what we learned in a meaningful way with the larger community. For now we have a set of written pieces we can send to anyone who wants.

And now we are already doing some strategic planning for our next cohort! If you are interested in joining our leadership team let us know!! minyanofthinkers@gmail.com

Minyan of Thinkers Retreat

8/30/2015

June and July we spent time working on our written reflection pieces in writing workshop style. We would write, share with a partner, or share with the larger group, get feedback, and rework our pieces. In August we had a wonderful retreat, a MOT first, led by our fearless board member Andy Kirschner.

Our retreat was held at Beth El Synagogue in Bethesda. Rabbi Greg Harris, who was a volunteer with the ConnectGens Fellowship program in 2012, has been giving the group advice about what to read as part of our journey to explore Jewish identity. He graciously connected us to his synagogue so that we could have a nice place, far enough away but still metro accessible, to have our half-day retreat.

We did warm ups, had a writing workshop, and several facilitated sessions on public shareouts that we can do to connect more to the community beyond our minyan. We were challenged to think about how to take community members through our minyan journey. How do we give people a flavor for the work we have done? Are there particularly provocative or interesting quotes or data tables from the articles we read that we can share?

If you are a community member and have some ideas for how we can connect with you, please let us know!

Come to Our First Public Shareout Event May 31st 1-3pm at Adas

5/21/2015

Gather the Jews, Moishe House Without Walls, YP at Adas Israel, Washington Hebrew, and the Minyan of Thinkers are partnering on an event focused on exploring one’s Jewish identity. Gather The Jews fellow, David Miller, also a member of the Minyan of Thinkers, is helping to coordinate the event which will take place at Adas Israel on Sunday, May 31st from 1-3pm in the Adas Beit Midrash.

The event will include reflection time about each other’s Jewish identities, a text-based group discussion facilitated by Senior Rabbi at Adas Israel Rabbi Gil Steinlauf, and an opportunity to write about new ideas or perspectives brought up in the discussion that inform your own thinking about Jewish identity. In what ways do you feel on the “inside” and in what ways do you feel “outside” Jewishly, and how can we create more experiences where people feel accepted and welcome? Sign up using the link below, and we look forward to seeing you there!

Part of Being Jewish is Giving to the Community. By Rebecca Kraushaar

5/10/2015

I used to have this Hillel quote in my aim profile—“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” It makes me cringe a little to remember. The quote is great. I just don’t know if it belonged in instant messenger. Who was I trying to impress back in college? And why did I pick that quote out of all the inspirational quotes on the internet?

My ancient aim profile didn’t cross my mind last Wednesday at Char Bar. We were busy discussing two articles focused on the decline in church membership—the Washington Post’s “Denominational Restructuring Won’t Work” and Huffington Post’s “Why Nobody Wants to Go to Church Anymore.” We went around the table echoing ideas from the articles that could apply to the Jewish community. I highlighted a sentence in the Huffington Post article, about Christians abandoning Church: “They have left, not to abandon their faith, but precisely because they wish to preserve it.”

It’s a sad, weird sentiment. Things—jewelry, books, photos, stamps—can be tucked away, sealed and preserved. Religion is lived. And life exists with other people.

Sitting at a table in a kosher restaurant heaped with burgers and fries and engaging, interesting conversation, I feel part of a community. I don’t need to withhold myself for fear of judgment. My ideas aren’t preserved—they’re challenged, broadened and strengthened.

As a college student, maybe I stuck to that Hillel quote because it reminded me to reach outside myself. “If I am only for myself, what am I?” Back then I had aim. Today I’m grateful that my convos are live, as part of the Minyan of Thinkers.

What Are We Looking For When We Look for Jews? By Kelley Kidd

3/30/2015

I often find myself frustrated by the act of gathering to talk about the state of Judaism in America. It seems pointless--why sit around and talk about it, when we could instead create the state we want it to be in.

Gathering with the Minyan of Thinkers this month radically shifted my perspective on the experience of engaging with this topic. This month, we met at the office of one of our members, where we stood in awe of the cappuccino machine and snacked on challah, hummus, and avocado. We discussed numerous articles responding to the data of the PEW study, which included opinions ranging from certainty that the situation is dire to those espousing that the data illustrates the room for growth of new Jewish stories. Being presented with such a diversity of opinions challenged each of us to truly engage with the perspectives outside of our realm of experience and belief. In fact, many of us felt deeply uncomfortable encountering the ways that certain pieces were framed--and there is no more effective marker in my mind of growth than discomfort within a safe exploratory space. The partnership of these amazing, thoughtful people allowed me to question my assumptions based on what I see of the Jewish community, and to delve safely into my feelings of discomfort with the premise that Jewish life's current transformation is necessarily one of loss.

We spent time considering what it actually means for the Jewish community that intermarriage is on the rise while birth rates decline, and affiliation with Jews and Jewish organization become less numerically prevalent. We discussed the fact that this must be viewed in the larger context of American religious affiliation in general, as well as American "melting pot" culture. We also acknowledged that our anecdotal evidence, while anecdotal, leads us to believe that the PEW study data at best overstates the problem, and at worst fails to grasp the complexity of modern Jewish identity. This led us towards discussion of what does constitute a modern and American Jewish identity. Perhaps, we posited, one element of the problem is that the metrics used by the PEW study are the structures in Jewish life that are no longer practical or resonant, so to measure them will show us that what we have lost is what we know is no longer working. How, then, do we construct metrics that measure for the quiet, internal, less institutional and traditional elements of Jewish identity--the personal but deeply important ways that people view their lives through a Jewish lens? And, perhaps more important than measuring, how do we create Jewish life that speaks to those pieces in new ways?

There exist structures--camp, day school, Hillel--that get it right, but how to we create those opportunities for people who are older and still in search of their Jewish identity? How do we continue to excite people in the way that those institutions do? How do we transform what does exist to meet these new needs, and expand the lens of Judaism's meaning outward into the modern, complex, busy lives of the modern day Jew?

It was a beautiful opportunity to engage these questions, and I look forward to working with these thoughtful, inquisitive minds as we move from problem-identifying towards problem solving.

Reflections on Session 3

2/25/2015

Snow and ice covered the sidewalks and some streets, leftover from the snowstorm the day before. Yet somehow, an incredible group of young people made their way to Adas Israel for our minyan meeting. Thank you to Adas for hosting us this month. With the building of the Beit Midrash, learning is “in the air” there, and that seemed to bubble up even to the third floor Sisterhood Hall where we sat. Thanks to the generosity of the Moishe House Without Walls Program, we were able to provide our minyan with brainfood (read here: Kosher meat!) which most certainly enhanced the discussion. It’s awesome that the minyan, which is small-scale non-institutional innovative entity, can work in such harmonious partnership with both long-time institutional structures such as Adas, and exploding innovative organizations like Moishe House. If that’s not symbolic of Jewish continuity and innovation at work together, I don’t know what is.

This minyan cohort has been exploring Jewish identity, trying to make sense of the 2013 PEW study, and how Jewish scholars understand the study and Jewish identity as a whole. This month we focused on two thoughtful pieces by Jewish scholar and NYU professor Bethamie Horowitz. She did a phenomenal job as part of the PEW study panel discussion held at 6 and I and facilitated brilliantly by Rabbi Shira Stutman. We read her commentary on the PEW study, as well a piece from 1998 that dug into her Connections and Journeys study. It was incredible how applicable the 1998 piece was to the PEW study, even though Horowitz was reacting to the previous demographic study, NJPS (which the Minyan of Thinkers pilot cohort explored a few years ago).

It was a breath of fresh air to study Horowitz’s perspective because her work is methodologically innovative in exploring Jewish identity. Her unit of analysis is the individual, and she cares about the multiple and overlapping Jewish and secular identities included in the same person. She acknowledges that Jewish identity is multi-faceted and often evolves over time depending on changing environments both within and outside of the Jewish community. Her connections and journeys study consisted of in-depth interviews, focus groups, and a subsequent survey.

Horowitz’s pieces resonated very much with the minyan members. We talked about how Jewish identity doesn’t operate in a vacuum, but rather interacts with the environment and with our identity as Americans. Given the openness of American society to different cultures and people, being Jewish and being American are less dichotomous than for previous generations. Several minyan members also talked about moving from places where they were one of the only Jews to an area like DC where they were one of innumerable Jews. I want to continue to explore this more- how do your secular and Jewish environments shape your Jewish identity?

Here are a few other major points that my mind will be chewing on for a while:

1)      Ideological boundaries of being Jewish- are there any? Do you need to believe in God, or a higher power? Can you believe in Jesus? Can you be ethnically or culturally Jewish but religiously or ideologically Christian? For our group Jesus as the Messiah seemed to be a strong ideological line that fell outside of what some of us considered Jewish. But I’m not sure we came to full resolution on the issue yet. More generally, what defines a Jew? Is it up to the individual person to define it for themselves? If so, what makes someone Jewish as opposed to any other identity?

2)      Defining ourselves in relation to the Holocaust- To what extent are we defining our Jewish selves based on the Holocaust? Is this appropriate or antiquated? How can we use our connection to the Holocaust to shape us into positive change agents in the world without being motivated to be or act Jewish out of fear or guilt?

3)      The outsider piece of our identity- We talked about how part of being Jewish involves being an outsider in some way- religiously, ethnically, culturally, etc. That outsider mentality has helped shape us in powerful ways. For example, it has allowed us to identify with peoples and groups oppressed today, because we have a historical narrative that involves being oppressed and being the underdog. What does it mean then, to be Jewish and also part of the multi-cultural American mainstream?

Looking ahead, we hope to grapple with a few more scholarly perspectives on Jewish identity and formulate our own reflection pieces on the topic that flesh out our individual perspectives. If you’re interested in connecting with the minyan or sharing your thoughts, send us a note at minyanofthinkers@gmail.com. We can’t wait to hear from you!

Second Meeting a Success!

1/12/2015

Thanks to Moishe House Without Walls program for funding our meeting and to 6 and I Synagogue for hosting us in one of its dialogue-conducive meeting spaces.

For this year's minyan we are focusing on Jewish identity and engagement. In our second meeting we dug into the data from chapter three of the PEW 2013 study http://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/. Chapter three focuses on Jewish identity.

Here are a few questions that bubbled up from our conversation:

1) How do we define being Jewish? Is believing in Jesus crossing that line? Are their belief requirements? If you lead an ethical life but don't do Jewish rituals are you living a Jewish life?

2) Is Judaism primarily a religion, an ethnicity, a culture? If most Jewish Americans believe that Judaism is mainly a matter of ancestry or culture, why do we frame it in terms of religious affiliation?

3) What are the top things that define people's Jewish identities? In the Pew study they were asked whether certain items were essential, but we wonder if asking people to rank the list would illuminate Jewish identity in a different way?

Have any thoughts? Comment!

Minyan of Thinkers Round 2 Kick-off Meeting

12/15/2014

Yesterday we had the MOT round 2 kick-off meeting at Bread and Chocolate, funded by the Moishe House Without Walls program. We had 8 minyan members and guest speaker Rachel Gildiner, director of Gather the Jews.

We introduced the concept of the minyan to everyone and went around to do introductions and what people want to get out of the group. Many people are looking for an outlet for Jewish learning that involves thinking about big Jewish issues in a sustained way, and that creates a safe space for intellectual inquiry.

Rachel led a dynamic discussion called Holy Conversations, using a text from Dr. Erica Brown, and we discussed in partners and then as a group what it means to have open, intentional conversations that lead to heightened consciousness or transcendence. That led us into a discussion of what we want and need in our group to build that sense of intentionality into our sessions.

The meat of our session was having folks do a warm-up activity, writing on index cards about an experience where they felt engaged Jewishly, and conversely an experience where they felt disengaged. We shared aloud and that sparked a broader conversation about the minyan dialogue topics and what we might want to focus on this year.

We talked a lot about Jewish engagement issues, Jewish survival and fear, Jewish activism within the community and in larger social issues, moving forward beyond the PEW study, and thinking about new ways to measure Jewish engagement.

In our debrief at the conclusion of the two hour session, participants noted that they found the discussion valuable and interesting, and are excited to continue the journey. Our next step is coming to consensus on a dialogue topic and then we will reach out to local Jewish leaders and scholars to see what research/data/scholarly texts fit with that topic.

Please feel free to share any thoughts you have with me so we can make this minyan the best it can be.

Introducing... the Minyan of Thinkers!

1/11/2012

2012 is the beginning of my life as a social entrepreneur. As some of you have learned, I recently won a fellowship to help launch my social entrepreneurship venture, which I call the Minyan of Thinkers. It's called the ConnectGens fellowship and it's being run by PresenTense and operated through the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. I am a part of a community of 11 young Jewish professionals, and I am humbled by the amazing people in the group. Today we had our first seminar and it opened my eyes up to a world of social entrepreneurship concepts.

One big issue we discussed was the need to communicate our ideas to others. Normally I like to keep a low profile, stay under the radar screen, and work behind the scenes. I'm much happier that way. But now I have this idea, and I'm trying to get it started. So I've got to put myself out there.

So here I am. Rather than just launching my venture, I want to also communicate with community members about the process, the journey. It's going to be quite an uphill road, with lots of challenges along the way. And I'm going to share it all with you. The good, the bad, the ugly. I hope that this will help show the human side of this venture, that there is a very personal journey that is going along with this business venture.