‘Quiet Revolution’ : Havurah: A New Spirit in Judaism

When Bonnie Schupak was growing up in Worcester, Mass., her “extremely large, extremely close” Jewish family traditionally ended the 24-hour Yom Kippur fast at her grandmother’s home, surrounded by “many, many friends,” most of whom were neighbors who lived within walking distance.

“My grandmother’s house was a nucleus,” Schupak said. “We would all celebrate the Jewish holidays together.”

In Orange County, where Schupak and her husband settled in 1956, the family usually had nowhere to go each year on the autumn evening when a long blast of the shofar, the ram’s horn, signaled the end of the Day of Atonement, for Jews the holiest day of the year. Over the next two decades, said Schupak, 53, the family developed its own, less intimate custom: “We would just take the children and go out to dinner.”

Means ‘Fellowship’

But Monday night, for the sixth year, the Schupaks will be breaking the fast with their havurah, a Hebrew word meaning “fellowship.” Like thousands of similar, extended family groups, the Schupaks’ havurah is a circle of 12 to 25 Jewish adults that meets monthly in members’ homes to talk, study, socialize and observe holidays and customs.

A growing number of other American Jews will not be waiting until Monday night to join with their fellow havurah members.

Beginning Sunday at sundown, they will be spending Yom Kippur worshipping in regular, praying havurot (the plural form of havurah). These prayer groups range from independent groups such as the Aquarian Minyan in San Francisco, which emphasizes Eastern mysticism, to a fervent Orthodox congregation in North Carolina that meets in the basement of a Conservative synagogue. Such groups, rabbis and Jewish leaders say, may be creating a model for the synagogue of the future.

Revitalized Jewish Life

The havurah represents a deeply felt desire for intimacy, said Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, executive director of the Rabbinical Assembly of America, and the groups’ impact “permeates the entire synagogue culture.” Introducing the concept to the synagogue, he said, has “revitalized Jewish life from within.” It is, in the words of another rabbi, “a quiet revolution transforming Jewish life in America.”

By practicing Judaism in smaller groups, supporters say the quality of religious experience is enriched and enhanced. The havurah is also making American Judaism more democratic by empowering lay people--especially women--in all aspects of practice and leadership, beginning in the home.

Like many mainline religious institutions such as the Episcopalian and Methodist churches, Jewish synagogues over the last two decades have been losing members, particularly among the young. Many view the havurot as the means of revitalizing interest and making Judaism more attractive to the Baby Boom generation and its children.

Sociologists and Christian church historians compare the havurah movement to various Christian renewal movements that have swept the nation in the last 15 years.

“There seems to be some sort of overall kinship with a common idea,” said Durwood Foster, of the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley.

“It’s a fairly natural kind of development within American church history,” said Eldon Ernst, professor of American church history at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. “It easily seems to jell with religious movements which developed in this country: a voluntary association of like-minded people dissatisfied with what they had, trying to hang onto their tradition.”

Increasingly, members of the havurah movement are gaining positions of leadership in the Jewish community, from congregational rabbis to officials of Jewish charities. And, the movement has been a powerful force for sexual equality in Jewish ritual life, insisting on full participation by women as a first principle.

Some See a Challenge

But not everyone within the Jewish community welcomes these changes, with critics calling the havurah everything from a “splinter group” to a “gimmick.” Some, mainly rabbis in older, larger synagogues in the Northeast, are bothered by the havurot’s increasing popularity, viewing the groups as a direct challenge to synagogues.

“Whether the havurot are a passing fad, as their mainline critics have maintained, or a permanent entry in Jewish life remains to be seen,” wrote Charles Silberman in “A Certain People: American Jews and Their Lives Today.”

For those who have joined the movement, havurot unquestionably make up a vital part of their lives.

Sally Weber helped start a havurah in San Francisco in the early 1970s and when she moved to Southern California with her husband in 1974 she joined a havurah at Valley Beth Shalom synagogue in Encino. In her view, the havurot have offered “new doors back into the synagogue, rather than just one through the main sanctuary,” although “if they pull people away from synagogues, then the synagogues deserve it.”

Maynard Bernstein, who with his wife, Sylvia, has belonged to another havurah at Valley Beth Shalom for 15 years, said “the common bond that keeps us together is the temple.”

‘It’s a Nexus’

“We would have celebrated the holidays in any event,” he said, but they joined a havurah anyway. “This was a different kind of thing. It’s a nexus, a connection. It has filled a real need.”

The modern havurah movement began in the late 1960s as a neighborhood effort, concentrated on and around college campuses. Some of these small groups lived together or nearby in what were essentially religious communes. Many emphasized Jewish mysticism and vegetarianism, the latter combining the attraction of health foods with traditional Jewish dietary laws.

Young, socially and politically active Jews, dissatisfied with the direction of establishment Judaism, began meeting in small groups in homes and storefront offices in New York and elsewhere in the East and Midwest.

An estimated 25% of all American Conservative and Reform synagogues in this country now have havurot, and, according to Weber, who has since become program director of Adat Ari El in Los Angeles and a havurah consultant for United Synagogue of America, estimates for congregations in California and other Western states may be as high as 65% and are rising. A 1981 study by researchers from UCLA and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion found more than 500 groups in the Los Angeles area alone.

Form Study Groups

At Beth Jacob, a large Orthodox synagogue in Los Angeles, there are about 20 study groups that meet in peoples’ homes once a month. “We don’t call them havurot, “ said Rabbi Abner Weiss, “but that’s what they are.”

In the 1970s, the independent, praying havurot-- usually made up of less than 50 people--soon developed certain similarities: circular or informal seating arrangements, new melodies and a strong commitment that every member, not just the rabbi and the cantor, should be able to participate and lead all phases of worship.

One person who early on took the movement seriously was Rabbi Harold Schulweis, who in 1970 moved from Oakland to Valley Beth Shalom. He had been watching the havurah movement and felt that it addressed some fundamental issues facing the synagogue.

“I knew about the independent havurah, and I knew that the general reaction by the synagogue rabbi to the individual havurot was that of a threat,” Schulweis said in a recent interview. “It seemed to me that it ought not to be a threat. One has to really ask, ‘why is this person pulling away?’ ‘What is he affirming?’ And it was then that it came obvious to me that these people are not my enemies. And these are precisely the kind of people I’d love to have in my congregation.”

Proposes Restructuring

In his inaugural sermon on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, he proposed a radical restructuring of the congregation.

“We are challenged to decentralize the synagogue and deprofessionalize Jewish living so that the individual Jew is brought back into a circle of shared Jewish experience,” Schulweis said.

He also saw something in the demography of California that made the havurah approach especially ripe for transplantation: Many Jews in the West, like the Schupaks of Irvine, had moved from the East and Midwest, leaving behind Jewish neighborhoods, extended families and networks of lifelong friends. Joining new temples with thousands of families was often daunting.

So Schulweis developed a concept of the havurah which has become a model for many others, first on the West Coast and, later, throughout the nation. In the fall, usually around the time of the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur holidays, synagogue members are given a form to fill out, listing their interests and preferences for a group composed of approximately 10 couples. Their choices include homogeneous or heterogeneous grouping in terms of age, children, observance of dietary laws, etc. Interest preferences include socializing, study, Jewish festival observation and good works.

Older, adult-centered groups tend to meet monthly on Saturday evenings, after the Sabbath. Younger groups, with small children, gather on Sunday afternoons. Potluck meals are popular, although some gatherings are more elaborate, depending on the community.

‘This Time It Worked’

The Schupaks signed up for a group in the autumn of 1979 at their temple, Beth Sholom in Santa Ana. As sometimes happens, the chemistry of the Schupaks’ first group was not right, so after about six months that group broke up. “We tried again,” Schupak said, and “this time it worked.”

Since members of Schupak’s havurah, at its founding, ranged in age from the late 30s to early 50s, with children of varying age, it varied its activities. But observing the festivals and milestones was an important part of the group.

“We celebrate many of the Jewish holidays together,” Schupak said, and, one in particular. “We decided immediately that we would break the (Yom Kippur) fast together. It was right in the first year that we started that,” she said, and “there’s just no comparison” with the years the family went to a restaurant after services.

Over the years, Schupak said, “the children could see the life cycle among Jews. We have buried parents, had the birth of grandchildren, observed bar mitzvahs and weddings.”

Synagogue havurot paint classrooms in the Hebrew School and visit Jewish old age homes, meet to read and discuss Jewish ethics and philosophy, attend and discuss lectures and movies, or review new books. Havurot at Valley Beth Shalom--there are now more than 60--have made retreats in the desert, gone to Israel and Egypt together and adopted families of Soviet Jews. Certain holiday observances became occasions for havurah gatherings. In times of family crises such as deaths and divorces, the havurah members are often first on the scene to provide support, reducing some of the demand on the rabbi and the congregation. The havurah, Schupak said, “interacts throughout all phases of our lives.”

Active at Synagogue

The concern of some rabbis and “regular” synagogue members that the havurot might siphon off enthusiasm and participation from the larger institution, does not apply to the Schupaks’ group. Over the years, two members of the havurah have served as presidents of Santa Ana’s Temple Beth Sholom, five have served on the synagogue’s board of directors and Bonnie Schupak is now president of the sisterhood chapter.

“It’s kind of a symbiotic relationship with the temple,” she said. “The temple feeds off us and we feed off the temple.”

There has been, however, some resistance at older, more established synagogues, especially in the Northeast, where neighborhood and familial networks are relatively undisturbed.

“Out here we don’t see that much success,” said Rabbi Howard Kahn, of Beth El in Cherry Hill, N.J. Kahn said his congregation started some havurot but found they “just fizzled out,” acknowledging that “I didn’t push it that much.” Potentially, Kahn said, havurot create a “two-category synagogue,” and he found that “young Jewish families want to feel that they’re a part of a central synagogue rather than a ‘splinter group.’ ”

Rabbi Jacob Neusner, of Brown University, while voicing great respect for Rabbi Schulweis of Valley Beth Shalom, calls the synagogue havurah a “gimmick,” which artificially grafts a top-down organization onto what had previously been a spontaneous, bottom-up movement.

Movement Evolving

Around the country, the havurot movement is evolving. Many of the early, independent neighborhood groups collapsed or withered away. Others consolidated, and those that survived gradually expanded and ultimately outgrew the homes, store fronts and rented churches where they began. Members of some synagogue groups, such as those at Beth Shalom in Encino, have started their own regular Saturday morning service apart from the main sanctuary.

In Buffalo, N.Y., a small havurah group that split off from a Reform synagogue grew to more than 70 families and became Congregation Havurah. In Orange County, Rabbi Menahem Herman refers to his Conservative Congregation B’nai Israel in Tustin as a “post- havurah synagogue.”

Some former members of the Westwood Free Minyan--an early independent group that is still in existence--established a new group, called “The Library Minyan,” which meets at Congregation Beth Am, a large established Conservative synagogue. At Beth Jacob, the Orthodox synagogue in Los Angeles, there is--in addition to home study groups--a smaller weekly service, called the “Upstairs Minyan,” which is conducted in a style similar to some praying havurot. The Germantown Jewish Center in Philadelphia and Ansche Chesed, on New York’s Upper West Side--both older, conservative congregations with shrinking memberships--invited independent havurah groups to associate as a group with the synagogues.

Steve Sager, rabbi at Beth-El Synagogue, a Conservative congregation of 240 families in Durham, N.C., believes that the havurah movement is “shifting the center of gravity of institutional Judaism” away from the traditional main sanctuary service. He cites his synagogue as a case in point. One Sabbath in four, the congregation moves from the main sanctuary to the adjoining auditorium for a circular-seated, “havurah- style” service.

Specialized Groupings

Each Saturday morning, in the basement, a smaller group of more traditional congregation members has a regular service. There are also a half dozen social, study and special-interest havurot that meet regularly in peoples’ homes, including one in nearby Chapel Hill composed of musicians interested in a kind of Eastern European music known as klezmer .

Rabbis disagree about the direction the havurah movement is taking. Kahn, in New Jersey, believes that the movement “peaked two or three years ago.” He maintains that the havurah movement “did not take off and capture the whole American synagogue scene as some thought it would,” that “it did not become what some thought it would be--the panacea and solution of all the problems facing the American Jewish religious community.”

There is also disagreement on the havurah’s ultimate effect.

The founders of the movement, according to Riv-Ellen Prell, author of “Recreating American Judaism: An Anthropology of Contemporary Prayer,” “have penetrated the national Jewish power structure in ways that I think are quite staggering.” They have brought with them to “the highest elite level” what Prell, a University of Minnesota anthropologist, calls “the havurah vision. That is the really lasting impact of the movement.”

Even the havurah’s critics give the movement credit for improving Jewish life. Most agree, for example, that it has reduced the expectation that every rabbi be a patriarch.

And, said Rabbi Kahn, “nothing has succeeded in creating Judaism in the home as the havurah has.”