Conference on independent minyanim

[magid]

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a one-day conference at Brandeis about independent minyanim. I biked out, and realized as soon as I'd gotten there that I'd forgotten to bring any kind of handwork (specifically, crocheting). That, plus having brought a pen that was mostly dead, meant it was all about remembering what people said, without the satisfaction of having made stuff during the day. That whole memory thing is mostly why I haven't written about it. However, I'm lucky, and the schedule with audio of the sessions have been posted online.

Everyone was together for the sessions over meals and the plenary sessions, with two options for the other slots. In the first parallel session, I chose "Rabbis, Leadership, and Questions of Authority" over "Tribes, Networks, and Cohorts" (which meant nothing to me), and the session was packed, which made it that much slower each of the couple of times the fire alarms went off, to evacuate and return. Apparently most of the independent minyanim do not have a rabbi in the usual congregational sense of the word, and most people thought that there were legitimate reasons for this, but over time there will be a need for more centralized leadership than by committee.

In the second session, I didn't go to "Minaynim and Jewish Communal Relationships: A Roundtable" (though it sounded fascinating) in favor of "Minyanim, Hlacha, and Modern Orthodoxy." This turned out to be three people presenting papers, with questions following. On the whole, I found myself thinking that I thought of Minyan Tehillah differently than the people on the panel did: they were obviously comfortable calling it non-denominational, while I think of it as Orthodox, though definitely to the far end of the spectrum. Ideologically, it seems I'm similar to some of the other people in Tehillah, as well as some of the other partnership mechitza minyanim, given the situations Elitzur Bar-Asher described in his paper, with people not wanting to challenge Orthodox institutions by convening their own batei din for conversions.

In the afternoon session, I chose "Independent Minyanim and Havurot: A Dialogue on Precents and Parallels" over "Independent Minyanim and Synagogues: Partnerships and Divergences," mostly because there were a bunch of NHC people at the conference, and I wanted to hear what they had to say.

There was a handout at registration with a bunch of data I thought interesting. These are the results of a survey of 32 independent minyanim earlier this year.

Shabbat Morning Service Attendance
(The intervals overlap. Ah, well.)
no services 37%
under 50 31%
50-100 13%
100-150 13%
150-200 3%
200+ 3%

Friday Night Service Attendance
(glitch: no percentages printed, so these are all my guesstimates based on central angle size in the circle graph)
no services 20%
under 50 40%
50-100 34%
100-150 3%
150-200 0%
100+ 3%

High Holiday Service Attendance (in numbers of minyanim)
under 50 RH 1, YK 1
50-100 RH 4, YK 2
100-150 RH 1, YK 1
150-200 RH 3, YK 4
200-300 RH 3, YK 2
100-400 RH 0, YK 1
400-500 RH 1, YK 2
greater than 500 RH 0, YK 0

Other Programs Offered (in numbers of minyanim)
Hannukah party 9
Purim services 18
Social action 13
Beit midrash 7
Shavuot program 15
Tish B'Av services 13
Slichot 11
Simchat Torah services 12
Israel programs 1
Social programs 11
Other 15

Primary Sources of Revenue
General donations 49%
Grants 12%
Membership 23%
Program revenue 4%
High holiday donations 12%

Tax Status
Incorporated as religious corporation 32%
Donations through fiscal sponsor 21%
No tax-exempt status 47%

Rent Paid (per use, in number of minyanim)
$0 13
$1-$100 7
$100-$300 4
$300-$500 1
$500-$750 2
Over $750 4

Length of Time in Current Space
Under 1 year 23%
1-2 years 16%
2-3 years 16%
3-4 years 19%
4-5 years 0%
5 years 26%

Number of Founders
1 6%
2 19%
3 16%
4 16%
5 3%
5+ 40%

Where Does the Minyan Meet?
Synagogue 29%
JCC 5%
Other Jewish institution 10%
School 2%
Secular institution 5%
Church 7%
People's homes 27%
Other 15%

Numbers on Email List (in number of minyanim)
Under 100 5
100-300 12
300-500 8
500-700 3
700-1000 0
1000-2000 1
2000+ 2

Average Age of Minyan [attendees]
20-30 45%
30-40 41%
40-50 14%

Hours Per Week a Minyan Leader Works on Minyan
1-2 48%
2-5 31%
5-10 14%
10+ 7%

Dvar Torah Length
Under 5 min 10%
5 min 46%
10 min 37%
15 min 7%

Gender Breakdown (in numbers of minyanim)
(first number is Shabbat morning minyan attendance, second number is service leaders)
< 30% M, > 70% F 0, 0
30% M, 70% F 0, 2
40% M, 60% F 12, 2
50% M, 50% F 14, 19
60% M, 40% F 1, 4
70% M, 30% F 0, 4
> 70% M, < 30% F 0, 0

Numbers Since Founding
stayed the same 16%
increased a little 28%
increased a lot 53%

Relationship With Other Established Communities
Joint services 12%
Joint programming 29%
No contact 24%
Other 35%
(which just screams out for examples of what "other" means in this case!)

Hospitality
Hospitality coordinator 22%
Hosted meals 24%
Asking people to leave space at their tables 16%
Potluck 22%
Other 16%

The back page of the handout had a bunch of 'quick facts' about the surveyed minyanim.

• Space rental and food-related costs are the biggest expenses for most minyanim.
  
• The most popular set is amud in the middle and chairs in a row. 25% have a mechitza.
  
• 50% announce pages during shul
  
• Just over 25% have guidelines for the dvar Torah.
  
• All have not changed or increased frequency of meetings since founding.
  
• 2/3 greet attendees at the door.
  
• 25% own their own Sefer Torah.
  
• 80% offer classes or other opportunities to learn to daven and/or leyn.
  
• Onlye 3 actively operate with formal by-law.
  
• 83% have a kashrut policy.
  
• Half use Facebook to communicate; only 28% use paper in any form (snail mail, flyers, etc).
  
• Over 50% have been featured in a news story or on a blog. 25% have an appointed person to deal with the media.
  
• Almost none provide formal "rabbinic" counseling.
  
• 1/3 of the founders are still its leaders.
  
• 30% have an average of more than 10 children/service.
  
• Over 50% have one person in charge of assigning davening.
  Only 32% have an official category of membership, and only 1/3 of those with membership offer special benefits to members (high holiday seats, etc). Only 2 charge more than $300 for membership. All but one have financial aid.
  
• All but 4 have budgets under $6000. 68% do no formal fundraising. 63% have one person in charge of finances, while 2 have paid bookkeepers. 23% have some paid staff (part-time only).
  
• 90% of attendees go to other shils at least some of the time.
  
• 6 count 10 men and 10 women, 3 count only men, the rest count men and women.

Comments

[feygele.livejournal.com]

If you're going to talk about the survey, it might be worth discussing how problematic it was. See this (http://jewschool.com/2008/11/26/14122/your-israeli-orientation/) as a starting point, or this (http://jewschool.com/2008/11/27/14119/no-child-left-behind/) for more in-depth probing.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I definitely had issues with the "Groomed v. Bloomed" talk's methodology. There were all sorts of issues (after-school Hebrew school should rank at least as much as a Jewish youth group, for instance: my 11 years of 8 hours per week plus regular Shabbat davening meant nothing because I wasn't in day school or a youth group. That's just foolish.), which is part of why I didn't feel like writing about it: it would turn into a huge rant about how I didn't feel that the data were reliable (nor as useful as the presenter seemed to think, but perhaps that's just me).

The data here are from a handout at the registration desk, and was not about groomed/bloomed at all. I have some issues with this data as well (overlapping data ranges, "other" categories that are so large they should be explicated, the more global question of whether a survey of only 32 independent minyanim's practices is a large enough sample size, and whether it's comparing apples to quinces when including minyanim with such a wide range of practices (orthopraxis through whatever, however much they are officially unaffiliated).

[bz-mahrabu.livejournal.com]

This was a different survey - this was a survey that went to the participating minyanim themselves in advance of the conference (not the one last year that went to the minyan participants).