Forward Recognizes the Challenge to Established Synagogues from Independent Jewish Prayer Groups

The Forward recognizes in an editorial and story this week (finally) that Jews do not need synagogues. Jews may pray anywhere that they gather. Judaism in its essence is not an institutional religion.

...Josh Nathan-Kazis reports this week, many independent minyanim have no interest in affiliating with this or any other denomination. “We don’t need the movement,” one minyan leader boasted. Perhaps not the “movement” as it is now structured, but engaged Jews — from establishment and upstart congregations — need to find a way to work together to shape a common future, especially if committed, egalitarian, non-Orthodox Judaism is going to survive. To do that, they must stop talking past one another and recognize some central truths....

And we add for those who will understand to what we allude, independent prayer groups have nothing to do with barefoot jogging, no how no way. They are the essential expressions of the primary modes of praying as articulated in the Mishnah and the Talmud, the rishonim and acharonim. Institutionalized synagogues as they are today are not the authentic representations of the preferred modes of prayer in classical Judaism.