Connecticut Jewish Ledger

NEW HAVEN — On a recent Shabbat morning, the third floor Zucker Reading Room in Yale Universitys Slifka Center had lots of singing and camaraderie, a mechitza (the divider separating male and females during prayer) n and male and female prayer leaders and Torah readers.

While college students warmly worshiping together at a Hillel House is a common sight on college campuses across the country, a prayer service featuring both a mechitza and women leading male and female worshippers is rare.

The approximately 30 male and female worshippers at Yale are members of the Urim Minyan, described as a monthly Shabbat morning service which strives to create an uplifting and song-filled tefilah, one that is grounded in commitment to halachah and maximizing the participation of both women and men.

In the Urim Minyan, women and men are permitted to lead Pesukei Dzimra, the verses of song at the beginning of services, as well as the Torah service. Men lead Shacharit (the morning service) and Musaf (the additional service).

During a recent service, a woman led the Torah service. After taking the Torah around the womens section, she handed the Torah to a male who carried the Torah through the mens section. Both male and female gabbaim jointly supervised the Torah reading.

The lengthy Torah portion of Parshat Bereishit (Genesis) was read in its entirety by a core of skilled male and female Torah readers.
The Urim Minyan is organized by several Yale students, including Elitzur Bar-Asher and Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, a married couple from the Old Katamon neighborhood of Jerusalem. The couple spent two years living in Cambridge, Mass., where they participated in a similar prayer service, Minyan Tehilla. They recently moved to New Haven, where Elitzur is a lecturer at Yale University, teaching a seminar in Aramaic and is a PhD student at Harvard University in Semitic Philology, where he studies linguistics with Semitic Languages. Michal has a masters degree from the Talmud department at Hebrew University and is currently in the PhD Program in Jewish Studies at Yale.

The Bar-Ashers said they are excited about the opportunities the minyan offers to women.

For many years, Michal knew how to read Torah, but she never had the opportunity of practicing it in shul until last year when she did it for the first time at Minyan Tehilla, said Elitzur. We then sponsored a kiddush saying that we feel that only now Michal had her real bat mitzvah.

I feel that Urim Minyan and other minyanim in this style give me something that was missing from my life so far - a sense of belonging to the kahal (community), Michal explained. In learning the debates and discussions the rabbis of the Talmud and the Poskim had regarding women, we realize that many of them had understood the Jewish world as open for women’s participation.

The Urim Minyan tries to implement those views, in real life, she continued. That means that my tefilah is now being led by both women and men. That means that my gabbaim are both a woman and a man. I hear the Torah being read by both women and men, and the dvar Torah is being given by both learned men and women. My Shabbat has changed.

A Happy, Holy Place
Other minyan participants express similar feelings. Rachel Bergstein, a PhD student in American Jewish history and one of the gabbaim of the minyan, reports, My whole life I have lived between two worlds, Orthodox and Conservative, comfortable in each but constantly aware that I am an anomaly.

Often I have longed for a davening experience that will allow me to merge my two worlds, Bergstein explained. Urim Minyan gives me this opportunity in an atmosphere that encourages communal singing, uplifting davening, and a friendly and supportive environment.

Aaron Kachuck, a Yale undergraduate studying literature, serves as the minyans male gabbai.

The Urim Minyan is a place where people of various theological and practical systems can meet together and, hopefully, feel not only comfortable but uplifted, Kachuck said. For those for whom the general aesthetic, and perhaps theology, of an Orthodox congregation are appealing or compelling, but for whom certain moral issues, such as the place of women in the congregation, cause more than a little discomfort with the gendered predispositions of most Orthodox congregations, the Urim Minyan is a far happier, and holier, place to pray.

Sydney Perry, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven speaks highly of the Bar-Ashers and the Urim Minyan.

“They bring their energy, their willingness to contribute and their desire to add to the complement of opportunities for prayer at the Slifka Center, Perry said.

For Michal, being a part of the minyan is rewarding as both a woman and a Jew.

I am now a part of what happens in shul, she said. I am a part of what creates the minyan. That feels good.

For more information about Urim Minyan and times of services, call the Slifka Center at (203) 432-1134.