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Welcome to the Chasidic Egal Minyan Resource Site

"Chasidic-Egalitarian? I guess it's not an oxymoron anymore."

JTS professor David Roskies 10 years ago after the first Chasidic egalitarian Minyan lit its spark

What will be on this site:

• How Chasidic song and feeling can be integrated into any davening or gathering.

• Dvar Torah's from Chasidic rebbes new and old.

• MP3 recordings of Nigunim, which you can learn and share at your
gatherings.

• Shabbat Bereishit, October 28, 2005, is kickoff Shabbat.

• Send in your suggestions (rebduvid86@hotmail.com, imagine@YourSpark.com).

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Sample SongSheet:

click for link to PDF Printout of Ana BaKoach

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Sample melodies to "Ana BaKoach":

anashlomo.mp3anashlomo

anaskolier.mp3

anayikar.mp3

anazalman.mp3

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BACKGROUND

From: Rabbi David Seidenberg (Los Angeles CA) 9-22-05
510-219-5834
rebduvid86@hotmail.com

Dear Chaverim,

You are invited to explore, imagine, and contribute to an evolving site that
will introduce Chasidic nusach and songs to the wider Jewish world and to
all kinds of seekers. As a taste of what we hope to create, you will be
able to find the liturgy of the holy "Ana Bakoach" prayer in a printable
format, along with three ways to chant it, ready for downloading.

This letter will give you a clear picture of what we are working on. If you
like what you see or hear on this site, please let us know how to be in
touch. The last section describes ways you can be involved.

HOW THIS IDEA GOT STARTED:

Ten years ago, the year after Reb Shlomo Carlebach died, I had a brainstorm
that we needed to daven Chasidic nusach in the non-Orthodox community. I
gathered a group of friends together for Shabbat B'reishit to found a
Chasidic egalitarian minyan on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. We
publicized the minyan by giving out "p'takim," quarter-page flyers, at
Simchat Torah celebrations of Upper West Side synagogues from all four
movements. We invited people to "Dance with the Holy Bride!" A wonderful
community of committed Jews from many walks of life, including
ex-Yeshiva-niks and currently Orthodox yidn, Conservative and Reform rabbis,
etc etc, began to gather once a month to dance and sing, share Torah and
meals. Sometimes we met at Ansche Chesed, sometimes at the Buddhist Center
on Riverside; a branch began meeting at JTS about a year or so later. We
continued to meet on Friday nights for about three years.

This Chasidic egalitarian minyan may have been the first ongoing minyan that
integrated Chasidic nusach and egalitarian davening. What we found in this
very special minyan was that Chasidus can live and be celebrated outside the
world of rebbes and outside the Charedi ("ultra-Orthodox") community.

Experiments in davening this way have happened before, and have continued in
many places, many times since. This site will help people continue to make
those experiments, to learn from each other, and to deepen their practice.

We are using the tenth anniversary of this minyan to promote the integration
of Chasidic practices, learning, and nusach into the services of shuls and
minyanim that are not part of a Chasidic community, including more liberal
or egalitarian groups, Modern Orthodox groups

WHAT THE WEBSITE WILL DO:

The ChasidicEgal website will provide resources, ideas, learning, and
context to help people use Chasidic traditions to deepen their davening on a
number of levels. It will:

~ invite people from all walks of Jewish life to experience and use Chasidic
nusach and teachings in their practice.

~ draw a picture of how Chasidic nusach is making its way into the
non-Orthodox world through many minyanim and in many ways.

~ help groups and individuals deepen their practice by teaching something
about davening on a heart level.

~ give groups already using Reb Shlomo's nusach diverse resources from older
Chasidic traditions that can deepen their davening.

~ offer shuls and minyanim some simple ways to incorporate Chasidic (nusach
Ari) liturgical changes into their davening.

WHAT WE HOPE TO ACCOMPLISH:

One of the sweetest aspects of the Chasidic egalitarian minyan in Manhattan
was that it brought together all kinds of Jews. People from very different
communities were able to be role models and teachers for each other, in a
way that rarely happens today. During the time that we were davening
together, the dividing lines between the Yeshiva world, the Chasidim, and
non-Orthodox Jews were erased. The website will model this kind of achdut
(unity) by including teaching and offerings from Jews in every movement.

A primary goal of the ChasidicEgal site is to open the door for non-Chasidic
or non-Orthodox Jews to connect their own prayer and practice with Chasidic
traditions.

The website will teach people about the history of using Chasidic nusach in
non-Chasidic contexts (in places like the Havurah movement, for example),
and help people find shuls and minyanim where this is happening today. It
will link them to resources - i.e. CD's, tapes, books, classes - that may
appeal to Jews regardless of their movement affiliation. (These resources
will include Orthodox centers like the Carlebach shul that are inclusive of
all types of Jews.) The underlying message is that everyone can learn
Chasidus and make it part of their religious practice.

We hope the resources on this site will be useful to both Orthodox and
egalitarian communities. For minyanim that already use some Chasidic
nusach - whether they are Orthodox or egalitarian or any combination of the
two - this site will encourage them to deepen their connection.
Many synagogues and new minyanim have started to use Reb Shlomo's tunes from
"Shabbos in Shomayim" (including many Orthodox non-Chasidic shuls). But
singing the tunes is not the same thing as experiencing the ruach or
understanding the great Chasidic traditions behind those tunes. We want to
provide the resources that will help people go deeper, including nigunim
from Breslov, Lubavitch, and other Chasidic traditions, stories and tools
for entering this world, and ways to learn and teach Chasidishe Torah, as
part of their davening.

WHAT WE NEED FROM YOU NOW:

If all this interests you, please let us know how to stay in touch. We'll
be adding resources, songs and Torah to this site over the coming months.
As we complete new sections, you'll receive notice (once a month or less)
about what's happened. Any information you provide will be used strictly
for this purpose. Our first goal is to provide one set of nigunim and
nusach for the psalms of Kabbalat Shabbat.

WHAT YOU CAN CONTRIBUTE:

We are looking for nigunim, recordings (old and new), liturgical text that
is ready to be used (for example, in a .pdf format), and stories of people's
journeys through the Chasidic world. We also want reflections on what
integrating Chasidus into other forms of davening can mean, and other ideas
that will help deepen our visitors' spiritual and religious experience, as
well as links to minyanim and to other sites that will help people on their
journeys.

We are looking for nigunim from diverse Chasidic streams and traditions that
can be presented in a simple format that people can use to learn and teach
others. The site may include some produced versions of songs, with
instrumentation, chords, etc. It may also include some written musical
notation. But ultimately many people will be using these songs on Shabbat
without instruments, and they will be learning them without training in how
to read music. So we want to include versions that are just a plain nigun,
sung in a simple voice. (For some artists, the best way to do this might be
to use a single instrument to record a nigun, like a fiddle or clarinet.)
In some cases it might also be helpful to include recordings of a group
singing a nigun.

We would also like each artist or singer who records a nigun to write a few
sentences about it. This could include:

~ how you learned this nigun, who taught it to you, etc.
~ what tradition this nigun comes from
~ what this nigun means to you, when you like to sing it, etc.

Many nigunim are used in more than one way in davening, i.e., a nigun may
work for more than one prayer or set of words. A nigun may have been
written for one prayer but then have "migrated" to another one - for
example, Reb Shlomo's "Yah Ribon" is often used for "L'kha Dodi". You may
want to record a nigun without words, and then record its setting to words
in more than one prayer. You may also have used a nigun in a special
context that you would like to teach others.

At this point, we are planning to offer everything in MP3 format, though we
are open to all suggestions. Most older nigunim can be recorded without any
copyright problem. Many newer nigunim require permissions. If you are a
musician who has recorded a nigun, and would like to include your
copyrighted version (or a clip of your version) on the site, we would love
to do that, as long as the rights issues are worked out. If you have a CD
that includes a particular song, we will include a link to help visitors to
buy your CD. Having a complete song available for download on the website
is one way to help sell your CD.

The nigunim will be organized in a few ways: 1) how they fit into Kabbalat
Shabbat; 2) whether they are dance nigunim or "deveikes" (devekut -
meditative) nigunim; 3) what tradition they come from.

I hope this inspires you to participate and to be creative! Thanks for the
time you took to read this letter, and thank you for whatever you may
contribute to this effort. Please contact us with any questions, ideas,
etc.

Sincerely,

Rabbi David Seidenberg
rebduvid86@hotmail.com
510-219-5834

YourSpark.com is proud to be the home of the Chasidic Egal Resource Site.

For other imaginative projects see links below.