21 - Building Community in a Pluralist High School

Summary

Context and Questions

The religious practice at an intentionally pluralistic Jewish high school in the United States that we are calling ‘Tikhon’ entails prayer services in the morning and, for those who are interested, in the afternoon as well. In order to provide services that are appropriate to the full range of its students, Tikhon organizes dozens of options in the morning, ranging from traditional services, in which males and females sit separately and men assume the leading liturgical roles, to discussions and yoga with meditation. Students choose the service that is of interest to them and—to some extent, since these are adolescents—with which their families are comfortable. By doing this, Tikhon legitimates the range of approaches to Judaism that Tikhon families hold and makes a statement about its understanding of pluralism.

Despite this effort to respect and support the multiplicity of approaches to prayer, conflicts that challenge students sometimes arise. Reflecting on her experience of pluralism during her first year, a girl who believes that females should not be counted in a minyan and who goes with her friends to the meḥitsah minyan recalls a morning when the meḥitsah minyan did not have the ten men needed for a participant to say Kaddish (the prayer to remember a deceased relative):

I remember [what happened] earlier in the year, [with] my friends who couldn't say Kaddish because there wasn't a minyan. So one girl from the [meḥitsah minyan] was actually willing to go to the egal minyan so that they could have a minyan [because a boy from the egal minyan came into the meḥitsah one and preserved the quorum] … so that the person in meḥitsah could say Kaddish. I don't know how you categorize that, like what's that called? But [the girl who left the meḥitsah minyan and went to the egalitarian one] honestly believed that she should not be counted in a minyan, but she went anyway for the sake of someone who had to say Kaddish. And that was just—people domake sacrifices.

A boy who identifies himself as a Reform Jew quickly concurs: ‘You can keep your own beliefs, but at the same time help other people, acknowledge, accept and respect their beliefs.’