Riv-Ellen Prell Papers

The Havurah Movement (1968- )

Incorporated historically from religious communes and small study and prayer groups, the emergence of contemporary havurot in the early 1960s was originally pioneered by the Reconstructionist Movement. These small communities prayed, studied and socialized together creating an organic Judaism advocated by Mordecai Kaplan. In the Fall of 1968 a religious community in Somerville, Massachusetts formed, specifically appealing to the growing Jewish counterculture and leading to a proliferation of contemporary havurot. These small informal communities engaged those searching for Jewish involvement that acknowledged their liberal, feminist, egalitarian, participatory and religiously creative viewpoints. Strongly attracting students and young married couples, these havurot began as reactions against the institutional alienation of the American synagogue; in the 1970s, the popularity of havurot resulted in synagogues including havurot as alternative minyans to their main services.

Havurot’s openness to individual self-expression reflected the social and political activism of the 60s and 70s generation of Americans while allowing young Jews to bond with religious tradition. In 1973, Riv-Ellen Prell, an anthropology graduate student in the University of Chicago, saw a unique opportunity to study the various forces affecting a havurah and based her dissertation on observing the Westwood Free Minyan at the University of California at Los Angeles. Prell studied religion as an undergraduate at the University of Southern California and was drawn to anthropological methods for her future work. As she writes:

Prell participated and observed the Westwood Minyan for eighteen months from 1973 to 1975. Her fieldwork encompassed attending the group’s formal prayer services, weekend retreats, evaluation meetings, and social events. She also conducted formal interviews with founding and significant minyan members. After finishing her dissertation, Prell, now Associate Professor in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Anthropology, revisited her research in the late 1980s. She states; “...I felt it was important to understand that research in the context of American Jewish History...My re-training in American Jewish history was crucial to my understanding that the havurah movement was consistent with virtually every generation of American Jews. Worship and synagogue was reconfigured by each generation in relationship to issues within the larger society...” She completed additional interviews with founders of the havurah movement in Boston and New York,6 and in 1989, published her work in a book titled Prayer and Community: The Havurah in American Judaism. Called “the first major study of the havurah movement by an anthropologist” and the recipient of the 1990 National Jewish Book Award in Contemporary Jewish Life, Prayer and Community examines how prayer reflects social forces and affects the worshiper’s experience and criticizes current secularization theories that tend to omit those seeking a significant religious experience. In her review of Prell’s book in the Anthropological Quarterly, Virginia R. Dominguez further explains:

Prell’s later work, manifested in articles and chapters published for Jewish studies and anthropologist publications, draws upon her graduate work at the Westwood Minyan. Prell currently serves as Professor in American Studies and as Adjunct Professor in Jewish Studies and in Women’s Studies at the University of Minnesota. She co-edited with the Personal Narratives Group Interpreting Women’s Lives: Theories of Personal Narratives and has authored Fighting to Become American: Jews, Gender, and the Anxiety of Assimilation. She has written numerous chapters and articles concerning American Jewish culture and its relationship with class, gender, ethnicity, and ritual. A complete list of her publications is available in her curriculum vitae within the collection.

The allure of the havurah movement was limited to its generation. By the late 1980s, most havurot were replaced by more traditional yet egalitarian minyanim, frequently held within synagogues. Many of the former havurah members channeled their religious questioning into professional careers in Jewish academia and communal work. Therein lies their legacy. As Prell writes in Prayer and Community: “Their vision will not soon be forgotten...With or without their particular communities, they have used these ideas to shape the American Judaism of the 1980s and 1990s..."