By SHERI SHEFA Reprinted by permission of SocialAction.com

Sarah Brodbar-Nemzer

Sarah Brodbar-Nemzer TORONTO - Sarah Brodbar-Nemzer is a self-described “unpeggable” Jew. She said she is Jewishly observant, but has a hard time fitting herself into a particular box. She is Shomer Shabbat – to an extent – and egalitarian.

“I’m unpeggable. I was telling a friend that I wouldn’t use the telephone for a local call, but I would use the telephone to call people I couldn’t walk to,” she said.

Maybe this is why the National Havurah Committee (NHC) is such a good fit for her, and hundreds of other liberal thinking Jews of all levels of observance, denominations, professions and education levels.

The NHC, founded almost 30 years ago, is a network of non-denominational, multigenerational, and egalitarian individuals and communities dedicated to Jewish living and learning, community building, and tikkun olam.

Brodbar-Nemzer, 22, a philosophy and contemporary studies graduate from the University of King’s College in Halifax and the co-ordinator of the Family Place at the Jewish Discovery Museum at the BJCC in Toronto, has been involved with the NHC since she was eight years old, and has served on the board since she was 15.

The NHC’s flagship program, the Summer Institute, described by Brodbar-Nemzer as a cross between an educational conference and summer camp, attracts Jews of all ages and denominations by offering a place where they can study, pray, sing, dance and meditate while feeling part of a community.

“The havurah movement started in the 1960s by people who felt alienated by the large mainstream suburban synagogues,” Brodbar-Nemzer explained. “They felt like they were going to watch a performance rather than engage in something.”

She said havurot, Hebrew for fellowships, began forming and groups would meet in people’s homes, with each havurah being different from the next.

“Some would focus more on learning, some would focus more on praying, some were for families, others for adults,” she added.

“Years later, people felt they could better service the Jewish community by becoming better organized,” Brodbar-Nemzer said.

By 1979, The NHC was established as a way for individuals and communities to get together and share with one another.

“[One of] the two main principles of the havurah movement is that it is participatory, which means everyone, no matter who you are in your life, no matter what you do, you are equal in terms or participation. You have something to teach and you have something to learn,” she said, adding that at the summer institute, every teacher is a student and vice versa.

Classes, which range in topics from “Men, Women, and Sex in the Talmud,” to “Writing and Listening to Jewish Poetry,” are taught and attended by professors, carpenters, students and doctors.

“And these people are sitting next to you in a class. So, a renowned Torah scholar might be sitting next to you, learning interpretive dance,” Brodbar-Nemzer said with a laugh.

Another important NHC principle is that the havurot are egalitarian.

“Normally, egalitarian focuses on questions of gender. We also focus on issues of age. It was a community in which I grew up thinking of myself as an equal participant, and an equal leader. When I joined the board, I was in high school and people said to me, ‘Oh, are you the youth representative on the board?’ I wasn’t there as a token young person. I was there because I was smart and had things to say.”

As a member of the board, Brodbar-Nemzer’s responsibility is to reach out to some of the younger members, to help them get the most out of their week, and foster relationships between their families and the rest of the community.

She said she reports to the other board members to define for them what her role should be and how to work pro-actively with the teens and young adults.

Brodbar-Nemzer said she is a woman who takes the initiative, and the institute was a program that encouraged that.

“I didn’t have to fight. At most places, as a young person, you have to fight to be taken seriously. Here was a place where people kvelled when I took the initiative. And everyone was ready to follow our thinking and support us.”

She said that at 14 years old, she and her friends started organizing Shabbatons themselves, with the support of their parents, as a way to see each other throughout the year.

“We organized all our own davening, all our own projects and learning sessions,” she said.

For young, unpeggable Jews like Brodbar-Nemzer, havurah Judaism is about creating their own Jewish experience.

In fact, the single largest group of participants at this year’s summer institute held in New Hampshire last month, was people in their 20s.

“There are just 300 really cool Jews. And there is a community feeling… having all these people around and engaging with each other. And young people get involved too,” she said adding that a couple years ago, a group of children organized a discussion on Jewish influences in the Harry Potter series.

There are more than 150 havurot and minyanim in 34 states and provinces in North America listed on the NHC website.

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