{"id":3802,"date":"2012-09-13T12:57:07","date_gmt":"2012-09-13T17:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/college.web.unc.edu\/?p=3802"},"modified":"2024-07-02T13:31:52","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T13:31:52","slug":"mornings-at-the-stanton-street-shul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=3802","title":{"rendered":"Mornings at the Stanton Street Shul"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Shul member, the late Abie Roth, who emigrated from Ukraine in 1920. (photo courtesy of Jonathan Boyarin)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Jonathan Boyarin started attending Stanton Street Shul, a small Manhattan synagogue, he and his wife were two of the youngest members\u2014a pair of thirty-year-olds in a sometimes cantankerous congregation of older men. Over its hundred-year history, the narrow building at 180 Stanton Street has been a home base for several generations of Jewish immigrants and children of immigrants. Many of these families eventually moved further up into Manhattan, but some stayed, speaking Yiddish, practicing traditional religion, and giving the synagogue its working-class\u00a0character.<\/p>\n

Boyarin, an anthropologist specializing in Jewish studies, visited Stanton Street for the first time back in 1983 when he was looking for a synagogue (or \u201cshul,\u201d as Orthodox Jews will often say) where he could attend prayers every morning. He and his wife, a New York City native, spend their summer and winter breaks on the Lower East Side. Boyarin didn\u2019t come to the synagogue to write a book, but Stanton Street Shul was a tempting anthropological subject. Here was a piece of Old World Judaism, except that it wasn\u2019t really old\u2014it was new, too, and changing as rapidly as the Lower East Side was\u00a0gentrifying.<\/p>\n

Every time Boyarin would try to pin the synagogue down with words, something new would come up. Stanton Street\u2019s longtime rabbi had a falling out with the congregation and left. A younger generation began turning up at services. Boyarin and his wife, Elissa Sampson, are in their fifties now, and that\u2019s older than most people at Stanton Street. There are many young couples, straight as well as gay, which is one feature that makes the shul unusual among Modern Orthodox. But the young people are often at Stanton Street for only a few years before they move on to more family-friendly neighborhoods. (On the Lower East Side, Orthodox Jews can\u2019t push a stroller on from Friday evening to Saturday evening without violating the Sabbath commandment to rest. Other Manhattan neighborhoods have special zones, established by rabbis, where stroller use and some other types of work are\u00a0permitted.)<\/p>\n

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The Stanton Street Shul (photo courtesy of Jonathan Boyarin)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By the summer of 2008, Boyarin had figured out that he\u2019d never be able, in his words, to make Stanton Street \u201csit still for its ethnographic portrait.\u201d He figured, \u201cI\u2019ll be in shul every morning\u2014let me just take notes every day and see what happens.\u201d Those daily writings became a book,\u00a0Mornings at the Stanton Street Shul<\/em>.\u00a0 The book doesn\u2019t have a plot and doesn\u2019t pretend to\u2014it\u2019s a journal of twelve weeks in the life of the shul. Morning Torah portions. Candidates for the job of rabbi. Holidays celebrated with kugel and rainbow\u00a0cookies.<\/p>\n

Prayers that summer were supposed to be held every morning at 6:45, but Jewish law requires a quorum of ten men for public prayer, and oftentimes ten wouldn\u2019t show up until much later. Sometimes the rabbi would have someone go out to the street and grab the next Jew who came along. Other times he\u2019d open the holy ark at the front of the sanctuary and just count the Torah scroll as the tenth\u00a0man.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the Stanton Street Shul\u2014both traditional and laid back. It\u2019s on the liberal edge of Modern Orthodoxy\u2014the branch of Judaism that combines fairly strict adherence to Jewish law with some adaptations to the modern world. Services are in Hebrew at Stanton Street. Women don\u2019t count toward the quorum of ten for prayer. At the same time, most members of the synagogue\u2019s leadership board are women, Boyarin says. Women read aloud from the Torah a few times a year at special services, which wouldn\u2019t happen at many other Orthodox synagogues, even in Modern\u00a0Orthodoxy.<\/p>\n

One visitor called Stanton Street the place \u201cwhere hip meets hip replacement.\u201d It\u2019s true, Boyarin says: when you go to services, alongside the older folks you\u2019ll see young guys in hipster hats and checkered shirts. Newcomers are attracted, as Boyarin and his wife were, by Stanton Street\u2019s reputation for unpretentious, no-need-to-dress-up Orthodox Judaism. \u201cSome people might have grown up in Modern Orthodox congregations and wanted to keep doing that, but not in as straight-laced a way,\u201d Boyarin explains. \u201cAfter all, that\u2019s not what they moved to New York City\u00a0for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boyarin told the shul\u2019s board that he was working on a book, but he didn\u2019t discuss it explicitly with everyone else. \u201cThey know I\u2019m an anthropologist,\u201d he says, \u201cand they saw me making notes.\u201d One elderly member, after reading the book, told him it was like sitting in the living room together, listening to Boyarin tell all the shul\u2019s stories. Another friend just said: \u201cYou wrote a whole book without saying anything nasty about\u00a0anyone!\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout the book, the synagogue seems on the edge of trouble\u2014not enough money, not enough members on the books. And it\u2019s got a skeleton in the closet, in the form of a previous rabbi who tried to sell the building out from under his congregation. Boyarin\u2019s son, Jonah, calls Stanton Street \u201cthe little shul that couldn\u2019t, sometimes.\u201d Yet the family still loves the synagogue and hopes newcomers keep coming\u00a0in.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a place that always works, and it\u2019s never a place that works perfectly,\u201d Boyarin says. \u201cBut when it does work, it\u2019s very, very\u00a0special.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Jonathan Boyarin is the Leonard and Tobee Kaplan Distinguished Professor of Modern Jewish Thought in the Department of Religious Studies and the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, both in the College of Arts and\u00a0Sciences.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0By Susan Hardy, Endeavors magazine<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Jonathan Boyarin started attending Stanton Street Shul, a small Manhattan synagogue, he and his wife were two of the youngest members. Over its hundred-year history, the narrow building at 180 Stanton Street has been a home base for several generations of Jewish immigrants and children of immigrants. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3820,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diversity","category-fine-arts-humanities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3802"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45473,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3802\/revisions\/45473"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}