The Minyan Tradition

Judaism has some wonderful traditions. We are all familiar with Tevya singing that wonderful song, “Tradition,” in “Fiddler on the Roof.” Traditions, however, often have some beauty to them.

One tradition is that of a Mourner’s Prayer at the Synagogue. When a person is in mourning the community comes together and prays with that person for a period of a month for most family members, or eleven months when people lose a parent. There is a requirement however. There must be a Minyan, a quorum of ten Jewish people, to offer the prayer. The concept of Minyan comes from Genesis in a negotiation between God and Abraham over the number of people which constituted a community. The number ten ended up being that number.

It fosters community and helps the Jewish community find one another in strange places. It invites people together to Worship God and to approach God. It’s not that individual prayer or faith is frowned upon, but there is a sense that a community is so much stronger.

I fear that Christianity has forgotten to preach and teach about the importance of community. I fear that Christianity has become so focused on individualism and individuality that we have lost sight of the fact that Jesus invited people into community and left a community of people together to carry on his work.

An interesting, very contemporary word has popped up in conversations about Christianity. The word is ‘personal.’ We have personal salvation, personal relationships with Jesus, personal responsibility, personal prayer, personal Worship, personal theology. There’s a funny thing about this word ‘personal’ in Christianity. The word ‘personal’ is not in the New Testament. It shows up once in Proverbs 18:2

A fool takes no pleasure in understanding,
but only in expressing personal opinion.

Hardly a word that inspires an allegiance to personal.

It also appears twice in Judith to refer to a person’s personal affairs.

Sadly, Christianity seems to have lost its sense of community. I believe that this has had some consequences that are not very good.

First, conceptually the idea of ‘personal theology’ sounds good----but it also flies in the face of the cumulative impact that theologians and historians have had in Christianity. Pre-Reformation reformers such as Thomas Aquinas and Francis of Assisi had much to teach and still have much to teach. They ought not be lost. Martin Luther and so many of the reformers had much to say. Reinhold Niebuhr (author of the Serenity Prayer) and his brother Richard Niebuhr wrote brilliant about theological matters in the twentieth century. They espoused a sense not so much of ‘personal’ theology of the theology of Christianity which was so much richer and is so much richer than many people even realize or acknowledge.

Secondly, while personal responsibility is incredibly important (and often lacking) it can blur the concept of communal responsibility. Cain asked God in Genesis a seminal question: Am I my brother’s keeper? The rest of the Bible answers the question in the affirmative. In 1st Corinthians in an issue of food sacrificed to idols, St. Paul is explicit in saying that the strong had responsibility for the weak. In the gospels we repeatedly are reminded that the rich have responsibility to the poor. This is a sense of communal responsibility.

Lastly, the idea of personal Worship. Should people pray on their own? Of course. But Jesus spoke of two or three being gathered as having so much strength. It was and remains an invitation for people to gather together to pray, together to Worship, together to learn and grow.

I had the privilege of visiting a synagogue last night. I thought I knew a great deal about Judaism and I learned that I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did. I was struck by the richness and the beauty of the traditions of Judaism. Above all, I was reminded that they understand the concept of Minyan far better than Christians do.