A new kaffiyeh policy is designed to help divided Jews pray together. Is this the Jewish future?

A prayer group in Brooklyn recently asked congregants to leave their kaffiyehs at home. “This decision aims to avoid harm and preserve communal cohesion and is not a judgment of intent,” the group’s organizers wrote. Image by Sauce Reques/iStock

By Louis Keene September 9, 2025

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Seth Berkman did not join a prayer group to set Israel policy.

When he started attending Shabbat services at Minyan Atara, what drew him was a scene that felt grassroots and authentic. Atara didn’t have a rabbi or a building — it met in the offices of a local Jewish nonprofit — but it had his friends. The services, mixed-gender and musical, recalled Conservative spaces Berkman grew up around, except less formal and more participatory.

Six years later, Atara has outgrown the nonprofit, but it still doesn’t have a rabbi or a building, and that’s by design. Instead, it is part of a thriving movement of independent, lay-led prayer groups, or minyans, that run services in a format called traditional egalitarianism. These Sabbath-observant minyans meet semi-regularly in borrowed spaces, building community outside of the purview of denominational Judaism. There’s often a potluck after services, and a WhatsApp group that comes to life when Shabbat ends.

“It’s ragtag in a way,” said Berkman, 35, now one of Atara’s lead organizers. “Vibes-wise, it’s very, ‘We’re creating this little thing, and it can be what we want it to be.’”

When it comes to Israel, however, people want different things. Among the trad-egal communities in Brooklyn — there are at least eight in the heavily Jewish neighborhoods of Crown Heights and Prospect Heights — are an explicitly Zionist minyan, an explicitly anti-Zionist minyan and a “non-Zionist/anti-Zionist” minyan. Atara, on the other hand, has taken the bold tack of trying to be a big tent. It falls on Berkman and his co-organizers to figure out how.

Prior to Oct. 7, inclusivity meant providing Atara congregants the option to read a prayer for Israel quietly, rather than the out-loud group reading that is the norm in most American synagogues. But the Hamas-led attack and the ensuing Israeli assault on Gaza brought new pressure on the minyan’s organizers to make decisions on identity, liturgy and even dress code. Many congregants were upset that a few had begun wearing kaffiyehs to services; the updated policy, emailed to the community Aug. 4, banned them.

In a four-page document defining the minyan’s approach to Israel, its organizers write that while the symbolic meaning of the kaffiyeh could depend on the wearer, the viewer and the context, the scarves had ultimately “caused pain and alienation during a vulnerable time.”

“We emphasize that this decision aims to avoid harm and preserve communal cohesion and is not a judgment of intent,” the document reads.

Atara’s painstaking effort at an inclusive policy on Israel — the committee that drafted it deliberated for six months — reflects a fault line around Israel and Zionism challenging Jewish communities of all sizes and kinds. But navigating Israel in a religious setting is especially complex in the trad-egal world, where the very same features that have fueled growth — lay leadership, limited overhead and liberal ideals — has caused the movement to splinter.

The proliferation of these independent minyans and their growing pains tells an important story about how Jewish community is being formed by young people in 2025 — with a position on Israel an inevitable, if not central, ingredient in the formula.

“I’m sure there are plenty of communities that have just like, not touched this topic as much as possible,” Berkman said. “They do what they do, and they try to not talk about it too much, because it’s painful. And that’s valid. But I think there’s also value in trying to say what you are, so people know.”

‘Inclusive thinking’

For years, Brooklyn’s trad-egal minyans enjoyed harmonious coexistence, and the big tents flourished. With most groups meeting once or twice a month, they cooperated on scheduling to limit cross-programming, and posted the calendar on a shared website. Taking a position on Zionism was not a central concern for most; new minyans popped up as much for practical reasons — like space and geography — as stylistic ones.

It’s easy to see the appeal of spaces that are attuned to halacha (Jewish law), but don’t have the strictures or baggage of denominational Judaism. As Orthodox communities battle their conscience over LGBTQ+ inclusion, these new minyans are queer-friendly and often queer-led; as Conservative Judaism fights to stay relevant, the minyans feel, well, fun, unlocking engaged, halachic Judaism (or as one minyan bills itself, “halach-ish“) for a generation disillusioned by the old mold.

The divergent opinions about Israel in these experimental communities could be ignored as the movement gathered momentum in the last decade; even a big-tent approach toward Israel like Atara’s is less in-your-face Zionist than either Conservative or Orthodox Judaism would be. But Oct. 7 and the war brought a new urgency to a bubbling conversation.

In the Atara WhatsApp chat, someone posted a link that referred to genocide not long into the war, upsetting some members; the group’s admins soon posted guidelines asking people to refrain from discussing the conflict in the chat. The minyan’s organizers were also regularly fielding questions about why they weren’t doing more — both from people who wanted stronger support of Israel and those who wanted clearer acknowledgment of Palestinian suffering.

Their attempt to keep controversy out of the religious space did not work for everyone. One of Atara’s pro-Israel members, Zachary Thacher, said in an interview that he pushed unsuccessfully for the minyan’s leaders to issue a statement of solidarity with Israel.

“They just said, ‘That’s not inclusive thinking for anti-Zionists,’” Thacher, 52, said. “In my opinion, that’s so inclusive that you mean nothing.”

Thacher had originally been attracted to the minyan by the intensity of its prayer. “They have really beautiful, soulful, egalitarian davening with beautiful voices, lots of ruach,” or enthusiasm, he said. But the notion of pluralism — an approach that accepts everyone regardless of their beliefs — fell short in a world where he could not coexist with every Jew.

“I’m not interested in making a minyan with people who think Israel shouldn’t exist,” Thacher explained. “Their values are so abhorrent that they would countenance the mass murder of Jews. It goes beyond prayer. They’ve ejected themselves from the peoplehood.”

Frustrated, he decided to revive the trad-egal minyan he had once organized when he lived in lower Manhattan — a community, he said, where people who love Israel didn’t have to be shy about it. Called Kol HaKfar, the new iteration draws a few dozen people once a month to his Crown Heights living room.

It was, at first, listed alongside Atara and the anti-Zionist minyans on Brooklyn’s shared trad-egal calendar. But last month Thacher had it removed in protest of the movement’s direction.

“I think trad-egal Judaism is in a cul-de-sac,” he said. “It is not working as a value system anymore because they’re bankrupting themselves over this.”

Yet even as the only pro-Israel trad-egal minyan in Brooklyn, Kol HaKfar has run into conflict over Israel — specifically, over whether liberal Zionism is actually possible. Its WhatsApp group, which once had a single channel devoted to Israeli political conversation, now has two: one for “center/right Zionists” and a smaller one for liberal Zionists.

This division might not seem to have any bearing on a Friday night service, which does not contain a section where the community might pray for Israel, and Thacher says it has not affected the atmosphere in his living room. (The Saturday morning service does have time for a prayer for Israel, during or immediately after the Torah reading.) But a minyan’s choices go beyond liturgy in a historical moment when Israel is an unavoidable determinant of Jewish identity, community and conversation.

At Brooklyn Shabbat Kodesh, the non-Zionist/anti-Zionist minyan, there is no prayer for Israel or Gaza because the minyan meets on Friday night. But the war may come up during the sermon — the speaker may call it genocide — and watermelon imagery and kaffiyehs are commonplace, according to Misha Holleb, a regular participant.

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More importantly for anti-Zionists, a place like Brooklyn Shabbat Kodesh offers the opportunity for them to exist in a Jewish space “without the burden of navigating a sensitive and emotional topic with people who they know are hostile to them,” Holleb said.

Some of the people he knows there were kicked out of other Jewish spaces for their politics. Holleb, who is Sabbath-observant, said he was asked not to return to a local Chabad synagogue after its board learned he protested alongside Jewish Voice for Peace. It had happened to the minyan, too: Brooklyn Shabbat Kodesh used to meet at the Brooklyn offices of Repair the World — Atara’s original home — before the nonprofit stopped partnering with anti-Zionist groups.

Like Thacher, Holleb left Atara over Israel after Oct. 7. But he delivered the opposite critique.

“I got fed up with their implicit Zionism,” said Holleb, a writer who is 36. “It was insulting to me that they kept saying it’s pluralistic, when it clearly isn’t.”

Pointing to the kaffiyeh policy, he noted that it had not come with a corresponding ban on hostage dog tags, a pro-Israel symbol that is more militaristic than, say, a yellow-ribbon pin. The minyan’s decision in the same policy to switch to a version of the prayer for hostages that did not mention the IDF was, in his view, a minor concession.

While he does not wear a kaffiyeh to shul, Holleb defended people who did, and who didn’t want to pray in a place where they couldn’t.

“It’s an expression of your politics of the very live war that’s happening,” he said. “And it feels important for people to show what their politics are, especially as Jews, when the narrative is that Judaism is Zionism, Zionism is Judaism and Jews have loyalty to the state of Israel. I fully get why people want to say, like, ‘No, not me, though.’”

‘Owning’ your Judaism

To the extent there is institutional backing for trad-egal practice, it comes from the Hadar Institute, a seminary and think tank on the Upper West Side that grew out of an independent minyan. Seating at that minyan was mixed-gender, as were cantorial duties, and both men and women counted toward the quorum; the prayer, mostly following Orthodox liturgy with a full Torah reading, was musically robust but, in accordance with the Jewish laws of Sabbath, non-instrumental. It met in a Manhattan apartment.

Without the typical institutional network of formal Jewish movements, Hadar has made supporting independent minyans that embody its religious outlook a part of its organizational strategy. One of Hadar’s co-founders, Rabbi Ethan Tucker, co-authored the book on trad-egal practice; another, Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, wrote one on independent minyans. Hadar today counts dozens of “Hadar-aligned” independent minyans in North America; Tucker and Kaunfer advise many of them, including Atara.

The core membership of these startup prayer groups, Kaunfer told Tablet in 2010, came from what he called the widening “post-college, pre-whatever” Jewish demographic.

“People are getting married and having kids later, if at all, and there is an institutional vacuum for that group of people,” he said at the time, adding, “The minyanim represent a desire that people have to own their Judaism.”

Hadar’s approach to Israel is fairly straightforward: It has a base in Jerusalem, names Israel as one of its guiding commitments, and its mission statement includes the assertion that “Zionism and sovereignty have enabled the flourishing of the Jewish people and Hebrew culture.” But the institution does not claim ruling authority over the minyans, or on trad-egal practice generally. The final decisions on matters of Jewish law are made by the communities themselves.

“We’re not giving anyone a hechsher, or kicking anyone out,” Rabbi Shai Held, Hadar’s president, said in an interview, using the Hebrew word for a kosher certification. “The losses are, you can’t enforce aspects of the vision. On the other hand, you don’t own everything anyone does.”

The absence of movement oversight or standards allows trad-egal communities the space to navigate issues of concern on their own terms. But that freedom also may create a greater expectation of influence among a minyan’s participants — and when they don’t get what they want, the impetus to leave the big tent and pitch their own smaller one, just as the original minyans did when they left more institutional Jewish spaces.

The emergence of new minyans that cater to Zionists or anti-Zionists facilitates worship and community for people who feel left out not only by denominational Judaism, but also by other independent spaces. It also reveals the deep religious engagement of some anti-Zionist Jews, who are not only excluded from many Jewish spaces, as Holleb noted, but also frequently delegitimized as not really committed. These anti-Zionist Jews are not a rarity; when Brooklyn Shabbat Kodesh held services at Repair the World, the space was not large enough to hold them.

Yet the division of religious institutions — even independent ones — over non-liturgical issues raises questions about the tenability of big tents in the Jewish future.

Held noted that minyans of all sizes often attract people who don’t fit neatly into their approach to religious observance; not everyone who goes to a Modern Orthodox synagogue wears tzitzit, he said, and no one is checking them at the door. But he wasn’t sure the same logic applied to Zionism. “I think the Israel fracture at this moment makes that question harder,” he said.

Beyond Brooklyn

It is not just in Brooklyn that trad-egal minyans are popular, or experiencing conflict.

At DC Minyan in Washington, a few congregants opposed saying any prayer for the hostages. (They were overruled.) At Minyan Dafna in Berkeley, a member leading High Holiday services last year unexpectedly launched into a prayer for Israel, violating the minyan’s policy to not say any prayer for a state; the minyan subsequently began alternating between that and its original prayer for people suffering in Israel and Gaza.

In Newton, Massachusetts, Minyan Ma’or tried to resolve conflict by doing all of the following in succession: A prayer for the U.S., a prayer for the State of Israel, a prayer for the hostages, a prayer for peace, a moment of silence for all who have suffered in the war and finally, the now-ubiquitous song Acheinu. Like Atara, what Ma’or did evolved as the war wore on.

“Is everybody happy? No,” Stephen Brown, Ma’or’s head organizer told me. “But we worked hard to consider all voices, and we felt this was the right place to land. So far, I think it has worked.”

The difference between those places and Brooklyn is not passion, but the size of a particular segment of the Jewish population there. The borough by nature attracts people in Kaunfer’s “post-college, pre-whatever” phase — young people with the motivation to contribute to the project, and who live close enough together to walk to services. In other cities, people let down by trad-egal minyans over Israel told me they just stopped going.

There are various reasons these minyans don’t all merge into one, larger, independent trad-egal synagogue — space, costs and volunteer capacity are stronger limiting factors than politics. But Holleb, the anti-Zionist minyan-goer, said that if everyone was forced to share a space, they’d figure out a way to get along.

“They would probably do what Atara is trying — badly — to do,” he said, “which is pluralism that sort of leans Zionist, because that’s the status quo. And everyone would kind of hold their nose at the parts they didn’t like. But that requires that people are dedicated enough to communal Jewish life to deal with difference. And right now, with Israel/Palestine, that’s a tall order.”

Three minyans, three opinions

Holleb and Thacher — and a few others with similar politics — had already left Minyan Atara by the time a six-person draft committee sat down to hash out a new policy that would become “Minyan Atara’s Approach to Israel.” And Berkman, who helped pick the committee, knew from the outset that whatever the group decided, the minyan would probably lose a few more on either margin.

He also recognized there was no neutrality on this issue; instead of trying to obscure the minyan’s perspective, the organizers tried to say what it was.

“I think we and other communities have a responsibility not to land in a particular place, but to be clear about what you’re trying to be,” Berkman said.

The organizers stated that the minyan cared about the well-being of Jewish people everywhere — including Israel — and that “when world events occur that impact Jews, we celebrate Jewish joy and mourn Jewish pain in particular.” They affirmed self-determination as a right for both Israelis and Palestinians, calling their respective futures intertwined. And they asserted ideological diversity and mutual respect as values of the minyan.

Having established those principles, Atara’s standing Israel practices were mostly left intact in the update. Prayers for the U.S. and for Israel — a softened version of the 1948 Prayer for the Welfare of the State — will remain optional and read quietly. The minyan will keep praying for the hostages, but it switched to a prayer that does not call out the captivity of soldiers in particular. The most dramatic change besides the kaffiyeh rule was a new commitment to participate in community Israeli Independence Day events.

The document — an earlier draft of which was as long as 13 pages, Berkman said — seems destined to become a primary source for Jewish historians of generations henceforth. It does not contain the words “Zionism” or “anti-Zionism” or “Palestine” or “genocide.” It avoids making statements about the conflict beyond the line about self-determination, and refers to Gaza only as a place where hostages are held.

And, of course, the kaffiyeh section, where the request that attendees “not wear visible kaffiyehs at Atara” is bracketed by more than 250 words of context and explanation.

At a minyan that routinely draws more than 100 people, Berkman said he never saw more than three kaffiyehs in the room, and he empathized with community members who, as the policy says, “feel morally compelled” to wear them. But he also understood their peers who were triggered by the scarves. He wanted the community to be welcoming for both of them.

But the presence of even one kaffiyeh had caused hurt and disruption in the community, Berkman said, in a way that hostage dog tags (and watermelon imagery, for that matter) had not. While he never wanted Atara to set a dress code — or really any Israel policy at all — he felt a responsibility to try to reduce that pain.

“We’re trying to accomplish many things as a community, and it is sometimes the case that some of the things we try to accomplish are in tension with one another,” Berkman said. “You just try to land in a somewhat reasonable place.”

Some people would undoubtedly leave for other minyans over this, an outcome Berkman hoped a careful, compassionate policy would limit. But he was also glad those alternatives existed. He had attended services at Kol HaKfar and at Brooklyn Shabbat Kodesh, and had no bone to pick with either.

“They’re trying to fulfill a different need than we are,” he said. “That does not mean that the thing they’re trying to build is bad. It just means it’s different from my perspective. And that can be a great thing.”