Originally published in The Jewish Advocate.
CAMBRIDGE – From the Washington Square Minyan in Brookline to the Cambridge Minyan across the Charles River, young leaders are gathering their friends in apartments, social halls, and even leased synagogue chapels to create communities they are not finding in existing Jewish institutions. There may be rabbis present, but not necessarily as leaders.
These are the new generation of lay-led congregations. While such groups come and go on a regular basis, particularly in a student-filled area like Boston and its surrounding communities, many of the groups in this latest generation of minyanim are planting roots to ensure long-term stability.
Minyan organizers cite two main attractions for their members: a particular approach to services and a community atmosphere. Yehuda Kurtzer, of the Washington Square minyan, sees these aspects as intertwined. His minyan, he said, strives to “create a positive social atmosphere with davening, not to obscure core values [of quality davening], but to complement that.”
Children’s theatre that delights and inspires young audiences is a rare treat to be commended. Children’s theatre that also entertains, or better yet, engages adults is even rarer. Frogz, a production by the Imago Theatre currently being presented by the American Repertory Theatre, falls somewhere in between. The show is more an exploration of movement akin to Cirque du Soleil than a legitimate play, featuring a series of unconnected, wordless scenes set to music. Each scene involves actors in elaborate costumes, invoking everything from animals to inanimate objects through the sort of exercises typical to those used in acting classes. For example, the show opens with three frogs staring at the audience for an uncomfortably long time. Then, one frog moves its head in a rather frog-like way, and we are all expected to delight in the veracity of its froggishness. To the production’s credit, the children in the audience giggle and squeal with excitement, although at the performance I attended, the adults remained nonplussed.
David Levy 