September 15, 2002; Page C1

At Yom Kippur, Tradition Leavened With Equality

By Caryle Murphy
Washington Post Staff Writer    

One night early last week, four young Washington professionals gathered in the living room of a townhouse just off Dupont Circle. Seated around a coffee table on folding chairs and a sofa, they drank filtered water and nibbled on peach slices. Their agenda was neither politics nor lobbying. It was worship. All Jewish, the two men and two women were organizing the first Yom Kippur service sponsored by their fledgling congregation, D.C. Minyan. The group was formed seven months ago to meet what members see as a need in the Washington area's Jewish life: a lay-led Orthodox congregation whose services involve full and equal participation by women.

The group has outgrown even its organizers' hopes, now drawing about 75 people to its Shabbat services every other Saturday at the D.C. Jewish Community Center in Northwest Washington. As the holiest days of the Jewish calendar commence at sundown today, D.C. Minyan expects more than 120 people at its Yom Kippur services this evening and tomorrow at the Westin Embassy Row Hotel in Northwest Washington.

"The minyan is obviously filling a niche that needed to be filled," said founding member Jeremy M. Brosowsky, 29, who heads a publishing company in the District. "I'm so extremely proud to be helping build an egalitarian, vibrant Jewish experience in the nation's capital."

In most Orthodox congregations, women sit separately and out of view of the men and have no role in services. At the other extreme, in most "egalitarian" Jewish services, where men and women have equal roles, they sit interspersed with each other

D.C. Minyan is different, its organizers say, because men and women sit apart, but in groups side by side, in full view of each other, and the women participate equally in the services.

"We joke about attempting to create a true form of separate but equal," said Adam J. Szubin, a trial lawyer at the Justice Department and another founding member. "Both sides of the aisle are participating fully and leading services equally."

The more significant aspect of D.C. Minyan's services, however, is that "it is a place where people are taking prayers and tradition very seriously," said Szubin, who was raised Orthodox. The congregation's commitment to observing Jewish law, or Halakha, means that people like him "can feel at home."

The group takes its name from the Hebrew word minyan, which means the quorum necessary to hold the key part of a Jewish worship service. The founders started off by studying ancient Jewish legal texts. The idea, Szubin said, "was to revisit the traditional authorities with an eye towards including women in the services . . . even allowing them to take a leadership role."

They found many rabbinical opinions allowing "active and vibrant roles for women in Jewish life" that had been "lost or swept under the carpet in the intervening centuries," Szubin said. But they also found that Jewish legal texts unanimously define a minyan as 10 men.

Faced with this dilemma but desiring to be strictly observant, the group resolved "that we will perform these parts of the service only when we have 10 men and 10 women present," Szubin said. This, he added, is "very, very unusual here in America."

D.C. Minyan, whose members are mostly in their twenties and thirties, reflects the increasing appearance of innovative, grass-roots Jewish congregations. Unaffiliated with organized movements of American Judaism, such groups seek to combine modern and traditional aspects of worship. Their services are led by congregants rather than a rabbi, and they emphasize community.

Part of the impetus for D.C. Minyan, its organizers said, was the desire to have a congregation close to home. Young, tradition-minded Jews living downtown who strictly observe Shabbat -- eschewing automobiles and walking to services -- had only two choices: the Orthodox synagogue Kesher Israel in Georgetown or the Conservative synagogue Adas Israel in Cleveland Park. Both are a 30- to 45-minute walk, one way, from downtown.

"I believe that living a vibrant, Jewish life in the Washington area shouldn't necessarily mean moving out to the suburbs or to their D.C. equivalent," said Brosowsky, who lives in the Dupont Circle area with his wife, Beth Tritter, 27, also a D.C. Minyan founder.

At its planning session for Yom Kippur last week, the group made lists of prayer leaders and "greeters" to meet people at the door. Members tried to think of every necessary detail: borrow a Torah, buy the memorial candle, get extra skullcaps. And they discussed when to bring copies of the prayer book, or Machzor, to the hotel; where to set up the "page-flipper" to show the congregation which page of the prayer book they should read from.

The daunting task of organizing their Yom Kippur service now seemed under control, for the most part. "There's got to be more," said Tritter, a legislative director on Capitol Hill. "Synagogues have armies of people planning for months" for such services.

"I have to tell you, I'm so excited," she added. "We want Yom Kippur to be a fulfilling experience: community-driven, well-run, spiritual, intimate and full of learning."

Jessica Lieberman, 34, a doctoral student in political science at George Washington University and another founder, tried to put the group at ease. "It's going to be awesome," she said.