Livre d'Or

I am very much in favour of peer-led communities. I've spent most of my life in such communities, where either there were enough skills that they genuinely didn't need a rabbi, or few enough people that they couldn't even begin to support one. And I've put a lot of my own time and energy and skills into making sure those communities have a sensible liturgical and educational base, and I know you've done even more along the lines of providing informal, non-ordained leadership. You're quite right that this kind of thing is a reaction, and a positive reaction in my opinion, against the sit back and watch model of Judaism.

The thing is that a DIY, peer-led, non-rabbi-centred community is still a community. It's not an "independent minyan" that meets in members' front rooms and only bothers inviting the people who will help to create a meaningful experience. A community includes all ages, all levels of Jewish knowledge and engagement, and that one guy who's kind of a bit unkempt and corners people and rambles on about conspiracy theories. Communities contribute both money and labour to keep the infrastructure going, the physical building yes, and the civic engagement and life cycle rituals, but also the bikkur cholim rota and phone tree for rounding up enough people to say Kaddish when someone who's never previously had anything to do with religion has to deal with a bereavement. Some of it is boring, and the money isn't good value if you compare it with like a season ticket for a sports team or a cinema. I don't think the independent minyanim, shiny though they are, are viable long-term if people withdraw support from organized, properly constituted communities.

Too many synagogues in a given area, we should only have such problems! Most of us Europeans outside the metropolitan centres don't even have a synagogue-we-never-set-foot-in, and there are several parts of the country with hundred mile gaps between synagogues.

How all this works with supporting Jewish professionals, I don't know. Maybe we go back to the model from the Talmudic era when rabbis are halachic experts with day jobs? I am not well up on the structural stuff around brit milah, I think a lot of Jewish doctors have training and certification. I don't think a mohel could ever make a living just doing that over here, not with a community as small as ours.