Sources on minyan?

[liv]

I've promised my community I'll do a study session on minyan for Shavuot, particularly on why we need a minyan to say Kaddish. I know this stuff fairly well on a general level, and can probably put something together that will be informative and provoke discussion. But I don't have actual texts, and, well, I threw out all my Jewish learning notes when I downsized. Mainly because they were just in big disorganized piles taking up space and I wasn't that convinced I'd ever be able to find anything. When I say texts, I mean really basic stuff like the Mishnah.

Also, fellow Jewish educators, whether professional or informal, what's a sensible amount to charge for one-to-one BM tuition? The mother of the kid I'm working with is absolutely insisting on paying me in spite of my protests, and I want to give her a reasonable figure. Basically the lessons are half an hour to 45 minutes, with about the same amount of prep time. My best guess is somewhere around £20 per lesson, but I really don't know if that's way too low or way too high.

Comments

[kaberett]

£20/lesson is fairly reasonable in terms of private music lessons, FWIW.

[liv]

Thanks for chipping in. Comparing to private music lessons was part of how I came up with the figure, because it's a similar amount of effort for me as a teacher and this is a kid who has private music lessons, maths tuition etc so I know his parents can afford it and won't faint from sticker shock. I think I'm somewhat less qualified as a Hebrew teacher than most private music teachers are in music, though.

[hatam_soferet]

I think I'm somewhat less qualified as a Hebrew teacher than most private music teachers are in music, though.

Rubbish.

[liv]

No, srsly, I have no qualifications at all. I think most music teachers have to have at least a post A-level diploma. I think I'm as good as many music teachers, but I have never had any formal instruction in any kind of Jewish studies, apart from that one month at Drisha. This is not me being self-deprecating, this is stating the fact: I'm not qualified as a Jewish educator, I just do it.

[hatam_soferet]

Well, okay, but:

a) I know a good number of people with education diplomas who are dreadful teachers

b) you are a teacher in a university, or you were last time I checked, so you have at least some education qualifications

c) I have no qualifications of any kind other than experience and I don't have a problem charging for lessons.

[kht.livejournal.com]

FYI, I gave private maths tuition through an agency in 2008-9, and the fee was £23 per hour.

[batdina]

I charge $50/US for a 45 minute session, (and that's considered low for someone with smicha). Don't know the exchange rates these days, but that seems like it's in the range you're talking about.

I'll poke my memory and my files for anything on minyan once I've had a second cuppa.

[liv]

Thank you, that's really really helpful. I think rates are generally higher in the US because there's a bigger, richer Jewish community and more of an attitude of paying Jewish educators. Also I'm not only not ordained, I have no formal Jewish studies qualifications at all. Though on the other hand I am also a highly qualified and experienced teacher, so that might balance it out. But if you're charging $50 then I think £20 is reasonable for me, and having real rather than hypothetical numbers is a great advantage in trying to think this through.

The thing is that I don't really want the money for me, I want the money to support the principle that Jewish education is worth money and should be remunerated. But that still means setting a realistic amount, not just token and also not unreasonably greedy.

[lethargic_man]

FWIW, when my mother, a professional teacher, discovered my shul wanted me to charge £20 an hour to my conversion student, she thought I was being hard done-by, and leaned on me to push for £30 an hour.

[liv]

Thank you, that's a particularly useful datapoint because your mother knew what she was talking about. I think my BM teaching is less work than your conversion teaching, and I'm thinking of 45 minute lessons rather than an hour (he's not even a teenager and doesn't really have the concentration for hour long lessons), which makes £20 seem reasonable if you were charging £30.

[lethargic_man]

The Siddur Companion says:

It was said [in the Talmud] that a person's prayer is heard only in the synagogue; that the Holy One Blessed be He is found in the synagogue; and that the Shechinah is with ten that pray^{[Berachos 6a]}. Indeed, He angers when he enters the synagogue and find a minyan lacking^{[id., 6b]}. Prayer with a quorum is likened even to the study of Torah and deeds of kindness^{[id., 8a]}

Minyan for kedusha from Ber. 21b based on Lev. 22:32. Both the above and Hertz's companion volume to the Singer's Prayerbook cite Ber. 7:3 as justification for needing a minyan for בָּרְכוּ, though that looks like it's about zimun for bentshing instead. The latter refers me further to Ber. 49b.

Can't really help you about about kaddish, though you may be interested to know Seder Rav Amram, the first ever siddur, provides a קדיש ליחיד (and also a ברכו ליחיד and a קדושה ליחיד).

[liv]

Very nice, thank you, just daf references help a lot with finding the actual texts for what I'm looking for. What I know is: nearly all the Talmudic discussion is about three for zimun, and somewhere completely else there's a list of what rituals we need 10 for, it's things like Sheva Brachot and the bit in the funeral service where you stop seven times between the ohel and the graveside. And the Rishonim combined these two sources to reason about the definition of a minyan for the Amidah and public Torah reading with blessings.

Your Limmud notes about the history of Kaddish are already a big help in preparing this shiur, so don't worry if you don't have exact sources. I think the stuff you and I have both learned about the historically changing role of Kaddish in the liturgy explains why I can't point to an exact text which says you definitely need 10 to say Kaddish.

[lethargic_man]

a list of what rituals we need 10 for, it's things like Sheva Brachot and the bit in the funeral service where you stop seven times between the ohel and the graveside

What? That didn't happen at my mother's funeral (though it did at the following funeral I went to), and why would it need a minyan? What needs a minyan is the graveside kaddish, surely?

[liv]

In modern times, definitely, you need a minyan for Kaddish and Barchu, and that's what's important. But I think the Mishnah mostly predates the idea of mourners' Kaddish as we understand it today. So the prooftext about minyan says, these are the things for which you need ten, and it lists a bunch of slightly random ceremonies, many of which we don't even do any more.

I don't think I've ever attended a funeral that didn't have a minyan, tbh, because even tiny sub-viable communities like mine scrape together 10 people to bury a friendless stranger somehow. This is going to be part of my shiur, reminding people just how important this is, because ok, I sympathise with people who are grumbling that they didn't get to say Kaddish on their yarzeit, but if we just got into the habit of saying, never mind, we all drive on Shabbat so we might as well say Kaddish with whoever turns up, we would lose that strong commitment to making sure we bury people properly, and that's too important to mess with.

[lethargic_man]

But I think the Mishnah mostly predates the idea of mourners' Kaddish as we understand it today.

It predated it by quite a long way!

I don't think I've ever attended a funeral that didn't have a minyan, tbh, because even tiny sub-viable communities like mine scrape together 10 people to bury a friendless stranger somehow.

Yes, my father told me of the time when he got a call from Cleveland Police, and there was an old man who'd died without any family in Middlesbrough, and they wanted to make sure he got a proper Jewish burial; so the Newcastle community rustled up a minyan for his funeral. (It turned out he'd been a well-known TV entertainer in the fifties, but had died decades later in complete obscurity.)

I got into an argument once with my aunt when her cousin's father died in Florida, where he'd retired to. Being from Newcastle, he'd left his family and friends behind, bar his wife (and being ninety-five, he'd probably outlived most of the latter); they weren't able to get a minyan for his funeral, and his widow was most upset that her son refused to say the graveside kaddish without one. (The deceased's son is Orthodox, but my aunt is Reform, and completely and utterly refused to accept that you can't just break halacha for this.)

Mourners' Kaddish

[(Anonymous)]

Was your aunt including women in the minyan?
(Who constitutes a minyan is, of course, a different question to how many people are required.)

Southernwood

Re: Mourners' Kaddish

[lethargic_man]

This is difficult for me to answer at several years' remove; but I suspect there were not ten people in total. Of course, from the Orthodox point of view, it makes no difference whether you're breaking halacha by including women or breaking halacha by reciting kaddish with less than ten...

[hatam_soferet]

Huh. I've been to several funerals *in the US* that couldn't scrape up a minyan. I wonder why that is.

Minyan at Funerals

[(Anonymous)]

The problem is partially demographic.

Some years ago, I attended the funeral of an elderly cousin in Leeds. Because she had outlived most of her generation and because Leeds is numerically a shrinking community, we managed 10 men for the burial but there were four households marking Shiva concurrently and we had very great difficulty completing a minyan in the evening.

Another example is a friend whose elderly mother died. My friend is an only child, so there was no immediate family. My friend, who is unmarried, has herself a very wide circle of friends but most of them are women. Again, we had to do a lot of telephoning for the Shiva.

Even in Stanmore/Wembley, the Jewish community is much more dilute than it was.

Southernwood