Can there be a community without rabbinical leadership?

My Torah study partner (and a commenter!) got me thinking about this question originally; the conversation went something along the lines of my saying I wanted to go post-denominational and her saying I shouldn’t go shopping around for a psak, and that once you find a community you like you’ve got to be in it for the long haul and listen to your rabbi because you’re in it for better or for worse.

So, is it wrong to “shop around” for a psak (assuming that you’re not only in it for the “most lenient answer”)? And why is it important to secure one from an ordained rabbi when we may know just as much about a given subject? This is quite noticeable in the Conservative world. Although I don’t know exactly how it works in Orthodoxy, the Conservative model pretty much was described above: you pick a community, and listen to your rabbi (who listens to the CJLS). If you don’t like it, you can leave…but once you do you ought to stay there. And you certainly can’t live by your own psak.

[...]Conservative leaders claim that independent minyanim are “Conservative congregations flying a Liberian flag”[...]But the same Conservative leaders would claim that Conservative central institutions, such as the CJLS, have the authority to determine policies and halacha that Conservative congregations should aspire to. Does this include “Conservative congregations flying a Liberian flag”? If so, then they seem to be making the absurd claim that the CJLS (etc.) automatically has plenary jurisdiction over any Jewish community that davens in Hebrew without a mechitza (or whatever criteria they’re using) or has Ramah alumni among its participants, regardless of whether that community ever consented to this.) [Mah Rabu]

It’s interesting, as someone who’s quickly becoming post-denominational, to consider the environment in which such a thing might happen. It assumes two axioms: That there are cohesive, leader-led communities; and that this is the only way Judaism may function (so thus any community whose practice looks Conservative ought to be absorbed into the CJLS).

I can’t tell if this is a new thing, an old thing, an Orthodox/Conservative thing, an American thing, or what. Most half-willing Orthodox converts (like me…might just be RCA) are getting the brunt of this when it’s demanded of them that they move to both a major city and an approved Orthodox synagogue. They can’t make their own community or join a self-made one. Why?

I think it must have something to do with this compulsive need to compartmentalize. Why else would anyone be so wont to call a self-defined independent minyan “Conservative”? (Unless those Conservative leaders are just jealous, man.) But never mind the denominations for the moment. We all know that Judaism is “community-based” (I re-realize this every week as I sit alone in my room waiting for Shabbat to be over). I don’t argue that. But must it be leader-led? And if it must, does that leader need to be a rabbi? Not someone capable of making local halachic decisions, like, I guess, a rosh yeshiva or something might be able to do. But someone who’s received veritable semicha.

This question is way real to me because I’m not only post-denominational in ideology—it’s by necessity. For example, I recently emailed my Conservative rabbi asking if I could wear tzitzit, and he wrote back saying: “My suggestion is wait until you convert and then you decide. I don’t think you have to fulfill the mitzvoth now, but it is your decision.”

Because I care about halacha, his opinion is important to me, but at the same time I know I’m not waiting until I convert (after following my own unencumbered line of thought to its own conclusions), so therefore I have to revert to the very non-Conservative idea that I’m Jewish enough to obligate myself if I want to so there. I’m very good at defying authority. So, it’s quite likely that I will be floating around on the edges for a while—no rabbi, no cohesive synagogue center, no “stable” establishment with dollars coming in and out—so what? It may not be pragmatically-minded, but then again neither is a degree in Religious Studies.

I happen to believe that a basic knowledge of everyday laws and a few intricacies are all a community needs to function for a good while (for permanency it’d need some educated members, naturally), but they don’t need to be “led” by a rabbi who on the day-to-day (might I remind you) doesn’t do anything that anyone couldn’t get up to do with some practice—and maybe some skills in Talmud and knowledge of well-known rulings etc. They do it in the Jewish Catalog; they do it on spiritual retreats; they do it in institutes and long-term meetups—so, why only sometimes? Can there be a self-functioning, educated, permanent community with neither rabbi nor denominational affiliation?

Why can’t my rabbi get a vote, not a veto?