Minyan

This article is on "minyan" in Judaism. See Minyan (disambiguation) for other meanings. A minyan (Hebrew: plural "minyanim") is traditionally a quorum of ten adult (over the age of Bar Mitzvah) male Jews for the purpose of communal prayer either within a synagogue or elsewhere. A minyan is required for many parts of the communal prayer service, including Barchu, Kaddish, repetition of the Amidah, the priestly blessing, and the Torah and Haftarah readings. A common misconception is that the requirement of ten to constitute a quorum comes from the fact that Abraham stopped decreasing his requests for God to spare Amora (Gamorrah) and Sedom (Sodom) at ten "righteous" individuals (Genesis 18). In fact, the requirement comes from the sin of the spies (Numbers 14:27), in which the ten spies who bring a negative report of the land of Israel are referred to as an "eidah" or congregation (Talmud Megillah 23b), though the Talmud Yerushalmi (Megillah 4,4) relates it to the ten brothers of Joseph who went down to Egypt to get food during a famine. The quorum of ten men is also referred to in the Book of Ruth 4:2. Some congregations (based on the Shulkhan Arukh O.C. 55) will include a boy touching a Torah scroll or holding a printed Tanakh as the tenth person if a minyan can be formed in no other way. In the late 20th century a number of Conservative congregations began accepting women as part of a minyan.

Related meaning:

\nA minyan is also regularly scheduled meeting of Jews for communal prayer but not within a formal synagogue. Similarly, a single minyan may be one of several scheduled prayer services within a synagogue.