Mission, Vision, & Values

Hadar empowers Jews to create and sustain vibrant, practicing, egalitarian communities of Torah, Avodah, and Hesed.

Jews, in communities throughout the United States, Israel, and the world, are living meaningful lives of Torah, Avodah, and Hesed.

Claiming Torah as Our Own • תלמוד תורה

• We believe in a living, speaking Torah, the birthright of Jews in all generations. We foster unmediated access to—and ownership of—Torah, so that all Jews can appreciate, contribute their voices to, and transmit a Torah that speaks to our lives in authentic and meaningful ways.

Prayer • תפילה

• Prayer is an ongoing medium for our relationship with God and a powerful way to build and sustain religious communities. We generate meaningful and vibrant experiences by approaching our inherited words of prayer through creative textual and musical interpretation.

Mitzvot and Observance • שמירת מצוות

• A life of observance opens us up to the full expression of God’s invitation to the Jewish people into relationship, from Sinai until today. We approach mitzvot as covenantal obligations that drive both our individual lives and the character of our communities toward goodness.

Relationship with God • אהבת השם

• We engage in relationship with God—not as an abstract concept, but as the central protagonist of our Torah, companion of the Jewish people throughout history, a transcendent being who loves and challenges humanity expecting us to live up to high covenantal expectations, and a presence throughout all aspects of our lives.

Hesed • חסד

• Hesed is being present for others in need; it is the orienting principle and ultimate purpose of living lives of deep learning and observance. A relationship with God and Torah must be fueled by—and generate—acts of care. This ethos is the bedrock of even broader social and structural hesed.

Israel: Land, People State • עם, ארץ, מדינה

• Zionism and sovereignty have enabled the flourishing of the Jewish people and Hebrew culture. In deep relationship with the Diaspora, Torah emerging from Israel impacts Jewish life everywhere. We embrace the profound, high-stakes responsibility to contribute to building Torah communities that anchor a society of dignity for all.

Gender Equality • כולנו כאחד

• Gender equality in participation and leadership of Jewish learning and practice is what Torah demands of us in our moment. We approach egalitarianism as a higher standard of expectation, a further culmination of the vision laid out at Sinai, of a nation where all adults—not just priests—step into religious engagement and responsibility.

Breadth of Jewish Community • כלל ישראל

• Jewish life is a collective, not individual, enterprise. All Jews are responsible for one another, and we hold ourselves accountable to the educational and interpretive work that enables Torah to speak to all. Our teaching aims for an audience that is as broad as the entire Jewish people.

Reverence • יראת שמים

• We approach God, the Torah, its interpretive masters, and our heritage with great reverence. We seek to understand why sources say what they do, to consider historical and social context, and then to apply their underlying values reverently in building lives of sanctity and goodness today.

Intellectual and Emotional Honesty • דברי שלום ואמת

• We strive to integrate intellectual and emotional insights into an outlook that meets our texts and our world honestly, shaping a Judaism true to the complexity of human experience. No question is out of bounds and, when wielded deliberately, a broad range of intellectual tools and emotions can strengthen—rather than threaten—our relationship with Torah and God.

Joy • שמחה של מצוה

• Mitzvot are meant to be engaging, enlightening, and nourishing—not simply a burden to bear or a source of rote practice. Even as we unflinchingly confront challenges in our tradition and our communities, we believe that God gave us Torah as a gift so we can live with purpose and joy.

Honor of Torah and People • כבוד התורה וכבוד הבריות

• Out of honor for both Torah and people, we hold high expectations of ourselves, our work, and our tradition, striving for rigor and excellence. We believe that a vision of inclusive, broadly compelling Judaism will emerge through building communities that demand more—not less—of each other and of Torah.

Love • אהבת הבריות

• Every individual encountering Judaism should feel appreciated as a person created in God’s image. We aim for attentiveness to each individual to infuse interactions with care and generosity. When we relate to others with kindness, we can overcome divisiveness and build communities inspired by divine love.

Embracing Multivocality • שבעים פנים לתורה

• Taking Torah seriously means listening to all of the voices in the many layers of our tradition. Rather than amplifying one part over the rest, we embrace this rich multivocality so that we have a fuller, broader, and more nuanced perspective. We also bring a dynamic range of creative voices to the unfolding of Jewish interpretation in our own times—in both text and music.

Peer Reinforcement • ערבות

• Beyond providing meaningful engagement for individuals, Judaism only becomes a way of life in communities of shared practice. We intentionally create spaces that bring people together in shared practice, catalyzing relationships and networks so people can find peers with whom to build their own communities centered around Torah, prayer, and mitzvot.

Long-Lasting, Sustainable Vision • לדור ודור

• In our quest for personal meaning-making, we aim to speak in the Torah’s dialect of eternity. Just as we draw from those before us, we want our values to be meaningful to those who come after us. We strive to build the vibrancy of our own communities in ways that will continue to unfold and grow stronger into the future so we leave the covenant more robust than we found it.