I’ve been a member of two unconventional congregations in New York. One was in the East Village and was financed by several lawyers in the Bronx. Hardly anyone paid dues but our Hasidic rabbi still fed his gaggle of converts, Baal Tshuvahs and crusty Lower East Side geezers, including a Jew known as Murphy who once had a pushcart in the neighborhood. The shul’s caretaker was a veteran of the East Village squatter scene. He scared the bejeezus out of me one shabbos: after drinking a few l’chaim’s, he showed me an AK-47 he kept at the shul.