Jewish Common Sense by Rabbi Randall J. Konigsburg

Chapter Seven: Getting Started

2011-11-20T12:43:00.001-06:00

ChapterSeven: Getting Started

If you have readthis far, and see all the work that synagogues need to do to turnthemselves around, you may despair that your synagogue can be saved.Your board will never go for all of this, your membership isuninterested and the atmosphere at meetings is toxic to put itmildly. Maybe you are one of those members of the leadership of yourcongregation and you don't think that what has been proposed here hasany merit and you think that synagogues are fine just the way theyare. The facts of synagogue life, however, are hard to ignore.Membership is declining, financial resources are declining,volunteerism is declining and the situation in your congregationseems to get worse every year.

You don't have tobelieve all that I have said, but clearly the status quo has got tochange. Can restoring synagogues be this easy? Can it be, at the sametime, so hard? It is only a matter of time before all congregationsthat have not yet struggled with the issues I have outlined, willhave to confront the serious challenges that the twenty-first centurypresents. When a synagogue is ready to change there will be many onthe board, some new and some old timers, who will be asking “whatcan we do to save our synagogue?” Here are some final thoughts onsynagogues and change.

First of allremember that synagogues did not get this way overnight and they willnot change overnight either. Even corporate turnarounds can takethree to five years. Be patient, plan carefully, get support fromanyone who shares your goals and be persistent. I think that it isonly fair to warn you, however, that those who work hard to bringabout synagogue change are often called upon to be a synagoguepresident. This can be very rewarding work but it is not for thefaint of heart. My father used to say that “if you don't know whereyou are going, how will you know when you get there?” First have aplan, a vision of what the end will look like, the more concrete thevision the better; and then go step by step to reach the goal.

Do not let yourown ego convince you that you know best what the synagogue needs.Gather together those who want more from the congregation and shareideas and approaches. Synagogues can't be changed by bullies whodemand “my way or the highway”. We need to build bridges and makepeople feel that their input and work are welcome. Collaborate on thevision and on the changes needed to get there. Inspire others; don'tdictate. Build bridges to others instead of building a fiefdom ofyour own. We once had an accountant who would come to thecongregational budget meeting and literally go over every single lineof the budget, making the meeting long, tedious and not as productiveas it should have been. A budget meeting is where the congregationfunds its priorities. We did not send this man out of the meeting. Weactually invited him to be a part of the budget committee so he couldhave a say in each line of the budget as it was being written. Thenext year, at the budget meeting, he was the biggest supporter of thebudget since he had a hand in creating it. Don't drive away yourgadflies; make them a part of the program.

To really changea synagogue you will need everyone's help. Think about surveys,parlor meetings, lunch discussions after services. Talk to the minyanattendees, the Shabbat regulars, the Sisterhood members, the Men'sClub members, the Gift Shop volunteers, the Religious School parents,whoever makes up a niche in the synagogue and give them a voice inshaping the future. Not every idea will be a good one but there willstill be many good ideas offered. Don't let any good idea get away,and anyone who is willing to help should be given the opportunity tohelp. If everyone is not welcome, then you will soon be workingagainst yourself.

There are somepeople who will stonewall any changes. Do all you can to bring theminto the program. Sometimes, however, it is impossible. There aremembers who will leave the synagogue because it is “not the sameshul I joined years ago”. This is a sad thing, but it happens. Ifit is someone who has done a lot of work for the shul, make sure thatsomeone writes a thank you note for all their service. Tell them thatyou miss them. But eventually, they will have to let the change come.If not, there really isn't much you can do. They are entitled totheir opinions and if they feel the need to go elsewhere, there isnothing that can be done to stop them (unless you stop the synagoguerenewal program).

There is nosubstitute for having a plan and being consistent in your changes.Sometimes changes happen rapidly, sometimes they take a long time.There will be bottlenecks that, when they clear, will open up a timeof significant changes. There will be setbacks that could take sometime to clear. In congregations where there is a set progression ofofficers, where each member of the executive board is moved up eachelection until he or she becomes president, it could take a number ofyears before reform minded officers become members of the executiveboard. Work on other aspects of synagogue life; for example, work onmaking your congregation more welcoming as you wait for a moreaccepting governing committee.

Most of all,never forget that you are doing holy work. If it all falls apart andyou are the one who decides that it is time to leave yourcongregation and find a new spiritual home, do not despair. A failureis only when you can't find any lessons to learn from what hashappened. Somewhere there is a congregation that will meet your needsand will be a place where you can fill your potential as a Jew.Maybe, with your friends, you will start something new in your livingroom. Maybe you will find new friends in a different congregationwhere the leadership is not so entrenched. Maybe you will discover adying congregation where they are willing to take a chance and dosomething radically different to save themselves. Only God knows thefuture. What is important is that you remain open to new ways toserve God. We learn from the Torah, the scroll that is central to ourlives, that even though the people never enter the Promised Land,they traveled together and they supported each other and most of all,they trusted in God.

May God bless youin all that you do for our faith and for your community.

Growing a Synagogue Part Six - Some Final Thoughts

2011-11-07T19:14:00.000-06:00

CommunityOrganizing

A Rabbi, Cantor,Jewish Educator, or a teacher can only be in so many places at once.Because these professionals are so important to the Jewish world weneed to use these precious resources wisely. The principles ofcommunity organizing teach us that if each professional can train5-10 others as par-professionals, who in turn lead another group of5-10, the growth in Jewish activities grows exponentially. Ourtrained Jewish leaders can have a far greater impact on the widerJewish community. Over a serious of years, this leadership core canbecome an important part of how the new Jewish community operates.

Rabbi HaroldShulweiss first talked about Rabbinic Para-professionals about twentyyears ago. Their roles was to be like the judges of parshat Yitro,trained to address the everyday concerns of the Jewish people andusing the Rabbi to address larger or more difficult issues. In theworld of Cantors, volunteers would be trained to lead daily andShabbat auxiliary services freeing up the Cantor to both compose newmusic and bring new musical possibilities to the congregation. TheseCantors would not just be a pretty voice, but a true musicprofessional coordinating all the musical resources the congregationhas at its disposal. The same kind of system could also be used tocreate Jews who can lead others in learning and growing Jewishly.

This communityorganizing principle can also work in the area of fundraisng as well. The more people a congregation can touch, the moreopportunities there will be for contributions and volunteer activity.As I described earlier, a community of different vaadot (differentmissions) under one roof, all can work together to provide for thecommon institution that stands behind them. The wider the net wespread, the greater the participation in our mission and the greaterthe financial possibilities.

What is importantis to put people before finances and involvement before dues. I donot, for one minute believe that synagogues can operate withoutproper financial funding. But it must not and can not be themotivating factor if we are looking to increase participants andinterest in our programs. First comes the engagement, only laterwill the financial resources come. One thing is for sure, we can nolonger mortgage the future of our synagogue to big beautifulbuildings. We need to use the building we have more efficiently andperhaps partner with those who have extra building space to keep ourcosts down. We can not afford to take literally anymore, the slogan“If you build it, they will come”.

Final Thoughts

1. Non profitorganizations are complicated institutions. I know that soundsobvious, but we also must understand that no two organizations areexactly alike and no two synagogues share exactly the same issues.While there are issues that all congregations share, there are alsosignificant ways they differ. Congregations in an urban setting dohave fundamental differences from synagogues in the suburbs. Largecity synagogues are different from small town shuls. Congregationswith large memberships do not see the world the same as docongregations with smaller memberships. I have tried to keep thingsgeneric in my discussions here but remains the responsibility of theleadership of the organization to pick and choose the sections thatspeak to their issues and pass by the sections that do not seemrelevant.

It is important,though, to be aware that while your congregation may not feel like itshares some of these problems, a third party or some other outsideadviser may think that the leadership is fooling itself if they thinkthey are immune from some of the problems I have outlined above. Itis very easy for congregational leadership to want to stick to whatthey know and ignore the signs that times have changed and that theyare falling very far behind. Sometimes everyone on a synagogue board“knows” what the problems are and has their own pet project thatwill solve all the problems in one swoop. Maybe they have a good ideaand maybe their idea may work for your congregation. What I amproposing, however, is not a “cure all pill” for synagogues, buta long term program for synagogue renewal and growth. Nothing happensquickly. A synagogue does not get in trouble quickly, it takes yearsto really get into trouble and it will take years to dig out of thehole. Anyone who promises a quick fix should be greeted with a raisedeyebrow.

The first stepbefore using any part of this book is to take a good hard look atyour community demographics. Some suburban areas don't have theinflux of singles that can be found in urban or near urban areas.University towns and those with large numbers of transient people,for example tourist destinations or large medical school/hospital,will have different needs than those who are in more stablecommunities. Congregations also get pegged for being the place whereone demographic is preferred over another. One congregation may havea great deal of success dealing with those who retired or nearlyretired and then may find it hard to attract a younger population. AsI mentioned earlier, congregations with couples and families oftenhave a difficult time welcoming singles into their community. If anestablished synagogue suddenly finds itself surrounded by a growingcommunity of Jews who are radically different than the currentpopulation, i.e. immigrants from Israel, Hispanic Jews, gay andlesbian Jews etc.; it can be hard to welcome those who somehow werenever welcomed before. What is important is to recognized the changesand challenges that the new realities present and then face themhead on. Prejudice and bigotry will kill a congregation. Turning awaymembers because they don't fit a stereotype of “those who aremembers here” could explain why your synagogue is struggling. If weclose our eyes or our hearts to those who are seeking Jewishcommunity because they don't look or act like us, or because theyhave new ideas that we don't like, will mean that we will be turningaway our best members. As Rabbi Akiva said, “Don't look at theflask, rather pay attention to what is inside.”

We need toestablish that our congregations are open to all, to singles andcouples, families and childless couples, young and old, men andwomen, gay and straight, black, white and yellow, Jew by birth andJew by choice. It is not good enough to have the community segmentedinto different groups that never talk to each other. Social Actionprojects are one way that all elements of the community can gathertogether and get some good work done. We need to build bridgesbetween communities and not keep them apart. If we can reach out toall groups of Jews who are in our community, we will be blessed witha strong membership and one that is loyal to the congregation thathas given them a spiritual home. In the 1960's, there was onecongregation on Miami Beach that welcomed Jewish refugees from Cubaafter Fidel Castro came to power. These refugees were so thankful forthe welcom that this congregation gave them that they continued theirmembership long after they became successful and moved away and evenafter they joined another synagogue. It is important that we notoverlook this kind of loyalty that comes from being welcoming andaccepting.

2. Synagoguesmust be continually motivating their staff and volunteers to work forthe institution. One would think that Rabbis, Cantors, Educators,Youth Directors and Executive Directors as well as the Teachers andClassroom Aides, would need no more motivation than their monthlypaycheck. This is a wrong assumption. Every member of a synagoguestaff could easily make more money in some other related occupation.Clergy and staff work for synagogues because they believe in the workthat is done in synagogues and have dedicated their lives to it.While everyone needs to make sure that they are taking care of theirfamilies, synagogue work rarely pays enough to really compensate forthe hours and stress that come with congregational work (fulldisclosure: Just a reminder, I am a pulpit Rabbi who has almost allof my working life in synagogues and my wife's career is in JewishEducation. My knowledge of staff motivations come from my own familyand from the motivations of those whom I have had the pleasure ofworking with over these many years.) Contract negotiations can bedifficult for both the congregation and the Staff. If we treat ourstaff with respect and appreciation for the work that they do, itwill make a profound difference in the way they conduct themselves onbehalf of the synagogue. I know that there are staff members who havenot fulfilled their responsibilities and of congregations who notonly don't appreciate the work that staff does, but treats them likesome kind of hired help. Both situations are bad for the synagogue.We need to employ staff that are dedicated to the mission and goalsof the synagogue and then pay them a living wage and show ourappreciation in word and deed when they go above and beyond theduties outlined in their contract.

RabbiCharles Simon of the Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs has written awhole book on how to motivate volunteers (Buildinga Successful Volunteer Culture: Finding Meaning in Service in theJewish Community: JewishLights Press) Thisis just a reminder that volunteers need to be thanked “early andoften”. You can never thank a volunteer enough. Working for asynagogue is not their full time job, it is an act and labor of love.This includes board members who serve each year, they too deserve averbal and written thanks for their service. All the more so thisapplies when a volunteer steps down from the board or a committee. Ifwe hope to have them volunteer again someday in the future, we bettershow our appreciation on the day they step down. If they tell youthey don't need any thanks, then don't go overboard in thanking thembut make sure they get a personal note anyway. They may not need tobe publically awarded a plaque for their service, but they do need toknow how much the leadership, staff and lay leaders, appreciate theirservice.

It is alsoimportant, when it comes to volunteers, not to let any volunteer gettoo connected to any one position. While some work is skilled work.Not everyone can answer a phone, make table seating arragements orput together the pages of an ad journal. Still it is important thatevery volunteer train the person who will eventually replace them. Nomatter how crucial a person may be in a job, nobody is irreplaceable.Volunteers on committees should be asked to chair the committee.Committee chairs should be asked to join the board. Board membersshould be asked to become officers and officers should be asked toserve as different officers and eventually to asked to be president.Two terms in any office is enough. When someone is given “lifetenure” in any position (other than an honorary one) whateverbenefits the synagogue may gain, it will be lost by good people notbeing able to rise past that one position. It will form a wall thatwill lock out new, up and coming talent from serving the congregationand they will take their time and effort somewhere else thatappreciates their commitment. While the immediate past presidentshould have a voice and vote on the board due to his or her recentexperience and knowledge of recent decisions, even past presidentsshould be consulted and even venerated, but they should not have avote on the board.

3. It is notuncommon to have other congregations in the same town or nearby. Someof these may be start up groups, others may be congregations indecline and some may be going strong and are widely accepted as“cross town rivals” to your community. Whenever and whereverpossible, try and build bridges rather than enter into competitionfor members or programming. We need to work together and notduplicate services or programs. It should not be difficult to createan agreement between congregations to end the rivalry, i.e. to notsolicit membership from those who are already members of anothercongregation. The return on this cooperation is very large. Bysharing resources and programming it saves both congregations timeand money. It created the impression that the Jewish community isunited and supportive of each other and this environment is welcomingto those who are thinking about joining. It opens up newopportunities to engage Jews who are not yet connected to thecommunity and lets them know that their participation, no matterwhich building or organization is running it, is appreciated. Largecongregations with empty space should invite new or smaller kehillotto share their space and perhaps some administrative help. Even whentwo congregations share space in a building, it does not mean thatthey are competing for members. If the two congregations aredifferent in halachic approach or in age of the members, there willbe little serious movement of members between them. If they are verysimilar, then, it could be the beginning of a merger that willstrengthen the overall community. There just is no good reason tobuild rival buildings and congregations. If there are those who are“angry” with one congregation for some reason, outsidearbitrators could be brought in the help heal the rift before itbecomes unbridgeable. We need to work together whenever possible.

I also believethat any congregation who insists on “going it alone” and refusesto participate in communal programming and fund raising should not bea part of the community and should not receive communal funding. Ipersonally believe that those organizations who work against thecommunal agenda for their own promotion or purposes, are free to doso but the community should be free to stop supporting them as well.For example, Federation funding should not be shared with those whodo not participate in the campaign. (I find it rather weird thatSynagogues are often asked to participate in the campaign but arethen refused funding for their programs because “Federations do notfund synagogues”. It is well documented that when there is fullcooperation between Federation and synagogues the entire community isstronger and the fund raising is stronger as well.)

Nationalsynagogue organizations have been in the news a lot lately. At onetime these organizations were vital to provide services tocongregations that they could not provide for themselves or servicesthat would make congregational life easier. The largest areas were inprofessional searches and educational/teen activities. Theseorganizations also helped congregations by publishing books that thecongregations needed and advice on best practices so eachcongregation was not out there going at it alone. These nationalorganizations were mostly reactive to the expressed needs of thecongregations who paid membership dues to receive the servicesneeded.

For a number ofreasons, the need for these organizations has changed over the years,and, like the congregations they served, they too fell behind thecurve, and were not able to provide the leadership and resourcesneeded for the changing role of synagogues in the twenty-firstcentury. Because they operate in a reactive manner, that is, theyreact to the issues rather than anticipate them and offer a wayforward, they were not always helpful when the synagogues neededthem. They also, over the years, became over staffed and bloated andneeded larger and larger dues contributions to keep going. It is nobig surprise that the congregations began to resent the fact that alot of dues was being paid and no real help was coming from thenational offices. These national organizations are now going throughthe same kind of soul searching that the congregations are strugglingwith. They are trying to become leaner and to provide more resources,especially in the area of technology. They have had to take a newlook at their mission and regional structure.

It is not myintention to critique their struggles or to help them chart a newpath. They will do what they think is best for their organization andfor synagogues. I will only say that congregations need to followwhat is going on nationally closely. There are many advantages tobeing part of a national organization and they are trying to findways to be helpful. It is not a good idea to reinvent the wheel everytime we have a new issue to address. National presidents list-serves,Rabbinic list-serves, Regional offices and nationally known adviserswho are part of these national organizations can be a source of goodideas, solutions to problems and advice on “what NOT to do” toaddress an issue. (Like all of life, sometimes the obvious answer isa wrong answer.) I am a big believer in getting good advice fromevery source and these organizations can be a good source for issuesthat congregations face. But they will never replace the localsynagogue board of directors who know their community and know whatthe congregation is ready to support and what will never work in thissetting. If a congregation needs outside help in creating a missionstatement, organizational remodeling, leadership training or if theyneed advice on websites, social networking, web hosting, then a goodplace to start for information and advice can be national synagogueorganizations.

4. There has beena lot of talk about if we are in a “post denominational” age,where people don't care any more about the denomination of theircongregation. They will go the the synagogue that meets their needs.As I have mentioned before, this is true, especially in congregationsserving a population of Jews under the age of 35. I am not under theage of 35 so I am not sure that denominations are ready to be castinto the dustbins of history. But I think that what a denominationdefines may be in flux more today than in any other time in ourhistory. We live in an age where most Jews define themselves as “JustJewish” rather than Conservative, Orthodox or Reform. In fact, overthe past half a century, there have been all kinds of new“denominations” that have come onto the scene: There isReconstrucionist, Renewal, traditional, Modern Orthodox, liberal,spiritual, havurah, ultra-orthodox, Jew-Bu, gay/straightcongregations, senior congregations; and each has its own issues andcontributions to the overall Jewish community. But the titles of thedenominations have hidden the real differences between them,differences that more often than not were differences of degree andnot differences in kind. Forty years ago it was apparent that therereally were only two kinds of Judaism, those who were biblicalliteralists and those who were not. We might say today that there arecongregations that are egalitarian and those that arenon-egalitarian. Other than this, most congregations specialize invarious kinds of programming and that is how they identify themselvesfrom the other congregations. My point in this book has been thatthese differing programs began to take center stage from the realbusiness of synagogues. We began to be social centers, fund raisingorganizations and architectural wonders. Synagogues forgot abouttheir core mission of Torah, Avodah and Gemilut Hasadim (learning,prayer and social action). As synagogues return to their “roots”we will see that the different denominations will slowly coalesceinto larger generic groupings. The ties will be looser to nationaldifferences and more about the needs of the local community. Learningwill demand that we follow either the literal understanding of Bibleor the Non-literal approach. Synagogues that are egalitarian will nothave a following that is non-egalitarian even if both groups meetunder the same roof. There may be differences in approach to thecommunity as well. For example, Habad has long held itself outsidethe local community, working only for its own national organization.Other congregations remain committed to the local Federation, JewishFamily Service and Community Day School. The national organizationswill try to cast their approach as widely as possible and the meaningof Reform or Conservative may represent less and less the differencesbetween congregations. We will still find ways to “classify” oursynagogues, but I predict (and I know predictions are alwaysdangerous) that the classifications of tomorrow will not be the sameas the denominations of today.

5. Synagoguesremain the foundational and fundamental unit of Jewish involvement. Ihave no reason to doubt that what has always been in Jewish History,will change in modern times. But I also understand that there aremany other worthy organizations, both secular and Jewish that shouldshare our time and efforts. Some of these are active in the world ofpolitical action. Some are social action oriented. Some are dedicatedto raising funds for worthy causes and some are the worthy causes whofill important needs in the community. In an age where government isgetting out of the social agenda due to budget concerns and politicalsniping, it will fall more and more upon the religious community tohelp support those who are in need. Jews should be a big part of thismovement. I have encouraged congregations to partner with outsideorganizations that could help the synagogue with its own agenda. Forexample, a congregation that has a core of members who are interestedin political support for the State of Israel, could forge allianceswith Israel Bonds, Zionists organizations, political organizationsand tour operators. A congregation that has a group that wants towork with the local community on economic issues could forge bondswith a soup kitchen, food pantry, job bank, homeless shelter andthrift store. Any of these organizations could be the recipient ofboth financial support or volunteer support. Just as I supportcongregations joining together to combine resources, we do not needto create new organizations to compete with existing organizationsserving the public. We should look for ways to collaborate and notcompete.

Growing a Synagogue Part Six - Synagogue Finances: Part B

2011-10-31T19:30:00.000-05:00

Fee forService

There is a greatfear both in synagogue leadership and at Federations, about adoptinga “fee for service” approach to finances. What would happen toAmerican synagogues and to the rest of the structure of the Jewishcommunity if Jews were allowed to pay only for the programming andservices that they need? Could a synagogue exist without dues? If wepause to think about this question we should see how absurd it is.Why should it be that Jews should pay for programming they don’tneed or want? Are we so paternalistic that we know better what Jews“should” want? Unless we sell them on a program, why should werequire them to pay for it? And yet, this is the way we run most ofour Jewish organizations. I have heard communal leaders say over andover, “Why don’t young Jews care about us anymore?” Justbecause it was important to a previous generation, if we can’tconvince a new generation of its importance, then we can’t expectthem to pay to keep it running.

Synagogues arenot doing all that well with a financial program that relies on dues.Shrinking memberships and increasing expenses are forcingcongregations to look to other means of fundraising to make up theshortfall in dues. Dues used to represent just about half of acongregations budget. Today, it can be as low as one quarter to onethird of the budget. It is also a number that is shrinking so fastthat calculating the amount a congregation will collect in dues canbe somewhat of a guess at the beginning of the year. Often thisbudget line falls below expectations.

Synagogues docharge fees for Religious School, Bar/Bat Mitzvah and a variety ofother services but often these do not cover all the costs involved.Dues are used to make School and other services more affordable forfamilies, in effect charging those without children to help cover thecost of education so it will not be too expensive for those who mightnot be able to afford to pay.

Even in the bestof times, fundraising can represent at least half of the annualbudget. Most of this is pretty mundane stuff. It is collected fromdedications that are in memory of the departed or in honor of speciallife cycle events. Many congregations have an annual fund raisingevent that the whole congregation gets behind to make is successful.This portion of the budget is often estimated low and when all goesas planned, there may be extra monies raised. I know of congregationswho just assume that whatever the shortfall will be in other areas,they will make up in fundraising from large donors in thecongregation. Sometimes this works, sometimes the shortfall is solarge that no one person can cover the debt.

This model ofdues, fees and fundraising clearly is not working. There are way toomany variables and without an endowment, often synagogues findthemselves running serious deficits. Congregations that have been inexistence long enough to have an endowment fund, find themselves in abetter situation as the restricted funds cover most standardprogramming as well as capital expenses and the unrestricted fundscover innovation and new ideas. But the recent financial crisis inthe world showed us, that endowment are also subject to fallinginterest rates and sometimes the principle has to be raided to coverunexpected problems.

I recently heardof an organization that did financial audits on synagogues anddiscovered that the dues model was not as effective as once believed.There are so many “hidden” costs in a synagogue that some of theprograms that were thought to be carrying the budget, in fact werelosing money if all the real costs were put together. Synagoguebudgets often list staffing costs, insurance costs, publicity costs,maintenance costs and utilities in other parts of the budgeteffectively hiding the real cost of running a religious school, apreschool and even High Holy Day services. It turns out that theseprograms are not as cost effective as we usually believe.

A fee for servicemodel, if priced according to real costs, could resolve many of theissues caused by hidden expenses. In much the same way that costs arefactored into the price of a restaurant meal or the retail price ofgroceries, so too we can determine the cost of a Shabbat Dinner, ABar or Bat Mitzvah or the cost of educating a pre-school student andset the fees accordingly. In this manner everyone who is in need ofwhat synagogues offer will pay their fair share of the expenses. In acapitalistic approach, this makes a lot of sense. If the congregationdoes not create services worth the cost, then Jews will go elsewhereand the synagogue will have to improve or close up. Goodorganizations will rise to the top and those who are beingmismanaged, will either have to reconstitute or merge with a moresuccessful neighbor.

In a fee forservice model, expensive annual dues are reduced since everyone onlyis paying for what they use. This could create substantial savingsfor Jewish families.

This model alsohas its pitfalls. Already, the real cost of a Jewish education isalmost beyond the reach of middle class Jews. Would the actual costof hiring a Rabbi or Cantor, using a synagogue building or buyingKosher meals be so great that they would be undercut by untrainedpractitioners, hotel ballrooms and treif catering? How could asynagogue justify high costs when similar services are found in thesecular world at substantial savings?

Toward a NewFinancial Model

Next Dor, asynagogue renewal project of Synagogue 3000, insists, as part of itsprogram that congregations first “engage young Jews” in the lifeof the synagogue and only later bring them into the congregation asdues paying members. The focus is not, at first, on membership.Membership is for those Jews already engages and committed to thework of the synagogue.

Next Dor alreadyrecognizes the new realities of synagogue commitment. This approachalso has financial ramifications. By concentrating on therelationship between Jews and the synagogue first, these newlyengaged Jews will come to see the importance of all the congregationdoes and will be more willing to invest in the ongoing program. Topay for the outreach, we could use a fee for service approach. Asnewly engaged Jews become involved in study, social action andritual, they will come to value membership and have the desire tomake want to be a part of the organization and invest in theirmission. This engagement brings with it eventually dues anddonations. These Jews are less “members” and more “investors”in the mission of the synagogue. The return on investment is in theeducational advancement, the feelings of having a meaningful life andthe spiritual feelings that are all part of what a commitment to thenew synagogue model should look like. Don't get me wrong, Dues anddonations to a synagogue are not “real” investments (This is nota place that the SEC should need to investigate) but rather thanasking people to pay dues first and only later become active, thiswill encourage all to become active and then to join others whobelieve in the mission.

This kind of anapproach to membership should not only stabilize income but shouldcreate larger groups of volunteers willing to donate time and effortto further the synagogue mission. Would everyone who came to ourprograms eventually become a member? Probably not. There will bethose who only have a short term need and will, in the end, only payfor what they use. But they are still a valuable asset to thecongregation. As “alumni” of a synagogue program, they walk awaywith feelings of goodwill and are grateful for the efforts of thesynagogue when they had a need. This can translate into futuredonations word of mouth publicity that are very valuable in today’s“social network” economy. I don't know if Angie's List has asection on Synagogues but to have a number of satisfied former“clients” posting good “reviews” of our services (in bothmeanings of the word), is another way we can capitalize on our goodworks. It is not a perfect system but one that can be a viablefinancial model.

I know that thereare some who say that if we really want to bring in Jews, we need tooffer them learning and activities for free. I respectfully disagree.If we are offering the public something important, they will have noissues about paying for what it is worth to them. Nobody, in this dayand age expects something for nothing (and when offered something fornothing, they usually consider it a scam.) Let them pay a small pricefor their activities today, and later, if when they are fully engagedin the community, they will want to join and invest in dues andongoing charitable giving.

Growing a Synagogue Part Six - Synagogue Finances: Part A

2011-10-25T12:44:00.000-05:00

It is easy to getinspired by the creative thinking that is going on in the Jewishworld today. It is easy to think of how a synagogue can be changedfor the better and what that would mean for the members of thecongregation and for those in the community looking for a spiritualhome. I can hear the financial people in the congregation saying,“But how much is this all going to cost?”

I started outthis book with the issue of financial problems that congregations arefacing. I really hesitated as I started my writing because I didn'twant either the Jews or the non-Jews to think that synagogues are allabout money. But in some ways, that is a big part of the problem. Wehave become so focused on fundraising, dues and budgets we are indanger of forgetting our mission and our core principles. A synagogueis not about money, it is about people, teaching them, sharing withthem and directing them on how to live better, more meaningful lives.The reality eventually hits us, however, that to do these things, weneed to raise the money to make them happen. That is not a bad thing. The problem in American synagogues has been, over the past five orsix decades, that money has been the main focus of our synagogues andwe continue to struggle because we are so focused on the financesthat we have forgotten our values. Now we are facing a future wherenobody wants to buy what we are selling. We are selling membershipsbut we never make clear why membership is important. The value, wesay, is belonging to a community, but what kind of a community andwhat meaning does it have in a person's life? How valuable can it bein facing life's challenges? That we never clarify.

Financialmanagers in the private sector teach us that money is not a value; itis the means to attain our values. If we say that we are savingmoney; that tells us nothing. If we say we are saving for retirement,for a special vacation, for our children’s college education, thenwe have stated the value. Retirement, college and vacation arevalues; saving is the way we attain what we value. The same appliesto the non-profit world. What is it that we are trying to accomplish?If we are creating a new adult education program, if we are bringingin a Scholar in Residence, if we are planning a weekend of intensivestudy, we are raising money to help educate our members. If we areraising the money to create a program to help educate migrantworkers, to support Habitat for Humanity in our neighborhood, to takeout an ad in the local newspaper in support of Israel, it shows thatwe value social and political action and the money is just the toolwe use to support our causes.

The same appliesto membership. What are we spending the money, that members pay, on?We have many good causes in our congregations. We are paying dues inorder to conduct beautiful services with the help of a Rabbi andHazzan. We are supporting Jewish education for children bysubsidizing the cost of our religious school. We are also showing ourconcern for those who are in need in our community, making religiousservices available even for those who may be suffering financialhardships. Those are also values.

All too often, weget caught up in the details of fundraising and forget the valuesthat are important. Congregations get so upset that someone might benot paying their fair share that they begin to deny membership forthose who can’t pay. High Holiday tickets must be bought if youwant to pray on the Holy Days. On the one hand, seating is limitedand we need to know how many will be attending the service, but weforget that we also have to be welcoming at our High Holiday servicesand to make those attending feel at home. All too often, we treatmembers and non-members as just another ticket and we wonder why theydon’t connect spiritually with the service. Sometimes we get socaught up in making a building beautiful that we forget that thebuilding is to be used, not just to be another pretty place. It isimportant that we don’t get disconnected from our values.

If theprogramming aspects of synagogue life has drastically changed, so toohave the financial aspects of a congregation. We live in a worldwhere the best intentions die due to lack of funding. All the hopesand dreams that are in this book will be useless without thefinancial backing to make it all happen. Let me say this right hereand now; there is nothing evil or non-spiritual about raising money.Money is not the root of all evil but another tool that we can use toadvance our goal of a more spiritual and meaningful Judaism. What isworthwhile is worth paying for. We must not forget this. Fund raisingis not a necessary evil, but the way we prioritize the many importantparts of our life. Money is not the reason a spiritual programexists, but it is one of the many devices we use to bring God intothe lives of others. The Torah teaches, “Six days you shall laborand on the seventh day you shall rest.” this means that work andraising money should take up 6/7 of our time. To be sure, some thingsare beyond money, but an underfunded program will not help us groweither.

The usualsynagogue model is to charge members annual dues. This is the feethat is required to belong. In most congregations it is one fee forthe entire family. The dues for singles and those without childrenare often half the price. Membership does have its privileges, thereare discounts on other fees and there are some programs open formembers only. Only members can vote on vital matters to the communityand members have a hand in selecting clergy for the congregation.When a family joins the synagogue, they are usually asked about whatparts of synagogue life they would like to get involved with, but thesad story is that far too few congregations have anyone from theMembership committee who will actually read the application orcontact the family about their interest. The usual story is that anew member will have to show interest in an area of synagogue lifeand persist in asking to be a part of the program. As I mentioned inthe section of cliques and fiefdoms, breaking into a group in asynagogue can be not just hard, but almost impossible for a newmember. I believe that for this reason alone, we are seeing most ofthe disinterest by Jews in synagogue membership. Synagogues areasking for significant sums of money but never invite new members tobe a part of the inner circle. After a while, the money is not worththe expense anymore and ignored members take their money elsewhere.It is not that families are poorer today than in the past. It israther that they are more careful where they spend their money. Onefinancial adviser noted that if you only join a synagogue for theHigh Holy Days and only use your membership three days a year, it isa poor investment. But if you get involved and take part in theongoing programming at the synagogue, it is a really good buy. Amembership committee has to make sure that new members are “gettingtheir money’s worth” from their dues.

By laying outreasons for people to get involved; in the learning program, in thesocial action program and in services, we give people in ourcommunity a reason to join. This is not as easy as we might think itshould be. It is not a matter of creating a website, printing amembership brochure or knocking on doors. These membership activitiesmay have worked in past decades, but they will no longer work today.Why? Because there has been a fundamental shift in how and why peoplejoin a synagogue. I noted before, that in the past, people would joinand then look for a way to get involved. Today, people need to beengaged, they need to be connected to the synagogue before they willgive their money and become members. This means that the firstcontact with our synagogue will be through events open to thecommunity. We will have to invest in engaging Jews in Jewishactivities if we hope to bring them into membership sometime in thefuture.

If we hold adultstudies programs open to the public. If we take our ongoing studygroups and open them up to all those who are searching, we will findthat there is a great untapped group of Jews who will commit to anongoing study program. If we make public our social action/politicalaction programs, we will soon attract those from the larger communitywho share our goals and who will be willing to give their time andeffort for the cause. Once they are engaged, they will come to payfor what they are doing. Nobody in this country really expectsanything for free. If we show them the value of what they aregetting, they are usually happy to pay their fair share. Once theyhave strong ties to our program and to the current members, they willaffiliate and they will remain active. They will come to understandthat the dues and other fees are worth the investment. That is howpeople get connected today. It is all about doing something importantand making the personal connections that eventually bring in thecommitment.

This is also whyI believe that denominations in Judaism are not as important as theyonce were. My teachers once told me that there really are only twokinds of Judaism, fundamentalist Judaism, and non-fundamentalistJudaism. I believe that most Jews don't know the difference betweenReform, Conservative and Reconstructionist Judaism and really don'tcare. Only the leadership and scholars really know and argue the finepoints between movements. Once a Jew finds a group that meets hisintellectual, spiritual and social needs, they will join and adjustto Jewish life in that denomination. If the congregation then failsto live up to those needs, the Jew will eventually quit thecongregation and will go where they will be fulfilled. If thatcongregation is a different movement, they will adjust. For somesynagogue leaders that may sound like heresy, but you can see thetruth of this almost every day. Jews who affiliated with onedenomination, will move to another community and affiliate with adifferent denomination because they like the programs there more thatthe other synagogues in their new community. Certainly there are someJews who could not belong to a congregation, for example, that is notegalitarian, or one that does not have a social action program, orthat does not have a kosher kitchen, but I believe that most Jews arelooking for a welcoming place, as place where people care aboutcauses that are important to them and who offer them some meaning andpurpose in their lives, and when they find that place, they join.Christian mega-churches grow so very large by getting theirmembership to find meaning and purpose in any combination of themyriad choices they offer. No matter what denomination they may becoming from, they stay because they find fulfillment in their lives.If there are some religious details to observe, like dressingconservatively, eating vegetarian at events, or separate seating formen and women, then they just go along. It is the purpose that drivesthe commitment. Most Jews today don’t really care about the use ofmicrophones on Shabbat, if swordfish is kosher or not, who wrote theBible and they don’t care if there are stained glass windows ornot. The real issue for these “seeking” Jews is, at the end ofthe day, they feel that their participation has made a difference inthe world. If it does, they will pay what they can to support thatprogram.

As I noted, forsome Jews, there are some exceptions to this rule. Egalitarianismsometimes can be a big issue. While there are families that will evenconnect to an orthodox synagogue if it meets their intellectual,spiritual and social needs, I suspect that the women in the familywill eventually be less than enthusiastic about the limited role theyplay in orthodox congregational life. There are families that don'tmind the different gender roles, and some orthodox congregations workhard to keep the genders separate but equal. When we look at longterm commitments, however, if there is an inequality of genders, iteventually will turn off members who don’t feel appreciated.

Kashrut can beanother important issue. Families who already keep kosher want theirsynagogues to be kosher as well. This may be only a small minority ofJews, but they are adamant about Kashrut. They will be surprised anddisgusted if they find a synagogue serving food that is treif. Mostof the people who don't care about Kashrut will not care if thecongregation is kosher or not, and if they attach themselves to aKosher synagogue, they will easily embrace the rules and live bythem, maybe not in their homes and personal lives, but certainly intheir Jewish communal life. If the family has children they may keeptheir membership with a Kosher congregation longer so as to beconsistent with the rules they have taught their children, but oncethe children have gone, if Kashrut is not important, than it will notbe a barrier to changing communal commitments. Once again, it takes aspecial commitment to belong to an Orthodox community since the lawsof Kashrut are far more demanding and change more frequently. One hasto be current on what is considered kosher, what has been rejected,who is accepted and who is no longer accepted and a host of minutiathat make keeping Kosher a challenge. Those who like that kind ofdetail will not be put off by this but the constant addition of newkosher regulations can put off someone who does not arrive at thedoor with that commitment.

Shabbat can be athird area of some concern. If there are affordable homes in the areaaround the synagogue where families can afford to live within walkingdistance to the synagogue, then those who are already Shabbatobservers will feel welcome. Since most non-fundamentalistcongregations allow driving, most Jews will not find this an issue.For those who want to walk on Shabbat and have a community of otherwalkers to share time on Shabbat afternoon, this could be an issuethat will keep people away. It is a small part of the community but avocal one. Often it is the Rabbi who is the leader in this group. Ifthe Rabbi lives within walking distance, he or she sets a goodexample. If the Rabbi rides to shul on Shabbat, then it will be up toothers to create this “walking community”.

But even withthese few areas of concern, many Jews, especially young Jews who arejust beginning to form their ties to the Jewish community, they areless concerned with the details of observance in the congregation andmore concerned about getting what they need from the synagogueprogramming. If all they are looking for is a place to have a Bar/BatMitzvah for their children, these parents will not really care at alleven about egalitarianism. They will have their ceremony and then goon to have a party somewhere else. They will pay for the service andmove on. Such Jews have no interest in long term communalrelationships. If we work to engage Jews at a younger age, when theyare in their mid to late twenties, we will find them open to what weoffer in their lives and eventually open to the way we connect withJudaism and Jewish ritual. If the first thing we ask from these youngJews is thousands of dollars in dues, we will find them uninterested.First we must engage them in Jewish activities and only later willthey see the value in joining.

2011-09-05T16:40:00.001-05:00

Growing ASynagogue Part E – Staff and the Modern Shul

There arekehillot (communities) that have a wealth of talented members whodon't need the guidance of a rabbi or cantor in their congregations.If rabbis are involved, they are teachers in the adult studiesprogram or advisers to the leadership team.

Full disclosure:I am a pulpit rabbi and have worked in and with a variety ofcongregations that have used my talents in different ways.

There are sometoday who think that rabbis should no longer be the spiritual leadersof congregations. I disagree with that but I do agree that the basicrole of the rabbi in a congregation has changed and continues tochange. There are some rabbis who have been able to work in thisdifferent environment and some who feel that they need to hang on tothe older style of synagogue. Some of my colleagues have told medirectly, that they are uncomfortable with new ways of leading acongregation and want to keep things the same for as long as theycan. While I understand the need to sometimes be the one who holdsthe line to changes in halacha,as we have discovered, the issue is not halachaat all; it is the very nature of the organization that is changing. Ihave tried to show many times that there is still a great respectamong Jews for rabbis and for Jewish tradition. Young Jews who createmeaningful communities do not reject Judaism; they embrace it in somevery traditional ways. I think that issues like egalitarianism andpluralism are crucial concepts in the creation of new communities,and once these communities come together, they retain traditionalobservances, like keeping kosher and observing Shabbat.

If I were to talkto my colleagues, I would tell them that the halachicissues that are being presented as things that need to be changed arenot the crux of the problem, only the symptoms. When people areunhappy with programming and prayer in our congregations they may saythings like “Services are boring” or “Why do we have to pay somuch for X?” or “Why can't you talk about current events?” Thefact is, many of our current members really don't know at all whatthey want, only that they are unhappy with what they have. If wepress them to tell us exactly what they are looking for, they usuallydon't have an answer or tell us that they want us to do what we arealready doing but somehow to do it differently.

I believe that arabbi must be constantly looking at what successful models ofcongregations look like and creating new ways to bring the successfulmodels to their synagogues. Naturally there will be those who don'twant anything to change and those who want everything to change.Reality is still somewhere between those two poles. Leadership is noteasy. My sister is a hazzanand long ago she told me that a hazzanthat is not introducing new melodiesand new liturgical configurations and changing up the service is justbeing lazy. The same applies to rabbis (I know, I know, who am Icalling lazy?!) I don't mean this with disrespect for my colleagues,both those who are my senior and those who are junior colleagues. Wehave a lot of things that we must do as rabbis. But growing ourcongregations is one of the most crucial. If you look atcongregations that are looking for new rabbis, it does not take longto see that all of them want help with “change”. They want tochange and they don't want to change (“change what I don't like anddon't change what I do like”) but that, we know is impossible. Anexecutive director once reminded me that “nobody likes all thefocus on the Bar Mitzvah boy at Saturday services, except the membersof the family. Yet the family makes up over 75% of the congregationthat morning, and they want the focus to be on the boy.” So how doyou make the regulars happy without angering 75% of the people inshul that morning? When we give blessings at the Torah for those witha birthday or anniversary, everyone tells me that it takes too long,except those who are getting the blessings. (It is always too longunless it involves me.)

Congregationshave a history. Congregations like to write their history and inviteothers to read it. Often synagogue websites have links to the historyof their communities. These histories often point back to thewonderful days when the congregations were small, or when they werein their heyday. Sometimes, however, there are darker secrets in thehistory of a congregation that the members don't like to recall ordon't want to recall; problems with clergy, financial problems,members and staff who are arrested and the synagogue is implicated,sexual harassment of a employee, sexual abuse of a child in theschool, embezzlement, misappropriation of funds, the sudden death ofbeloved rabbi or president. All of these can devastate a congregationand produce years of upheaval. When a congregation faces these kindsof serious issues the officers and members of the congregation wantto quickly get past their problems and return to the way things usedto be. But going backwards is impossible. Things will never be theway they used to be because we only see the past through the rosetinted glasses that will not let us acknowledge the problems anddifficulties that we also endured. In synagogue life, the past isinteresting, but we can't live there. We need to constantly havevision and focus on what lies ahead.

One colleaguereminded me that this is the reason that cars have a large windshieldand a small rear view mirror, so we can see more of where we aregoing and less of where we have been. What would success look likein the twenty-first century? It will not be the same as it was in thetwentieth century. Life does move on and we must not let our historycloud our vision of the future. The questions we need to ask are whatare we doing now that we want to continue and what needs to bechanged/updated/renewed or created? This is not a challenge just tosynagogues. All modern organizations and businesses have to look tothe future or face difficult consequences that come from living inthe past. As rabbis we need to encourage these questions and we mustbe prepared to answer them.

Jack and SuziWelch in the article I mentioned earlier, write, Whena team is infused with trust, people play to their better angels.They share ideas freely. They help their colleagues when they arestuck and need an insight. What they do every day then becomes aboutthe group's success, not their own. They're not worried about notgetting the credit for some big win; they know a teammate will saysomething like “Hey, don't thank me. Cary was the one with theeureka moment that set the whole thing in motion.” and Cary willsay, “Thanks. I may have had the idea, but you executed.” Thecandor-trust connection has another benefit: it promotes anenvironment of risk-taking. Who wants to try something new if theysense they'll get a stick in the eye (or worse) should they fall?Leaders of winning teams encourage their people to take on hugechallenges and let them know that they're safe no matter whathappens. And then they make good on their word.

I have seenboards that are so risk adverse that they quash every new idea thatshould arise. I have seen rabbis and directors tell excited layleadership that what they propose can't be done. Anyone who has everserved on a synagogue board or who has served on the professionalstaff has heard the phrases that kill new ideas, “We tried thatonce and it didn't work.” “Who will you get to chair thatproject?” “That may work in big cities but in our town it wouldnever fly.” “That is not what our congregation is about, if youwant to do that, you should join a different synagogue that doesstuff like that.” We have thousands of ways that leadership, bothlay and professional, can kill new ideas. What we need is a culturethat encourages new ideas, new programs and forward thinking. It isnot about who gets the credit, but what is for the good of thecongregation. If we try something and it fails, then we have learnedsomething and, if we think the idea is still good, we can try againwith an eye to overcoming the obstacles. If it just doesn't work,well, then we will try something different. The payoff of an ideathat does work is worth the previous failures that have helped setthe foundation for the success. We can find new ideas in the talentthat we already have, and in searching for ideas that have workedelsewhere. All we need to do to make these ideas our own is to beopen to possibilities.

I thereforebelieve that the best approach is for both rabbi/staff and layleadership to create a working dialogue. Often the rabbi only hearsgood things and the president hears all the complaints. That needs tochange. Both rabbi and president need to share their points of viewwith one another. Together they need to identify the real needs ofthe congregation (not just the personal needs of those who complainall the time) and then look into how other congregations deal withthese issues; what may be working and what clearly is not working(and what would never work here!). Complaints about things being toolong (services, religious school) are symptoms of programs that donot engage the participants. “Boring” (services, programming) isthe symptom of the lack of change. Dropping membership is the symptomof people who are voting with their feet to find something meaningfulsomewhere else. It means we have missed their needs. If young Jewsare not joining, it is because they don't see anything for them inour congregation. And that is why you are reading this book.

Cantors have aneven harder time. New hazzanimare trained to be not just singers, but auxiliary staff members. Theyare often trained to be teachers, education directors and evenexecutive directors. Older hazzanimwere trained to lead services with classical cantorial melodies. Theproblem is that many of those melodies are anywhere from 50-150 yearsold and are not appealing to most contemporary audiences. In thedocumentary, “100 Voices: A Journey Home” the hazzanimin the film understand that these old classic melodies, many of whichcame from Europe, are not meaningful to younger Jewish audiences. Irecently wrote in my congregation’s bulletin, “Istill love the song that Michelle and I danced to at our wedding.Sometimes, if we are out dancing, and I feel really romantic, I askthe band to play it for us to dance to. I would never expect my radiostation to play it anymore. Music has moved on and while there arestill some of us who like “oldies” it is not the way for a radiostation to stay on the air. Even my favorite station that playedmusic from the 1950's, now plays “oldies” from the 60's and 70's.My music is now older than the “oldies”!” Musical styles change. That is a fact of life. A cantorial concertcan be the showcase for classical hazzanut,but the liturgy deserves more modern influences. Hazzanimwho can't keep up may find themselves left behind.

It is crucialthat the rabbi and hazzanwork together to create a meaningful service. There should be noreason for rabbis and hazzanimto be feuding or working at cross purposes. While each needs torespect the role of the other, and must treat each other ascolleagues, there will not always be agreement on everything. What isimportant is to try new things, and then come back and assess how itis going. What is important is to talk each week as to what will makethat service unique. Sometimes it may be a reaction to something inthe news. Rabbi Sharon Braus said after the 2004 tsunami thatdevastated the countries of the eastern Indian Ocean, “If yourservice before the tsunami is the same as the service after thetsunami, then something is very wrong.” We have to be sensitive towhat is happening in our world and how it affects those who areworshiping with us in our sanctuary. Our service has to reflectwhatever is important and on the minds of the congregation.Sometimes a service may be built around a moral issue in thecommunity; sometimes it will be built around getting moreparticipation from the congregation. When the rabbi and hazzanwork together, it creates a better atmosphere for really good thingsto happen.

If we are tochange the focus of learning in the synagogue from school forchildren to educating adults, this will mean a change in educationstaffing as well. Rather than an “education director” what willbe needed is a “director of life-long learning”. Certainly wewill need to oversee the Jewish education of children, but the mainfocus has to be on adults. There will need to be a movement away fromlectures and more to “hevruta” learning. There will need to bemore texts and more discussion. There will have to be higher levellearning and ways for those who are just beginning to “catch up”without dragging the whole program down. Education programs must alsoreflect that some learning will be in people's homes and perhaps inthe work environment as well. Coordinating study groups can be a fulltime job alone once the program takes off. There can be ongoing studyprograms that feature evening learning for those who work during theday. There can be special week long programs of learning based on the“Limmud” program that takes place each winter in England. Therecan be weekend programs and Shabbaton programs that can offer a widerange of topics to give everyone a chance to try something new.These shorter programs should kick off a longer program if enoughpeople show an interest in the topic.

Teachers can bethe rabbi and cantor and any other staff member with an educationalbackground. Often the same teachers who do so well with our childrenmay be able to teach adults. Many congregations are blessed with laymembers who have solid education backgrounds or strong Judaicbackgrounds who can also lead these study sessions. Many communitieshave colleges and universities with a Judaic Studies department thatcan be the source of teachers and the students in the program mayalso be able to lend a hand. All of this, of course, takes investmentof money as well as time. Just as the religious school for childrenhas school fees, so too adult education, if it is to be credible andchallenging, will also require fees from the participants. It may bepossible to find outside money from foundations and funders, and afund raiser in the community on behalf of adult studies could involvea patrons' program, where people with an interest in adult studiescan help fund the program. There are opportunities for endowments andlegacy gifts as well. There may even be corporations who wouldsponsor events in exchange for publicity that could help raise moneyfor the adult studies program. The key to the program is to createit with high caliber talent so that adults will want to join in thestudy program. Clearly we need educators who are up to the task ofcreating serious adult learning.

Finally, we needto insure that the entire synagogue staff are involved in the overallprogram and are adding in their own way to the goal of engagement ofthe membership. We are no longer in an age where peoplesay, “you should hear my Rabbi/Cantor,” etc. In the future, wewill want to hear: “This is what Ilearned/taught in shul this week. It is important that ourprofessionals be able to put their own egos aside and let thelearners learn and the members sing.It is not about the staff; the purpose of the synagogue is to teachJudaism, spirituality and how to find God and meaning in life.

How Does The Book End?

2011-08-29T20:19:00.000-05:00

It has been awhile since I last posted a chapter of my book. I was working on it one chapter at a time and as I approached the end of the book I needed to draw it all together. I have continued to work on the book, trying to update the chapters, tie it all together and get it ready for prime time. I did not count on this process taking so long. My usual proofreaders now need to cull the entire book, looking for redundancies, and work on ways to edit the long run on sentences I have a tendency to use. My usual writing style is for sermons. I am not as skilled to write for reading. So this process has been a learning process for me as well.
Over the next few weeks, I will get the final chapters out on this blog and I hope that you will take the time to read them and to comment on them. I am also looking for comments on the entire enterprise and what I may have missed. I know it is easier to challenge what I have written and much harder to identify what is missing. I am sure that you, my readers, will share your ideas and comments so I can include your thoughts in the final draft.
Don't be afraid to tell me what you really think. We are all adults. Be kind, but you can tell me what you feel. I promise not to get snippy in return. I do value your comments. I thank you in advance for your help in my quest to change the face and approach of American synagogues.

Growing A Synagogue Part D: Building and Rebuilding

2011-05-09T20:26:00.002-05:00

Maybe it is because of the weak economy, maybe it is a result of our new awareness of environmental concerns, or maybe because of the shrinking number of children in need of our religious schools, but the size of synagogue buildings is decreasing.

In the 1950's a synagogue aspired to have a large building, perhaps designed by a famous architect, in an upper middle class suburb. Today, many congregations in these “designer” buildings, are finding them expensive to maintain and no longer as useful for what modern Jews expect from their religious space. A Rabbi I know had his congregation move into a new sanctuary in the 1970's that featured a Ner Tamid, an eternal light, that was not electric, rather it was a real flame burning butane (basically it was a somewhat large cigarette lighter). Shortly after the building was opened, came the first oil crisis in this country and the cost of butane shot up. What had seemed like a good idea at the time became an expensive headache. In a similar way, as styles of worship changed, large sanctuaries with fixed pews, once a standard in religious buildings, suddenly just condemned the largest room in the building to just one or two days when it could be used.

A modern synagogue today is a very different kind of a place. Sanctuaries are definitely smaller. Where once it was common to see sanctuaries seating 600-700 people and expanding to seat 1500 on the High Holy Days, today the standard size of a sanctuary seats less than 400, expandable perhaps to 1000 on the holidays. But the size of the room is not the only feature that has changed. To keep energy costs down, there is a lot more natural light being used; in some cases, the sunlight actually helps keep the building warmer in the winter. The bima, the raised platform where the service is conducted, is much lower, dropping from seven to eight steps up, to just one or two steps above the floor of the sanctuary, giving everyone the feeling of being close to the “action”. It also makes the bima more accessible to those with disabilities. Instead of narrow stairs leading up and down, the entire bima can be accessed from any direction, with a simple step up across the entire front of the bima. Bima furnishings, once very ornate and dark, are now simple and lighter in color.

In addition to changing decor there is a trend to return to the “older” synagogue style of placing the bima in the middle of the room. Where this is not possible, often the seats will be on three sides of the bima, not just in the front facing forward. This circular style, where the worshipers can see each other lends to a feeling of everyone being together in prayer. Rabbi Eli Kaunfer, in his book, “Empowered Judaism” notes “The other layout popular in independent minyanim, and the one that I advocate, is that used in many traditional Orthodox synagogues; all rows face forward, and the prayer leader stationed in the center, also facing forward. This sends a few important messages. First that everyone is facing the Aron Kodesh (the holy ark) rather than facing a leader who is davening toward (at?) the congregation. The unity of purpose is clearly reinforced by the direction of the community. Second, the charismatic role of the prayer leader is diminished – half the congregation sit in front of the leader, while the other half sit behind her. While at first blush this may seem impersonal, it actually allows both the congregation and the leader to avoid self-consciousness, putting the focus on sound rather than sight. A third advantage is that the prayer leader experiences a different relationship to the congregation by being in their midst. She can better gauge to what extent a melody is “working” and can feel supported by the more active daveners in the congregation. She is simply closer to the entire congregation than in a standard synagogue layout, and she draws strength from that closeness.” (p.114) Kaunfer admits that the feelings of “self consciousness” that can come when a congregation prays in a circle, with the leader in the middle, is what makes him prefer the facing forward model. But he admits that some find davening in a circle, seeing each others faces actually fosters a connection with God and other human beings. While I may differ with him on the feelings of “self-consciousness” and tend to prefer the more circular seating, we both agree that theatrical seating, with the bima in front and everyone watching the “show” is no longer a useable model for prayer. The need for participation and inclusiveness would have us put the bima in the midst of the congregation no matter which way the daveners may be facing.

Synagogue seating is better when we get away from fixed pews. Moveable seating has many advantages. First of all the room can be reconfigured to fit the size of the congregation you are expecting. Hadar, the independent minyan in New York City, puts up a slightly smaller number of seats for what they are expecting so that everyone will sit together rather than spread out all over the room. The feeling of being in a room with everyone nearby helps lift the spirit of the service. If you have moveable seating, and you need more seats, you can bring them in as needed.

Another reason movable seating is better is that there is flexibility in the arrangement of chairs. One week there can be semicircular seating, then placing the bima in the middle the next week and setting up a front facing congregation the following week. Aisles can be wide or narrow. You can have seating in two rows, three rows or just one inner circle. Ansche Chesed in New York had very old hard pews from almost 100 years ago all set facing forward with a very high bima. They took out the first ten rows of pews in the front and replaced them with moveable seating in a semi-circle and moved the bima to the center of the circle. Now more people sit up front, the action is closer to the congregation and it is a great, participatory service.

A third reason for moveable seating is that it makes the room usable for more than just services. One can hold a number of discussion groups on a weekday, there can be multiple Torah readings on Simchat Torah, it can allow room for dancing for Kabbalat Shabbat and the room can be used for larger meetings as needed. Rearranging the seating can have a great impact on a program that can begin as soon as the people come into the room and have to find a seat. [While I know that it is customary that people want to sit in the same seat each Shabbat, by reconfiguring the seating, people will sit in different seats and meet different people than the crowd with whom they usually sit.] I am not advocating using folding chairs. There are many comfortable seats, with pockets for books and information, that can be used without needing to bolt the chairs to the floor. It is a wiser use of space to scrap the pews and switch to moveable seating.

Bima

There was a time in this country, where the Rabbi spoke from “on high” and everyone literally looked up to see and hear him (there were no women Rabbis then). There was an invisible wall between the congregation and the bima. Just as in the theater there has been an attempt to break down the wall between the actors and the audience, so too we need to break down the barriers that separate prayer leaders from the worshipers.

When one of my congregations moved to a new building, we gutted the sanctuary to completely refurbish it. I insisted that the bima, seven steps high, be removed and lowered to no more than two. The building committee came back to me and said that, for some strange reason, the bima in the old sanctuary was made of poured concrete. It would take a week of jack hammering and then the removal of the debris to lower the bima. It just did not make economic sense. So I had them take out the narrow steps up and replace them with steps that spanned the entire face of the bima. No matter where someone sat in the congregation, they had direct access to the bima. It also freed me up to come down from the bima and speak from the floor of the sanctuary for a more informal discussion on Shabbat. As I mentioned before, Ansche Chesed in New York moved the bima to the center of the circle on the sanctuary floor and congregants only go up on the bima when they need to open the ark and take out the Torah. Otherwise, the bima is just a nice backdrop for their service.

These days,on Friday nights, for Kabbalat Shabbat, our congregation does away with a bima altogether. The service is held in one of our smaller social halls. The Hazzan stands in the middle of the circle with only a music stand to hold his siddur. I wander around through the aisles and around the back, encouraging the congregation to sing and participate in the service. I enter the center of the circle only when I have something I need to do in the center, i.e. give a d'var Torah or lead a reading. I encourage others to lead reading just by standing up at their seats.

Beyond the Building

My good friend Rabbi Edwin Farber told me a story of a renovation of the sanctuary that happened at his synagogue. The plans called for the Torah reading table to be built into the bima, right on the edge next to the steps. Rabbi Farber tried to explain to the builder that there had to be room for four people to stand around the table: a Torah Reader, a person called to the Torah but who couldn't read the Torah so the Torah Reader would read for him, a Gabbai who made sure the Torah Reader did not make a mistake and another Gabbai who made sure that a mistake did not slip past the first Gabbai. The builder listened carefully and asked, “How many classrooms are we including in this building?” “Seven” said the Rabbi. “That's a good thing,” replied the builder, “since none of your people can read!”

A synagogue is more than a sanctuary. It needs office space, classrooms, meeting rooms, perhaps a smaller chapel, a kitchen and a space for dinners and social events. The key is to be able to use the space effectively and efficiently. Moveable partitions between classrooms can give more room but could be noisy when both rooms are used. Early Childhood classes can be converted to Religious school classrooms but that change could be more work than the time between schools allows. A secretarial pool is an efficient use of space but makes it difficult for members needing a private meeting with the Rabbi to set that up. Designing a building requires a lot of thought and consideration.

For start-up and small congregations, one must consider whether a building is really necessary. Meetings and adult studies can be held at the homes of members. After school classrooms can be rented from a public/private school that has empty rooms after the school day is over. A storefront with moveable chairs, some office space and some moveable partitions may be all a congregation needs for awhile without requiring a mortgage and full tilt capital campaign. This could allow financial resources to be concentrated on people and programs and not on maintaining a building. Building maintenance can be an expensive overhead that makes future budget cuts difficult. In these days of home offices, conference rooms that rent by the hour and the local copy store serving as an email, snail mail and package office with computer equipment to get office work done, there may be fewer reasons for small congregations to own a building at all.

Another possibility, in this time of large synagogue buildings with shrinking congregations, is to rent space from a congregation that is different from yours and run two different congregations from one location. Costs can be reduced by sharing office and janitorial help. If there is a big age gap between the two congregations there will be little reason to fear one group “stealing” members from the other. The mission and atmosphere of the two congregations would be just too different. If not, perhaps create the possibility of moving from one service to the other which can enhance both services rather than create a turf war. I think it is wonderful if a minyan can move into the empty space in a larger synagogue, as long as the details of what is permitted and what is not permitted is negotiated in advance.

A small orthodox minyan once asked to meet in one of my classrooms on Saturday morning. It was a group from a local Young Israel affiliated congregation and after speaking to the Rabbi at the Young Israel ( I was not looking to create a rift in his congregation) I gave them the green light to meet in our building. In an act of cooperation, we offered, gratis, the use of the room. A couple of years later, the Young Israel Rabbi told me that they were ready to spin off the group using my space. We then renegotiated with the group; they would act like a congregation and charge nominal dues and we would give them the space for only the cost of the maintenance to keep the room clean. That group was mostly older men and slowly they were no longer able to attend. Sometimes they came into our service to look for men to help them make a minyan. There were some in my congregation who were offended by this but nobody was required to join them; some were happy to help out and go to the other service. The only other restriction we placed on this minyan was that they could not “denigrate” our Conservative congregation because we did not agree with them on issues of egalitarianism and participation. After many years, the group was no longer able to continue and the remaining members joined our congregation. We were happy to have them join.

I said earlier, that the “one size fits all” type of service is way out of date. Offering multiple services that have multiple options is a way to be more things to more people. Bringing in other smaller groups can be a way of helping them and having more to offer the community. It is important, however, to make sure that the concerns of both congregations are addressed in advance. There will need to be really good communication between the different groups to make this kind of an arrangement work.

Virtual Buildings and Virtual Community

Modern technology does not require community to actually be inside the same building all the time. Technology allows us to create “virtual” buildings. This works particularly well when it comes to educational programs. Classes can be recorded as MP3 files and put on the congregation website to be listened to later, or even posted as an MP4 file, a video of the class, for those who missed the session. An internet “forum” can be used to encourage discussion by those who may be taking the class later and questions can be posted so that participants can see what other learners are thinking. Prior to an advanced text class, basic information can be posted to the web as a “prerequisite” for those who missed the beginning semester. Together with the List-serve, a virtual community can be set up, so that in addition to learning, questions and answers, day to day information like finding a baby sitter or asking for the name of a qualified painter, can be provided; members can reach out to each other even if they can't make it that day to the building. There may be some who think that this kind of community is impersonal and cold, but given the busyness of people today, making ideas, lessons and communal information available after hours can make the difference in keeping active members involved. Young adults today, are more familiar and less put off by virtual community and this could be a way of getting them and keeping them connected.

Growing a Synagogue Part 3: Communicating in the Twenty-First Century

2011-04-05T18:15:00.000-05:00

C. Email, Listservs and Social Networking.

We are working from the inside out when it comes to publicity. Once you have a good looking and up to date website, you now need to get word out that you are open for business. When Ikar, the successful young synagogue in the Los Angeles area, was ready to start, it sent an email to everyone who was a friend of the founders telling about what the congregation was about and how they were going to be different from other congregations. The email stated that “if this kind of a synagogue sounds like something you would be interested in, join us for a service on Shabbat and pass this email on to others you think might be interested.” Over 200 people came for that first Shabbat.

If you have a core of members of a particular demographic and want to increase participation in that group, email can be a very effective way to spread the news. Everyone who inquires about your congregation should be asked to leave an email address in addition to more conventional contact information of address and phone number. Instead of a weekly announcement sheet, (or in addition to that sheet) there could be a weekly email about what is happening at the synagogue. This email should mention that recipients can forward the information to anyone who may be interested. Try not to make these announcements just plain blocks of text. Include graphics, the synagogue logo, and even pictures if possible. It should always include both a phone number for information and a link to the synagogue website where more information can be found.

This announcement email should go out to every email address you have on file. You do not, however, want to end up as spam in somebody's email box. There are a couple of things to do to be kind to those who will receive your email. First of all, never send an email out with every one's name in the “To:” box. Email addresses should be as private as snail mail addresses. You would not sell your snail mail list; don't publish your email list either. Emails from the congregation to the list should only have the synagogue's email address in the “To” box. Consider using a mass mailing/marketing service such as Constant Contact. If you do send the email directly, all the other addresses should be sent out as “blind copies” (BCC). If you don't know how to do this with your email client, then get someone to teach you. Keep away from sending attachments and links to untrusted websites. Be considerate of your users and try not to send more emails than they want to receive. Having someone's email address is a privilege; don't make them regret that they gave it to you. It is also proper web etiquette to include an opt out link at the end of every email so users can remove themselves from the list. Don't take requests to be removed personally, but it is a good idea to try and find out why they left the list. Perhaps they have moved to a different community or have joined another synagogue and no longer need your information or perhaps your email is not meeting their needs. Consider having a variety of mailing lists focused on different groups so that you can target parents with small children for one type of program, and for another, reach everyone who has participated in a food drive. This ensures that you are making the most of your email list and reaching members with the information that is of particular interest to them.

A variation on the email list is a Listserv. This is a forum where everyone on the list can contact everyone else on the list with one email. This can be used for announcements but usually it is a way that members can stay in contact with each other. The list is usually private, for congregational members only. They can share ideas, look for babysitters, recommend a plumber or give away tickets to a show they can no longer attend. It’s a good idea to establish guidelines and policies for use of the list. Make clear what sort of communication is welcome and what is not. Also be clear about what the consequences are for unwelcome behavior. A Listserv can be a way to discuss interesting articles or lessons with the group. Like the mailing lists above, your Listserv does not need to be all members. You can have targeted lists for college students who are away at school, for the youth group, for the Sisterhood or Men's Club. If you have multiple minyanim at the synagogue, each minyan can have its own Listserv to stay in touch with its group and to assign parts in the service in advance.

There are also a number of other social networking sites that members may already belong to and you can stay in touch with them by asking them to connect with you there. Social networks are a great way to extend relationships or start new ones. Instead of reaching members only when they are inside your building, you can extend your reach to meet them where they are. Social Networks are often the first place where people post their news, both good and bad, and presents many opportunities to hear from, help, and be there for your members. It is also a good place to ask questions about what they may like to see in the future from the congregation, survey your members as to which programs they might attend and have them give you a hand in planning what the next program might look like.

One common objection to social media is that it opens up the channels of communication and creates the possibility of negative publicity or a forum for those who are dissatisfied to let others know about their unhappiness. This objection is rooted in a misunderstanding of the medium. Whether you are on Facebook or not, the conversation is already happening! Isn’t it better to keep track of issues and use a negative post as an opportunity to fix the relationship and let others know what you are doing to resolve the situation? Making this shift can be difficult, but it is very worthwhile.

If you’re not familiar with the variety of social network options, take the time to learn about each of them. One common mistake is to treat them all the same. Instead, determine your goal and then choose the right tool to meet your needs.

Do you want to bring more people to your building? Consider using Foursquare to offer a promotion for anyone who checks-in at the synagogue.
Do you want to establish a professional network to help congregants find jobs? Start a group on Linked-in.
Do you want to send out short blasts to the public? This may be a good use of Twitter.
Do you want to establish mutual relationships with members? Start a page on Facebook.

Ea Each of these methods can be very powerful tools when used correctly, so make sure to familiarize yourself with the tool you’ve chosen and take some time familiarize yourself with them. Social Media users can be very forgiving so don’t be afraid to try new things or take chances.

Texting is mainly for personal communication. Since texts can cost the recipients money, ask for permission before sending out text messages, but they may be good tools in certain circumstances, when time is short, such as notifying parents of an emergency.

Instant Messaging (IM) is also often personal, but consider having someone in the office staff an IM account to answer questions. The more entry points you have, the more you enable your members to connect.

One last thought, consider finding out what mediums and tools your congregants are using and meeting them there. Don’t jump in just because it sounds cool to be on Facebook or Twitter. Starting a Linked-in group if your congregants don’t use it doesn’t benefit anyone. Make sure that you’re where your people are, or work on a plan to help them gain the proficiency that they might need to connect with you.

Growing A Synagogue Part 3: Communicating in the Twenty-First Century

2011-03-21T20:11:00.000-05:00

B. Websites

The basic unit of publicity on the Internet is a website. While there are domains (web addresses) that are free, for just a few dollars you can own your own domain name (e.g. www.CongregationBethX.org or www.templex.com or something similar). Think of a website as one way of having your synagogue office open twenty four hours a day, seven days a week (yes, even on Shabbat!). If a congregation is looking to attract young adults, to anyone born after 1980, an organization or business that does not have a website, in their eyes, just does not exist. Long before a young adult will ever come to visit a synagogue, they will first check the congregation out on its website. It is important that the website be done right.

A website should include the following information: the name of your congregation and an accurate description of what you’re about; the mission statement and values of the congregation; your physical address and directions on how to find your synagogue; information including times and locations for services, programs, and classes; an up to date calendar of events and contact information for the synagogue staff. It’s also nice to include a bio of your clergy, sample sermons from the rabbi or audio files of the cantor; the different committees and affiliates and some of the activities that they sponsor; and information about the neighborhood such as kosher restaurants or supermarkets, etc.

Your website must have accurate and timely information and be updated regularly. Developing a website either means having a volunteer who really understands the web design it or else having the website designed professionally. Professional web design may not be the cheapest option, but if the congregation is cutting back on print advertising, a professional designer may be a good investment. One important consideration is how the website will be maintained. Who will be responsible for keeping information on the site up to date, and what training might they need? Synagogue staff and volunteers should establish a communication strategy that includes making sure that upcoming programs are posted to the website, old material is taken down and that the website is accurate. This also includes an annual review of the entire website and at-least-monthly check for accuracy. Also consider rotating the pictures on display.

If a congregation does not have a website or the congregation is unhappy with what they have currently, the first thing to do is spend some time on the web looking at what other successful synagogues and churches are doing. Ask people who use the web regularly to let you know their own favorite sites. Go to those sites and look at the style and what they put on their home page. Examine how they divide up the different areas of the congregation, putting them on different pages. Pay attention to how easy is it to find a particular piece of information, like a map showing the synagogue's location, a list of who to call for information, a calendar of current activities or the times that services will be held. Look at what pictures are used, what graphics are used. Look further and pay attention to what colors are in the background and what color is used for the fonts. If the site was professionally designed, often the designer will have the company name at the very bottom of the page in very small letters. If you like what you see you can contact the designer (at the designer's website) and inquire as to how they can be of service to you. If you have a professional design your website, make sure that it is designed so that it can be easily updated by synagogue staff or volunteers without needing the designer or incurring additional expense. When constructing a website, it should be designed to be easy to update so that the volunteer or staff member who keeps the calendar, or the one who does the publicity, can easily post new material and take down the old information. (Usually this means having a content management system [CMS] which enables those who don’t know how to code to update the text on a website).

One common mistake congregations make on their website is putting a picture of the synagogue building on the home page. Your community may be very proud of your synagogue building but the building is not the most important part of your congregation. Synagogues (and churches) are all about people and it is better to have pictures of people on your homepage; especially people who are having fun, smiling people, cute children and lots of activity. You can add a guided tour of your building to the site for those who are interested, but it does not belong on the home page.

If you have a website already, open it in your browser and see what it looks like when it opens. Like the synagogue tour above, take a tour of your own website. Does the homepage make you look like a place you would want to visit? A website is like the large window of a department store. It is the face that the world sees when they look at your synagogue. It needs to be kept fresh, up to date and have all of the most important information. A website that is out of date will never get a second look. It is better to have no website than to have one that is out of date with old, useless information. (If you really can’t keep a website up to date, consider having a “brochure website”, with the name and address and contact information for your synagogue- at least until you can establish a more dynamic website).

Most synagogues overlook this but metrics (statistics) are a vital part of a website. There are a number of companies that offer free metrics (such as google analytics) for a website. Usually you get a counter to count how many hits the website gets. But they also include metrics that tell you how visitors found your website, what pages they visited, how long they spent on each page and how long they were on the entire website. It can tell you where these visitors live, what their internet service provider is, which browser they are using and a host of other details that can be very helpful in planning and updating the website. Businesses use metrics all the time and they can be of great help to synagogues and churches as well. Make sure that if someone is looking for a synagogue or rabbi in your area and Googles these terms, your site will show up in the search listings. If it doesn’t appear, or is ranked lower than other less relevant results, consult someone who knows about search engine optimization (SEO) to help you fix this.

It is also wise to consult someone about website security. Pictures of children and members should not give too much information to the outside world. The website should have a strong password so other nefarious characters cannot deface it or hijack it. If you allow transactions over the website, they must meet security standards including having an SSL certificate. Email addresses should be protected from those who scan the web looking for addresses to send spam and other dangerous items. Since a website can be scanned by spammers for a particular text (like an email address), sometimes it is better to post sensitive information not as text but as a graphic or picture and avoid problems with spam. Be careful how your website is linked to other sites. You don't want problems with other sites which may be out of date or with faulty security to affect your web address. The web can be a wonderful place but it can also be a bit of a wild frontier. Make sure that your web page is protected from problems. There may be legal implications of what appears on your website; you may need to specify terms of use, a privacy policy, a formal release to use pictures of individuals on the site. It is a good idea to consult with whoever does the legal work for your congregation before you make a new website public.

Some congregations have a password protected area on the website; for members only, for parents of the religious school only or where committees can share information privately; a place where more personal information can be shared. In some of these areas, social networking has been built into the website itself. By separating the public and private sections, members can have more information available than they could on a public site. They can not only share synagogue information but they can inquire about local service providers, share information on babysitters and give away unwanted furniture or theater tickets. A private area on a web site for members only can be a wonderful community tool.

Growing A Synagogue Part 3: Communicating in the Twenty-First Century

2011-03-14T19:10:00.003-05:00

A. Communicating in Print

The third leg of a successful congregation is communication. We can be the most welcoming organization in town, and have some of the most meaningful and innovative programming ever devised but if we can't get the word out about who we are, where we are and what we have to offer, we will be unknown for a very long time. There are many synagogues that have extensive advertising campaigns, but most of the information that I have seen indicates that display advertising, in newspapers and fliers, is of little effect. It is okay if all that is needed is name recognition, but this kind of advertising does not attract new members or new participants.

Everyone knows that the single most effective way to get new prospects is to have synagogue members personally invite friends and neighbors to join them at the synagogue. With the possible exception of the month before Rosh Hashana (when Jews do look for a synagogue to attend for the holidays), display advertising is of very limited use. Too many of the people we are looking for no longer get their information from print advertising.

For example, many newspapers and organizations use community calendars that offer free advertising of events. I don't know of any community calendar that publishes all events no matter who sends them in. Often events are published based on how much space the publication has available in the issue and if the program intrigues the editor. These events may only be published a day or two before the event occurs even though the deadline for inclusion is weeks in advance. Someone who is looking for something to do that day may read about it and decide to attend, but most of the time it only serves as a reminder for those who have already signed up.

Print display advertising for synagogues is expensive and never really very effective. To be fair, most synagogues have not really invested in a major advertising effort. Synagogues don't hire advertising firms to create eye catching and informative display ads. Most congregations just don't have the budget for that kind of marketing. My colleague, Rabbi Jack Riemer told me once that he convinced a major PR firm to do a series of ads for his synagogue for free, as a public service donation of time. That was a rare successful program. In these modern times, newspapers, magazines and other print media are a dying breed. The place to get our word out today is on the Internet. The good news is that it is fast and free. The bad news is that it is much harder to rise above all the other noise on the web.

Synagogue Bulletin/Weekly Announcements

Because synagogues are multi generational, there may still be a need for a printed bulletin. The bulletin should include your synagogue logo and should carry a professional design. There are many computer programs that can help design a very professional bulletin. There are also many good graphic designers for those who would like their bulletin, stationery, and logo to all have the same look and feel. The cost of a print bulletin, printing and postage, can be underwritten by a donor or there can be advertising sold to cover the costs. You never know in whose hands a print bulletin will end up so the bulletin should be only used as a way to advertise upcoming events. Controversial items or critical letters do not belong in a bulletin. If you can afford to print in color and include pictures, that is great. If not, find lots of graphics to highlight a page so that it is not just blocks of print. Pay attention to the color and quality of the paper and the quality of the printing. If you can't do a quality job in house, then pay to have the bulletin printed at a local print shop. A good graphic designer can, for a rather modest fee, create a template for a print bulletin that can be used over and over again. It is helpful to have good advice on the layout of the bulletin. The balance between text, graphics and white space, the use of logos and borders and matching the headings for regular columns in the bulletin often require the assistance of someone who has experience and an eye for graphic design. Once the design is finished, reusing the design every month should be easy for in house editors.

While it may be expensive, it’s worth thinking about, and good business practice, to have your print and web materials professionally branded. This includes consistency in the language you use as well as consistent use of fonts and colors to create a cohesive design. In this manner those who receive or view your material can instantly recognize that it’s from you and have a sense of what your congregation is about simply from the look and feel of your website or envelope.

Weekly announcement sheets can be put out every Shabbat for those in attendance to pick up at services. This is a good way to help those who attend on weekends receive information on upcoming events. Do not make the common mistake of thinking that if something is put in the weekly announcements that every member of the congregation will see it. In fact, only the small percentage of people who attend services will see the events posted. It is no more than a reminder sheet for those who are active in the congregation. It can be used to thank those sponsors and donors for events that weekend so they can see their name in print. Since it is handed out to members and guests, it is also a public relations document. It should be short, to the point and easy to take home. If a newcomer to the service picks one up, it can also include information about the service, the congregation and who to contact if they want more information. It should have all the contact information about the congregation including the web address and the names of officers and staff who can be contacted for additional information about the synagogue.

Because both of these documents, bulletins and weekly announcements, are put together by volunteers, it has become a kind of sport, over the years, to find as many typos and mistakes in them as one can. There are whole books written about the humorous things found in church/synagogue bulletins and announcements. It is crucial, therefore, to make sure that a qualified proofreader goes over the documents before they go to print. I know that this sounds obvious, but getting the names (the right name and the right spelling), dates and information accurate is not an easy job and somebody needs to be responsible to make sure that everything is as correct as it can be.

The information on both of these documents can and should be included on the synagogue website. If it is created on a standard word processing program on a computer, it can easily be reformatted to fit on an existing page or it can be posted to its own page in just about the same format as it was for printed distribution. It is a good idea to have a teaser for important items on the front page which click through to the full description of the program or event on a different page. Since people looking for a synagogue will be viewing your website, having the announcements on the website is a good way for strangers to get to know your organization and for regulars to easily find details for programs they’d like to attend.

Chapter Four: Growing a Synagogue Part Two:- Programming for the Congregation

2011-03-03T15:28:00.000-06:00

Let me try to be specific about the kinds of programs that compliment the welcoming atmosphere that we need to first establish. Once a synagogue has the reputation for welcoming new faces, the next big issue is “what does the synagogue have to offer?” In some ways Welcoming and Programming need to go hand in hand. As I stated before, many Jews today want to get involved first and then will become part of the community. So how do we get them involved?

First of all, we must remember that each person who walks through our door has individual needs and interests. We live in an age where we encourage everyone to find their own way in life. This means that we need to offer an array of programs, to cast our net wide, so that we can involve a diverse group of people in a wide range of programs. A synagogue may eventually discover that a staff person is needed to oversee this extensive program. A Program Director or a Lifelong Learning Director could do what a Rabbi alone may not be able to do. A pulpit rabbi, no matter how good his or her intentions may be, will be drawn away from planning and organizing when pastoral duties interrupt. Having someone to do the coordination and publicity could make a big difference in the success of these programs. Volunteers can go a long way in a program that is just getting started, but as the programming grows, and as the congregation grows, a new staff position may be required.

Programming is not only about social activities; it is about learning and social/political action. These are the two main areas that synagogues and other religious institutions can provide that are still important and meaningful to those who are tired of empty and self centered living. While there are many non-profit organizations that try to offer such programming, synagogues (and churches too) are in a unique position to do a great deal of good in a very wide segment of the larger community outside their doors. Synagogues can partner with other non-profit organizations to bring the volunteer culture of the congregation to the causes espoused by the non-profits. We don't need to always reinvent the wheel by starting our own programs. We can work with other organizations to make the biggest impact in the wider community.

Examples of Social/Political Action Programming

Having stated the need for Social/Political Action, we must remember to be sensitive to the needs of the different groups in our congregation. Young Jewish adults may be able to do different activities than those who are middle aged or seniors. For example, middle aged adults may be able to help at a homeless shelter by checking in the residents for the night and making sure that they have what they need; younger volunteers may be better suited to stay on duty over the entire night. For this reason some congregations that have homeless shelters have two shifts, one in the early evening for a couple of hours to get everyone settled, and a second shift that stays overnight, for six to eight hours, to make sure that everything goes smoothly all night. A middle aged adult may be happy to do carpentry work at a Habitat for Humanity build, but someone older perhaps should be kept off the ladders. Every one of every age has a role to play and we need to be sensitive as to what those roles may be by providing options for those who wish to serve.

Some of the best volunteers at a Senior Center are other seniors. They often have the time and patience to assist every resident. Younger volunteers, or those who do not have the patience to sit and talk with the clients of the Center, could take part in special programming. I have seen volunteers who speak Yiddish have a profound effect on elderly Jews who feel like the world has changed so much that they no longer have a place in that world. Just speaking Yiddish can make a world of difference to those who are very elderly. Over time, volunteers should be provided the means to increase their skills and find new ways to help. As volunteers become more skilled, we should make sure that there are many ways for them to use their experience to provide greater service to the cause.

Here again it is important that we realize that “one size does not fit all.” Individuals will have different ideas as to how to bring meaning into their lives. It may not even be an age difference, but their approach to social action may reflect incidents from their childhood. I once wanted to open a Jewish Alcoholics Anonymous group at my synagogue. The President refused to allow “those kinds of people” to come onto the synagogue campus. I am sure that somewhere in his past, an encounter with a drunk set his mind against “those kind of people.” There is no one social action or political action program that will make everyone happy.

In a church setting, these kinds of programs are called “ministries”. Every part of the church is organized around volunteers who are part of a “ministry”. In Hebrew, the word is “Vaad” or the plural, “Vaadot” which loosely translates as “societies” or “committees”. It seems to me that this is an excellent way to organize a Social/Political Action program in a congregation. Invite groups to come together around a particular service program and if they can reach a critical mass of people, from 8-12 individuals or so, then they can begin to work together on behalf of their cause. There are two types of programs that they will need to focus on: the ongoing program that speaks to the needs of the community and the congregational program that teaches the other members of the congregation what the work of this “vaad” is all about and how they can help. Sometimes help may be a fundraiser for the project, but there are lots of other important ways a congregation as a whole can help the vaad. For example, if they are knitting wool caps for Israeli soldiers, then anyone can sign on to make hats that the committee can send on to Israel. If there is a need for contact with political figures, there can be a congregation wide letter writing program, or maybe a forum featuring information on the issue and inviting political figures to join the event. It could alternatively mean setting up a “lobbying” day at the state capital or in Washington DC to bring home to the state and federal leadership the importance of this cause to your congregation. A vaad that is working with a homeless shelter could ask members of the congregation to donate furniture and clothing to help the homeless set up new lives. Some congregations sponsor “suit and dress” drives to collect clothing for the homeless to wear for job interviews. A local orphanage, with teens getting ready to graduate high school, were looking for donors of cars for these students who were leaving foster care and going on to college as adults, taking on responsibility for their own lives.

Examples of Learning Programs

Almost every congregation has an Adult Studies Program. The issue is not having the program; it is having a GOOD program. All too often, adult studies classes are simplistic lectures which are perpetually geared for beginners; the level of learning is far below the level of most adults today. Students are not inspired to look deeper into the subjects and to grapple with traditional study texts. Innovative programs for adults provide opportunities for learners to share their knowledge with others and encourage them to find their own way in these important religious texts. What makes Jewish learning exciting is the discovery of meaning in ancient texts. This does not happen when someone is lecturing on what the meaning of the text is for that teacher. Real learning comes when students are permitted to find their own meaning in the sources. There are two basic kinds of programs that promote this kind of learning and every synagogue should think about having opportunities for both.

The first type of class is, as we stated earlier, Hevruta Learning of serious texts. This kind of learning is text based. It encourages learners to read and grapple with a text, but not alone. It can be used to study Bible, Talmud, Liturgy or any other form of sacred text. A teacher should prepare a section of text, in Hebrew or in Hebrew and English, depending on the students’ abilities, (Hebrew is the language of Jewish learning and at some point the students should want to expand their Hebrew proficiency) with a list of open ended questions. The students then should have some time to look at the text and contemplate the questions. This is done in small groups of two or three students (a Hevruta – from the word Haver, meaning “friends” or “colleagues”) around a table. The group can be as large as four or five but remember that the more students in each group, the longer the time they will need to prepare the material since each person needs some time to share his or her understanding of the text with the rest of the group. Each person in the Hevruta has his or her own background and life experience to bring to the discussion.

At the end of this “Hevruta time”, the groups then gather where the teacher gives a “shiur” a “lesson” that offers the groups a chance to explain how they understand the text and how they came to answer the questions. There should be time allotted so that each group can share their ideas and answers, and then the teacher can weave all the answers together, explaining why some ideas are not as good as others based on the limits of the text and how rabbis and other commentators understand what the text is about. This will deepen the understanding of the text for the students. Hevruta study is a way to learn from the experiences of others and at the same time have the guidance of an experienced teacher.

The other style of learning is an independent study group. Here, a diverse group of 8-12 people decide on a text to study and then start at the beginning and read through it with whatever commentary and study aids they find that help them understand the text. Here too, the life experiences of the members of the group are brought to the table to understand the meaning of the text. The Genesis Project, made famous on a PBS special years ago, is a good example of this kind of learning (The Bill Moyers Genesis Project: www.pbs.org/wnet/genesis). A diverse group of learners gathers each week in someone's conference room and study together a text of their choosing. Each person in the group can lead a session and the rest of the group can comment on what has been presented. The group does not need a teacher unless there is something in the text that stymies the entire group and a teacher or some reference work can be consulted for the next session.

Both of these methods of learning rely on the students to set the tone and pace of the discussion. Sometimes a teacher can point out a really important concept that will help the students later in their learning or the teacher can help the students drill down into the text to find deeper meaning than they may find on the surface. For example, Bibliodrama, a way of personally encountering the stories of the Bible is an extension of the study group. Here a teacher can guide the discussion to bring out the ways that the stories of the Bible are also the stories of our own lives. (See the book, “Our Fathers' Wells” by Peter Pitzele, Harper Collins Press 1995, as an example). The organization “Storahtelling” in New York (www.storahtelling.org ) can provide a good kickoff for this kind of a group or a way to renew a group that is struggling.

Adult learners should be encouraged to examine and write out their Jewish journey, the journey that has brought them to study these texts. Sometimes these journeys can be an inspiration to others who are on a similar path. To know that the same need for meaning and the same search for faith that drives one adult are the same motivations that drives others is a powerful way of helping adults to connect with their learning. This is not the esoteric learning of college nor the practical learning needed to improve skill sets on the job. Adult Learning at the synagogue should be the kind of life changing learning that helps us understand better who we are and where we want our lives to go. It is unique to religious learning and we need to make better use of it for the benefit of those who are searching.

I like to think of this kind of adult learning as participating in the longest running classroom discussion in the history of the world. Jews have been studying these texts together for thousands of years. It is an honor to be able to study these texts together and the enterprise is filled with meaning for the students

Chapter Four: Growing a Synagogue Part One: Welcoming - Programming

2011-02-24T15:04:00.001-06:00

Perhaps, in the 1950's, we could say that almost all Jews were married, with children, and would be able to find all that they needed to do in the synagogue. I don't know if this was completely true then, but it certainly is not true today. One of the reasons that synagogue membership is falling off is because synagogues are not welcoming to every Jew anymore. Jews are a diverse people; perhaps we are more diverse today than in any other time in modern Jewish history.

Most synagogues today, however, are still looking for young families with small children. We live in a time where the number of families with children is decreasing. The number of children each family has is decreasing. We can no longer build our synagogue programming around a demographic that is no longer the central pillar of the Jewish community. There are many other groups we need to attract; some groups have been ignored so long we no longer even think about them. Some groups are so new we are only beginning to understand their needs and desires. Synagogues need to expand programming horizons to include those who may not fit the old stereotype profile of the two parent family that was more common half a century ago. .

In my mind, the most obvious group forgotten by synagogues is young singles. As I mentioned earlier, young people are marrying later, sometimes 15-20 years later than young people did 25 years ago. If we want to attract single Jews, then we have to have programming that will interest singles. Does every event have a “family price” but not a price for singles? It is hard for singles to attend events where there will only be couples. Not only is it uncomfortable to be one of only a few who are present who do not have a partner, but often the couples attending are not happy having the singles around either and they tend to shun singles when singles are present. Even in the most welcoming congregation, singles love to meet other singles. Having special programs for singles should also be a part of a synagogue's planning.

It would be a wise idea not to just have one program for all singles. Singles need to be organized by age. Young singles do not mix well with older singles. Single parents likely have different needs than the never married. Seniors who are single may be looking for someone younger, but that does not mean that someone younger is looking to socialize with someone over 70. As singles get older, they have a tendency to “fudge” their age a bit. If you are trying to separate the singles programs by age, it may be necessary to adjust the ages to allow for those who may “inaccurately” report their age.

It is important to understand that programming for singles should not be all socials and “mixers”. In fact, these are the hardest programs to create since the young single community is very fluid and it is very possible that the program will not attract the same people twice as they pair off and move on to other concerns. Like all other demographic groups, singles have available to them a wide range of social activities that the secular community provides; there are downtown hot spots, internet games and social networks that can keep singles busy all day and all night. Singles, on the other hand, have similar needs as couples do, to create meaning and direction in their lives. It is a far more successful plan for a synagogue to create social action projects and political action projects that are open to all members of the community and invite singles to be a part of that program.

Young singles, however, are not the only neglected demographic. I have a friend who became the president of his congregation. Sometime after he left that position, he became divorced. For the entire time he was divorced, his congregation had little contact with him. It was as if he had disappeared. Eventually he remarried and soon after that, he was asked to become a part of the synagogue board again. This is not how a congregation makes singles feel welcome.

We see this kind of thinking all across the Jewish community. If we want a service to be family friendly, but don't start babysitting until an hour into the service, then we have effectively said to that family “you are not welcome in our service until an hour after it starts”. If we have a population we want to reach that doesn't have English as their primary language, then why not have a reading or two, or create a siddur with instructions in their primary language (Spanish, Russian, etc.) or have an auxiliary service that is conducted entirely in that language? What about Jews with disabilities? Is the building and the sanctuary handicapped accessible? How about hearing assistance for those who are partially deaf, or large print Siddurim for those who are visually impaired, or having one service a month professionally signed for the deaf?

Is there a Jewish gay and lesbian population in the area? Think about how to make these Jews feel welcome. In a congregation where couples receive Torah honors, is a gay couple given an honor? Are gay families offered the “family” dues? A congregation should announce gay commitment ceremonies (where both partners are Jewish) in the synagogue bulletin. What about programming for families who have intermarried? Are the non-ritual programs made so that the non-Jewish partner feels welcome? Often a congregation is so set on what parts of the service a non-Jew must be excluded from, that we forget to consider the parts of the service where a non-Jew can be included. How are non-Jews welcomed into services? What role in the service can they participate in when there are family celebrations? Many congregations struggle to find ways to be inclusive of intermarried families but we still have a long way to go. Jews who convert to Judaism are not “converts” but “Jews.” We need to remember, however, that these Jews by Choice may not have the same Jewish family memories that other Jews may have. We have to be sensitive in our programming to be as inclusive as we can. No Jew should be left behind.

Chapter Four - Growing A Synagogue Part One - Welcoming - A Welcoming Building

2011-02-16T20:45:00.000-06:00

A Welcoming Building – A Self Test

Try this experiment. Go to the front of your building, the part of the building that can be seen from the road, the place where your driveway connects with the street, and look at your facility as if you are seeing it for the first time. Take a moment and put yourself in the shoes of a first time visitor. While you are standing there, ask yourself these questions:

Can you see the signs/building when driving on the street or only after you enter the driveway? Just because “everyone” knows that you are supposed to enter the parking lot from the “back”, do visitors have to drive past the building and turn around because they can only see the turn when it is too late?
Once you are in the driveway, is it clear where a visitor is supposed to park? Do they have any way of knowing where the closer parking is or will they always park in the wrong lot? Remember, the door used during the week may be different from the door used on Shabbat. The door used by the school may be different from the one that leads to the offices. Is it clear where all these entrances are in relation to the parking lot?
Can a visitor find the main entrance easily? If there are many doors, are there signs telling someone while they are still in the car, where they need to park and where they will enter? I belonged to a congregation where years ago they stopped using the “old” entrance to the building and started using a different entrance on a different side of the building. As I would walk up to the building every Shabbat, I always found someone at the “old” entrance trying to get in the locked doors. There was no sign that the entrance had been moved to the other side of the building. Often we found that visitors who decided to walk around the building looking for the entrance, would circle the building to the right and walk around the entire campus before finding the proper doors that would have been found easier if they had gone to the left. There is nothing more frustrating than not being able to find your way inside the building and finding every door locked. I once visited a church and there were signs everywhere; the problem was that I didn't know the lingo. Was I looking for the “vestry”? What was the “nave” or the “chancel” ? The signs were of no help; these signs needed to be written in a way that that any visitor, especially one who does not know church lingo, can understand.
After visitors find the proper entrance, can they find their way around inside? Are there signs that point to the main office, the Rabbi's office, the Cantor's office, the Education office? Is there a sign pointing out the sanctuary, or the chapel where daily services are held. (Does the chapel have its own outside entrance? How would a visitor to daily minyan, who arrives when the offices are still closed, find their way to minyan?) Can a visitor find the Gift Shop and the Rest Rooms? Remember if these rooms are “named” would a visitor be able to find them if they don't know the “name”? (Does the sign say: “Levine Hall” or does it say, “Levine Social Hall”? To a visitor the second name gives more information than the first name.)
Do the people who work in your office have name tags that identify them by name? Besides the security issue, how will someone who is lost know who to ask for help and directions? Often the only person who has a name on his or her shirt is the janitor.
Finally, who will be the first person a visitor will meet when entering the building? Who is the receptionist? Who is the greeter/usher? Does that person have a welcoming personality or are they too busy to notice someone in the lobby? I was once visiting a hospital that I had never been in before. I don't think that I walked more than ten steps in any direction without someone on the staff offering to help me find what I was looking for. Does that happen in your congregation on a weekday? On Shabbat?

In addition to the physical entrances to your building, there are also other “entrances”. What is the experience of someone calling on the phone? Do they get a live human being or do they go directly to voice mail? How many numbers do they have to push to hear a live human voice? What about the website; is it warm and friendly? Synagogues have a tendency to put pictures of their building on their home page. A synagogue is NOT a building, it is a community. Leave the building to a different page; the home page should have lots of smiling people doing fun activities.

When a person does become a member, what then? Do they get a call or letter from the Rabbi? The President? From someone asking them to join a committee or a project? If you don't invite someone to participate, then don't be surprised if they are not so quick to volunteer. Is the only thing they get for their membership a bill?

Fifty years ago, a family would first join a synagogue and then look around to decide in which of the activities to participate. Today, it is exactly the opposite. With so many options in life, so many distractions and so many ways to spend our time, a Jew first has to see what he or she might want to do at a synagogue and then decide if they want to join. This is why having many “entrances” to synagogue life is so important. What does your synagogue offer those who are looking for a place to express their Judaism? Do you have opportunities for involvement for Singles? For divorced parents? For men and women who work and commute long days? What does your synagogue do to “engage” newcomers in synagogue activities? Do you really want the first contact with someone new to be about “finances” or membership?

The goal is to create, from the time a person arrives in the synagogue parking lot, until they leave the kiddush/oneg Shabbat/collation after the service, the feeling that the stranger is welcome here. It should be easy to maneuver around the building. There should be plenty of people who are there to offer assistance and information. People sitting near the visitor should take a moment, when appropriate, to introduce themselves and perhaps make some introductions to others who may be sitting nearby. Visitors should be invited to have some small honor in the service and after the service, they should be able to meet other members, who will show them around, introduce them to the clergy and show them where there is information about other synagogue events. Making someone feel welcome is all about how you reach out and make them feel as if they are among friends.

The hard part of welcoming people in our congregation, is that there may be many strangers who attend on Shabbat who are guests of somebody who is celebrating a life cycle event at the synagogue and who may have little or no interest in becoming a member. There could be dozens of guests for an anniversary or a special birthday. There could be hundreds of guests invited to a Bar or Bat Mitzvah. How do you know if the stranger who arrives is a potential member or just the guest of the family who is celebrating? The answer is: It doesn't matter. When we cultivate a culture of welcoming, even to those who are there for reasons other than potential membership, they will remember how welcome they were made to feel and will carry that with them for a long time. If someone should ask them what to do when visiting your city, they will recommend the place where they were made to feel so welcome.

While the clergy and the ushers should be trained in how to make people feel welcome, it is important to foster a culture of welcoming in every member. When your members see a stranger, they should be able to step up and help that person feel welcome, and make sure that they did not slip past the usher and miss out on the information they were supposed to receive when they arrived. No system is perfect, but the goal is to make welcoming strangers the responsibility of every member every day.

Chapter Four: Growing A Synagogue: Part One – Welcoming- An Overview

2011-02-06T14:49:00.003-06:00

Dr. Ron Wolfson, professor of Education at the American Jewish University and a major thinker at Synagogue 3000 has written a book about how synagogues can and should be more welcoming. [The Spirituality of Welcoming; Jewish Lights Press] I believe that every Rabbi, Synagogue Administrator and Membership Vice President should have this book and read it often. Dr. Wolfson does not break any new ground, but his method of visiting any place that has a successful membership culture and seeing what they are doing and asking why we can't do it, cannot be overlooked as we try to attract those who rarely if ever cross our doorsteps. Much of what I will have to say is affirmed and informed by his research.

A Welcoming Culture – Changing the Way Members Think

It is not an accident that Walmart, the large retailer has, as its signature position, the greeter who stands at the door of the store and has the duty to say to every customer “Welcome to Walmart”. The reason that this person is there is because people come back to the store that they remember as being welcoming and friendly. Churches and Synagogues are no different. Those who walk in the door will remember forever their first experience, for good or for bad.

You don't have to take my word for it. Just ask any of the involved members of your congregation why they chose your synagogue to join (assuming that yours is not the only synagogue in the area). Virtually every time, they will say that when they arrived, somebody met them, greeted them and made them feel welcome. I used to tell my congregation that if somebody came to our service, sat in a seat, had a cup of coffee and a piece of cake after the service and left the building and nobody said “hello” to them, greeted them or asked their name, they would never be back and we didn't deserve to have them join. I usually end services by asking those who are new to take a few moments to join us at the Kiddush after the service so we will get the chance to greet them. There is no reason that someone new in the service should have to be a stranger twice. Just asking a few questions to begin a conversation with a visitor can make a huge difference. Since my members come from all over the United States, when I meet someone new, I always ask where they are from, and then attempt to connect them with the “landsmen” from that town. It always leads to a bit of “Jewish Geography” and often is the beginning of real friendships.

I am not in favor of asking visitors to wear something to identify themselves. It is better, I believe, to have members identify themselves. One suggestion is to give your members a lapel pin so strangers will know who they can ask for more information. Welcoming guests should be made a part of our synagogue culture. ( I heard of a congregation in Ohio that had name badges made for every member of the synagogue to wear while they were at services, so that visitors would have an easier time getting to know the members' names.) There should be greeters at the front door of the synagogue just to say Shalom to all those entering. At the door of the sanctuary, there needs to be ushers who will help visitors find a tallit, whatever Siddurim/Humashim they will need and assist them to find seats.

It is “the Kiss of Death” for a congregation when members say to a visitor “you're sitting in my seat”, or when, at the kiddush, someone says, “that is our 'reserved' table”. As Clergy and synagogue leadership we need to teach our members to be welcoming and friendly. (I only allowed one exception. There was in one congregation a 100 year old man who sat in the same seat for over 30 years and regularly chased away anyone who dared to sit there. The kind people who sat around him often spoke to visitors, asking the visitor to join them in a different seat, that, after all, you have to be a bit more patient when someone is over 100!). Members need to know that strangers should be invited to join them, not shoo them away, so they can learn more about the service. Saying “Come sit with me” is much better than, “You can't sit here”. I don't want to spend more time on this but it is the number one complaint that visitors have when they come to a shul for the first time. Hasidic literature is filled with stories of how the prophet of miracles, Elijah, was turned away by uncaring and unkind Jews. Dr. Wolfson tells how he arrived early to services and was asked to move out of a seat when he was there as the Scholar in Residence; there were no more than a dozen people in a sanctuary that seated 700! We need to treat our visitors as honored guests if we hope to have them become a part of our community.

Chapter 3 Part Three: Political and Social Action

2011-01-30T11:22:00.001-06:00

Responding To Demographic Changes: Part Three - Political and Social Action

I recently heard a political pundit explain a “moral compass” as having the values so that when one is confused by all the noise and commotion in the world, and is feeling dizzy and lost, it will always help a person find the right direction. If this is not the work that synagogues need to be doing, then I don't know what else is. Our congregations have social programs, dances, shows, dinners, breakfasts, card parties, poker nights, casino trips, dessert receptions, meetings, and a host of other gatherings that keep us busy but have little or no long term effect on the world around us. Conservative congregations have typically not been actively involved with issues relating to Social Action or Political Action. Often these are seen as the work for Federation or some other Jewish organization. I think that one of the reasons that the Reform movement has not declined as quickly as the Conservative movement is because it has a long history of Social Action programming.

Many congregations point to Mitzvah Day programs, where many people gather together on one day and work on a wide variety of social action projects. They also point to annual food drives, or other collections done in response to a call for action. These are fine, as far as they go. But what a modern synagogue needs is an active and ongoing connection to social action or political action. People don't want to just learn about Judaism, nor just to pray that things should be different. We want to get our hands “dirty” doing the work that will make a difference.

Doing it Right

I know congregations that regularly go out on “builds” for Habitat for Humanity. I know congregations that have a soup kitchen to feed the hungry or a food pantry that distributes food to the poor. I know of congregations that have a homeless shelter in their basement, a vegetable market in the parking lot for locally grown food and one congregation that actually sends people to work on an organic farm to help the farmer in exchange for a share of the crops when they ripen. There are congregations that organize job fairs for those out of work, mentor at risk children in the community, sent workers multiple times to New Orleans after hurricane Katrina and to Haiti after the earthquake to help rebuild, and who send teachers out to work with the children of migrant workers.

There are congregations who send members to their state capitals and to Washington DC to lobby representatives about issues that are important to the Jewish community or to the wider community of religious people. There are congregations with active chapters of AIPAC and J Street that advocate for Israel. Some work with other faiths to address, from a religious point of view, issues relating to health care, immigration, civil rights, and issues of religious freedom. While there are certainly issues on which different faiths disagree, there are more issues where there is great agreement and working together can make a very big difference. In Hollywood, Florida, when all the other surrounding cities were struggling to find a place for a homeless shelter, the Interfaith Council, working together, had a shelter built, furnished and occupied by a full compliment of residents in need. It was the religious organizations that gave the political cover to get the job done.

Many years ago, I had the privilege of hearing from a young man, about thirty years old, who was active in a Jewish philanthropic agency. He recounted that when he graduated college, he took a job at a big corporation, with a corner office, and went to work on his first day. He sat in the office, looked at the walls and the window and thought, “is this where I will sit for the next thirty years of my life? Is this all that I have to look forward to?” He didn't particularly like the answers to these questions, and decided he needed something more. Needless to say, he got involved in charity work to give his life meaning and depth. I think that just about everyone at every age has this feeling, though certainly there are plenty of people who are content with living lives of self interest and self indulgence. At a very young age, my children quickly understood the good feelings that come when one has made a difference in the life of someone else. To see the faces of gratitude when we take the time to care is its own reward. To know that life in this country or some other country is better because we got involved is a wonderful feeling. This needs to be one of the main foci of synagogue life.

There are some congregations who in fact do require every member to be involved in some social action project. They offer a wide range of projects in need of helping hands and hearts and expect everyone to pitch in. In many cases, it was involvement in the social action programs that led a family to join the synagogue and to participate in other programs with their new friends.

Getting Started

Like prayer, a Hesed [kindness] program, does not have to be“one size fits all”. Smaller committees could focus on the day to day planning and the congregation can get involved as needed. For example, a Habitat committee could plan for helping with a build and make the arrangements with the local organization. The rest of the members only need to show up on the appointed day. An Israel Affairs committee could report information about Israel to the congregation on a web page or by email and then call upon the congregation to respond with appropriate letters, emails and visits to political representatives to lobby in support of Israel. It could also coordinate lectures and educational programs on Israel for the synagogue and for the larger community. An ongoing food drive will bring in food from all the members of the synagogue but the committee would be responsible for bringing it to the food pantry or delivering it to needy families in the larger community. The entire community is thus involved in many different projects, but each member can focus attention on the program that gives him or her the most satisfaction.

When a person is engaged in this kind of community service, it can be an important entry point into the religious world. If synagogues become the place where people go to find meaning and fulfillment, then they will stay at the synagogue for learning and for services as well. There is evidence that involvement in social action projects will also bring greater donations to the synagogue as participants feel that the entire congregation is working on worthwhile and meaningful programs.

One of the ways that synagogue life has changed is that fifty years ago, a person joined a synagogue and then tried to find something with which to get involved. Today, before a person will join a synagogue, he or she will have to see that there are worthwhile things happening there before they make the commitment to join. Social and political action can be the portals to a lifetime of synagogue membership. It provides the entree for Singles in the congregation to get involved; a place to meet like minded singles who could potentially be future partners. It is important to remember that meeting future partners is not the only idea that drives the lives of singles. Many programs for singles fall apart after a short time as singles meet and no longer need a “meet and mix” program. Social action and political action are activities that singles can participate in regardless of their relationship status. Single parents can participate as a way to be personally involved in meaningful community service or they could use these programs for important and precious family activity. Socially, singles and couples often do not mix, but in social and political action committees, the good work may override the differences that usually keep them apart.

There may be many outside social and political action groups that rival the synagogue already involved in the community and we should partner with them where we can. We must remember, however, that the combination of community service, faith and Mitzvot found in synagogues can create strong connections between participants, congregations and God. It is this deeper meaning that makes social/political action an important part of what the modern synagogue is all about.

Responding To Demographic Changes: Summary

Synagogues based on these three core components, Learning, Prayer and Social/Political Action or as we say in Hebrew, Torah, Avoda and Gemilut Hasadim, are in a prime position to attract Jews of different ages, genders, marital status and backgrounds. All of these activities together under one roof, groups for serious learning, meaningful praying and social /political action involvement, provide many entryways into synagogue life and toward a future of synagogue leadership. This is the bedrock of what a modern synagogue must be to grow and thrive in today’s environment. The irony is that this is exactly what synagogues have been for centuries that have made them one of the most enduring organizations in Judaism. Implied here, I guess, is a criticism of the last fifty years of congregational life. In some ways, the idea of the synagogue got lost as the leadership planned social programs, education for children and services that were designed for spectators, not those wishing to pray. I don't think that American synagogues started out on the wrong path, but over time, the organization strayed from its roots and the damage has been significant. We need to get back on track and we will see that Jews will again recognize the importance of synagogues in their lives. Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman, in his book, “Rethinking Synagogues: A New Vocabulary for Congregational Life”(Jewish Lights Press) talks about synagogues as “market communities”. A market community is defined as “communities that exist because they promise concrete benefits, not because they are so central to people’s lives that their members cannot imagine belonging anywhere else.” Rabbi Hoffman talks about creating “Sacred Communities: Communities whose worth is measured in sacred acts and relationships, that connect us to one another and to God.” Clearly a synagogue based on Torah, Avoda and Gemilut Hasadim would be creating its community based on sacred acts, rather than “spectator” activities.

Can it really be that easy? If we wish to recreate the Synagogue, is all that we need to do - create adult learning, better services and social/political action programs? That's it? The short answer is: “Yes, that's all it takes.” But while the answer is short, taking action on the changes will challenge everything that already exists. I don't know why we should be surprised that the answer we seek can be found in our ancient tradition. Our Sages and teachers over and over surprise us in how they could see beyond their own time and create a timeless religion called Judaism. The difference is always in how we respond to this tri-headed call. We need to see new ways to apply it for the modern world.

Take learning. Every American congregation today has a program of Adult Studies. This has been going on for decades, and the program has grown smaller every year. We give away the classes for free and the rooms are still empty. We make a mistake when we gear our adult studies programs for beginners only and never offer advanced courses that reflect the higher education attained by many modern Jews. The reality is that young Jews today have advanced college degrees and massive amounts of basic information are available to them on the internet. Many current adult studies classes never get beyond the “introduction” level. Yet there is a great need, as I have noted above, for serious adult learning. This means hiring teachers, creating curriculum and setting aside a proper place to learn. It means diverting some of the resources set aside for the education of children and using those resources for Adult Education. I do not fool myself into thinking that such a change will be easy nor popular. I only maintain that it is necessary.

Take Avoda, worship. If anyone would like to cut right to the heart of a Rabbi's or Cantor's ego, try talking to them about changing the essence of the service. Try telling a man (so far these are still mostly men) who is 90 years old, that the way he has prayed his whole life now has to change. Cantor Linda Shivers once told me that a good cantor can't rest on what he or she knows, that a cantor needs to be constantly improving his or her voice and repertoire. It applies to rabbis as well. Rabbis who only glean the news looking for topics to speak about but never spend any time learning what Jews are looking for in their worship, may be successful in the short run, but will falter as times change. I am not going to sit here and declare that rabbis and cantors have gotten “fat and lazy.” Actually clergy work extraordinarily hard each and every day. I know that, in spite of my constant renewal of my rabbinate, I still missed this problem until I had a sabbatical where I met younger colleagues and had the time to really listen to their take on what was happening in the world.

Still, it will never be easy to start an alternative service if the Rabbi expects everyone to be present for his or her sermon. It will never be easy if the Cantor expects everyone to be in the main sanctuary for the Musaf service. As long as we have officers and board members who think that everyone should like the same service or else they are “tearing apart the community” alternative minyanim will be created not in our current buildings, but in the basements of churches and in the living rooms of young Jews. We need to embrace this movement of alternative minyanim, make room for them in our mostly empty buildings. Those who like the original service, will stay in the main sanctuary. Those who want change will gladly go to the alternatives. There will be times when people will move from one to the other as they try them out, but since they are all in the same building, it is easy to find the form of worship that makes the most difference in the member's life. What is wrong with that?

Rabbi Sharon Braus, of Los Angeles, when she asked about a social action program at a synagogue, was informed that “Social Action is what they do at the synagogue down the street. Here we do prayer.” It is my personal opinion that the reason Conservative Judaism has fallen so far so fast over the last fifty years is because we have had little or no social action. I believe that the reason Reform Judaism has not taken as big a hit as Conservative Judaism is because it has had a very extensive Social Action program. I don't know of any survey that shows this but it is still what I deeply believe.

When I talk about Torah, Avoda and Gemilut Hasadim, I am looking for new ways to apply these in our congregations and in our synagogue buildings. The mission is as ancient as our faith. The application needs to be as new as the latest smart phone. These are the basic building blocks of Synagogue renewal. It is in these areas that we must address our time and energy to turn our congregations around.

These basic components of Torah, Avoda and Gemilut Hasadim are the baseline activities that will bring in members and make them active participants in the community, But our world has changed over the last fifty year and there are other approaches to the way synagogues are run that must change if we are to be successful for both our long and short term goals. When it comes to changing synagogues, sometimes we lapse into poor habits and lazy thinking and we undermine our best ideas and programs. Synagogues did not get into the trouble we are in overnight. It has been years, decades, of neglect that has gotten us where we are today. It will take time to climb out of this hole. We need to think in terms of three to five years to really see the changes I propose to make a difference in the synagogue world. It could be a decade until we wake up one day and see that we have created something strong and meaningful in people's lives. I also need to remind those who espouse change that the changes I propose does NOT mean that we are going back to the way things used to be in the “good old days” - the heydays of our congregations from fifty years ago. What worked then will NOT work now. We really don't want to set the clock back fifty years, that would be a fiasco. We need to create a new standard of success and then focus all our energy to create it. In summation Torah, Avoda and Gemilut Hasadim may be the keys to success but we still will need to do more than just promote this program.. They certainly need to be the focus of our energies but we must remember that the playing field has changed and we need to address the new reality of life. Once we have addressed the main issues, there are still a number of “second tier” challenges. These are not the contents of our change, but the “bottle”, the “containers”, in which we need to hold them. We need to do new things in new ways if we wish to truly grow our synagogues.

Chapter 3 Part Two: Worship

2011-01-16T13:19:00.001-06:00

Responding To Demographic Changes: Part Two - Worshiping God

As a Rabbi, I have gotten used to hearing from Jews over the years that services are too long, too boring and not very spiritual. At least that is the excuse given to me as to why more people don't attend services. I have now been a part of several congregations where services are packed with people. The surprise is that it is the same service, of roughly the same length but they are hardly boring and they are very spiritual. Each congregation says the same words, in fact, the popular services often don't skip a word of the service. It is enough to “cross a Rabbi's eyes”.

Joel Lurie Grishaver, in an article he wrote many years ago, called “Time Wars”, noted that when people are interested in what is going on, they don't look at the clock. When they are unengaged and bored, then time slows to a crawl and they can't wait to get out and do something different. The issue with boring services is about engagement, not the contours of the service.

Gabriel Blau, in his essay Negotiating Orgasm: Spirituality and the Sexual Experience published in the book, “Jewish Choices, Jewish Voices: Sex and Intimacy” (Edited by Elliot Dorff and Danya Ruttenberg, JPS, 2010: page 122) writes: “At the center of every great prayer experience that I have ever had, there has been a profound yearning, a desire that is strong and alluring, yet mysterious and elusive. The greatest of our tradition’s liturgy and music offer us a sense of awe, empowerment, and release. These are the same qualities present in our sexual desires and experiences. Like prayer, they can be ecstatic, yet like prayer they can, at times also be off-putting and demeaning. Both spiritual practice, in all its forms (some of which are sexual) and sex offer opportunities for unique connections to others and to ourselves. They require faith and trust, and they have a presence in our lives that can seem limited to isolated occasions, yet are part of almost everything we see and feel.”

If sex is a complicated part of our lives, how much more so will prayer be complicated. If both prayer and sex attempt to reach that most intimate part of our souls, then how can it ever be possible to have a service that will meet the needs of all the individuals who make up a congregation? Sometimes it is impossible to have a normal conversation about sex, and sometimes it is impossible to have a normal conversation about tephilot, the structure of Jewish prayer. Sex and prayer may be two different discussions, but they seem to meet in the same place in our spiritual soul.

I think that everyone, Rabbis, Cantors and worshipers all agree that something needs to be done to fix the service. Change is hard, and I believe this is because we are all speaking a different language. Clergy want to remain true to the traditional format of the service, and worshipers are demanding shorter, less “boring” services with more English. Both sides go away from this discussion angry. Each side feels that the other is not listening to their concerns. When I hear these arguments and then step back and see what happens when we let the lay leadership compose their own service, more often than not, they put together something that is pretty traditional. The English readings that substitute for prayer, however, notoriously go out of style after just a few weeks. Writing prayers is a pretty complicated task. Our Siddur is filled with prayers written over thousands of years. The really meaningful prayers have survived a test of time. So what is the key to making our worship services more spiritual, more meaningful, more beautiful, more interesting, more engaging, more uplifting; or in short, what will make services better?

There are many who have written about what is wrong with our services. Rabbi Eli Kaunfer, Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Rabbi Mike Comins, Rabbi Naomi Levy, Rabbi David Wolpe, Rabbi Neil Gillman and a host of others. Some have written extensively about taking services out of the sanctuary, into nature and into the real world. There are those who speak about meditation, chanting and mantras. These are all paths to spirituality and they have a rightful place in the prayer toolbox. I will let you read these guides to non-traditional prayer from those who are more involved in them than I. I have bonded with the service in the synagogue and that is where I find my spirituality. My topic here is the synagogue and so I will limit my observations to the synagogue setting. That is not to say that it is the best setting for everyone; it is only the particular aspect of prayer that I want to comment on at this time.

The Siddur

Ever since the dawn of time, parents have been saying to their children during the prayer service, “Stop fidgeting, pay attention... What page are we on?” Rabbis have seen it as their religious duty to make sure that every member of the congregation is on the same page of the prayerbook (siddur). I was once, a long time ago, visiting another congregation and found that I had fallen behind and had to catch up. I stood up, in the back of the room to move quickly through my prayers and I noticed that the Rabbi was obviously unhappy that I was not with the rest of the congregation at that moment.

I would like to think that we are past this phase. I would like to think that all Jews understand that they don't have to all be on the same page. All Jews do not have to stand and sit in harmony and if the words of one prayer or another moves us in that moment, then we can linger there, contemplate the meaning of that moment and catch up (or not) later. I know some Jews who bring other books to read to enhance their prayer experience. Some of the more modern prayer books have commentary on every page to help not only explain but to help the pray-er have a deeper understanding of what the words mean and to reveal the deeper meaning of the poetry and metaphor of the prayer.

The siddur is not a cook book. The prayers are not recipes that one can follow to bake a spiritual cake. Prayer is an art form and the prayer book is a book of poetry and linguistic art that guides us in our spiritual search; but the siddur cannot do all the work for us. Rabbi Mark Greenspan, in one of his High Holy Day sermons recalled some advice from his wife; “services are not spiritual, people are spiritual.” If we come to synagogue expecting something to give us a spiritual feeling, we will be disappointed. If we come prepared to seek the spiritual in our lives, if we come with a spiritual frame of mind, the siddur will guide us to places we have not attained before. The siddur calls us to be artists with our words, using them as the rungs on ladders to help us grow upwards and inward to find God. When we find ourselves looking at our watches or trying to figure out what the words of prayer are supposed to mean, we have missed the purpose of being in synagogue. It is the combination of location, poetry, music, and inner awareness that make our prayers come alive. Nobody else can do it for us.

Prayer

This does not mean that synagogues are off the hook. To improve the way Jews pray, there needs to be a better relationship between synagogue and congregation. We can argue all we want about the merits of spontaneous prayer verses fixed prayer. That debate was resolved centuries ago. Judaism has a fixed liturgy for three services a day, allowing for personal spontaneous prayer in only one section, the Amidah. Rabbi Max Kedushan, professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in the early twentieth century, connected this fixed liturgy with what he called, “normal mysticism”, that there could be a deeper, spiritual understanding of the liturgy that could come from regular, planned prayer. As we become familiar with the wording of the fixed liturgy, we are better able to use it as part of our own spiritual advancement; in the same way that we learn to play a piece of music and after we have mastered it, we are better able to add our own “riffs” to the original score. This means that to fully understand Jewish liturgy one needs to become a regular at the service or be committed to praying individually at home. Intermittent praying will not bring about the desired connection to the text. We can sing along to our favorite music in the shower and while driving in our car, but if we wish to take the next step and perform the song for ourselves, we need to add something of ourselves to the music and not just give a karaoke performance imitating exactly how it sounds on the CD.

This would seem to imply that someone who is interested in spiritual prayer in synagogue will have to sink a bit before he or she can swim. It may mean that we will struggle for a while with one prayer or another until we find the place for this prayer in our life. This may be true, but again, we should not let synagogues off the hook. Waiting for the congregation to master the service without recognizing the needs of the congregation and how we can help them bridge this gap would be a serious breach of communal responsibility. Rabbi Sharon Brous reminded other Rabbis recently, that “if your service the week before the tsunami hit Indonesia is the same as the service after the tsunami, then something is very wrong.” Spirituality is not about a moment of silent prayer, but it is focusing on the proper parts of the liturgy in order to highlight how we can emotionally and reasonably respond to important events in our lives and in our world. It is up to Rabbis, prayer leaders and synagogues to show us the way.

I know that there are many Jews today who think that the best way to improve the service is to cut out unnecessary prayers and shorten the time of the service. This approach is not validated by any of the modern congregations who have successful services. In fact, the vast majority of independent minyaim for young Jews offer only a full traditional service, often from older prayer books with translations that can be sexist or archaic. In the end, it is not the prayers or the prayer book that seem to make the difference.

Congregational Responsibility

The most important part of prayer is the participation of the congregation. All too many synagogues are oriented for prayer that is a performance. The congregation waits for the Rabbi or Cantor to “lead” them in prayer and the congregation is told when they can sing, when they should pray, when they should stand, when they should sit and they are constantly reminded what page they are supposed to be on. Rabbi Lawrence Kushner (in “Making Prayer Real, Comins ed. p. 13-14) writes; The problem with Reform liturgy is that we assume that we should always give people an exciting new experience. There were ten Friday night services in “Gates of Prayer” [The Reform prayer book], which has the unfortunate side effect of preventing anyone from memorizing the liturgy. And it sort of turned everyone into dummies who had to be told when to stand up and when to sit down. I'm always struck when the leader of the service says, “We now rise for the Shema.” Why are you telling me that? I've been coming here for thirty years. I know we stand up for the Shema. Only Jews tell one another when to stand. People in every other religion assume you know what to do, and if you don't, you're smart enough to watch and see what everyone else is doing.”

Many of the independent minyanim (see E. Kaunfer “Empowered Judaism”) have placed the leaders of prayer, not in the front but in the middle of the congregation; they have switched from professional leaders to lay leadership of the service and, while they insist that those wishing to lead the service pass a “test” with an experienced service leader, the leadership of the service is, for all practical purposes, open to anyone who wants to lead. Those who do not have the necessary skills, are given a chance to learn prayer skills with the eventual reward of being able to lead the congregation. In this model, “responsive readings” are no longer necessary. The service is done all in Hebrew. The only part in English is the D'var Torah/sermon. Page numbers are only called out in special circumstances (when there is something new or unusual that needs to be clarified); the pages are listed in a program or in the front of the siddur and the congregation is expected to find their own way through the siddur. If there is a problem, then they are to ask someone sitting near them for clarification. In this way, everyone is able to pray at their own pace. The real surprise for congregations today is that they don't need to coddle the worshipers. While there may be some confusion in the beginning, after a while worshipers will come to appreciate being on their own in the siddur. The reading of the Torah also does not need to be a constant reminder of what page we are on. Everyone should be reading/studying at their own pace. If someone makes a comment on the reading before or between aliyot, a simple reference to chapter and verse is all that should be needed. This would even let those who may be studying the Torah from a different text than the rest of the congregation, follow the comments of the darshan (the one explaining the meaning of the Torah reading).

Music

Music in the service is a big concern. Surprisingly, the issue with music is NOT about whether or not musical instruments are permitted on Shabbat. There are very successful congregations that use live music and those who only pray a Capella. What seems to matter the most is the KIND of music that is being used. In the book, Sacred Strategies: Transforming Synagogues From Functional To Visionary (I. Aron, S.M. Cohen, L.A. Hoffman, and A.Y. Kelman; Alban Institute Press,2010, p. 69) the authors examine worship to see what makes the greatest difference in the service. They write, “Neither space nor choreography, however, made the greatest difference. Nor, certainly, could it have been the prayer book (Gates of Prayer), which had been in use since 1975 without facilitating much notable change at all. The determining factor was music – a finding compatible with Protestant worship change as well. Rick Warren, founder of the path-breaking Saddleback Church in southern California, recalls, “If I could start Saddleback all over again, I'd put more energy and money into music. … The great American pastime is not baseball; it is music.” The authors also note; “...music can either aid or inhibit the congregant's experiences of meaningfulness in the service. Music and melodies that are familiar link one with tradition, real or imagined, but at the risk of being experienced as routine and uninspiring. Music and melodies that are innovative and contemporary evoke other reactions, such as stimulation, excitement, curiosity, or discomfort. The choice of how best to balance these and other musical options varies with time, place, congregants, and context” (p. 37-8).

I believe that there is a new wave of Jewish liturgical music that is being written today that will eventually mark these years as the beginning of a new “Golden Age” of Jewish liturgical music. The new music has grown out of the pioneering work of Rabbi Shlomo Carlbach, Debbie Friedman, Craig Taubman and many others. It is a mixture of modern forms of music, spiritual chants and repetitive musical stanzas. These melodies are easy to learn and help the congregation learn the Hebrew prayers. Sometimes they begin as a nigun, a wordless melody (using La-La-La or Bim Bam Bim or Ai-De-De-Dai etc) then switching to the words of the prayer and then going back to the wordless melody. This allows everyone to learn the music and the words and if you can't read/sing the words, there is still time to connect during the wordless part of the singing. The music is actually enhanced by having everyone singing, adding to the spiritual component of the service. Clearly the music is a key to spirituality and having the congregation chant together with a minimum of central leadership (someone has to at least pick the music for the prayer before everyone can sing it and then set the pace). What applies to leading the music also applies to musical instruments. If the singer or the musicians play as if they are performing, then the service will be an empty shell. If the singers and the musicians play to encourage the entire congregation to join in and participate, then there is almost no end to how high the service can take its participants.

Clergy

All of this requires a different role for the Rabbi and Cantor in the service. The Rabbi may set the structure of the prayer service and then leave it for the congregation to lead, with an extended role as teacher to those who don't know the prayers and to those who want to boost their connection to the service by learning to lead the congregation in prayer. The Cantor would be constantly searching for new music to help the congregation expand the musical modes of the service; the Cantor's role would be to teach new melodies and new ways to lead prayer. This does not mean that there will no longer be a role in the service for traditional nusach, the standard musical modes that are unique for the different experiences of Jewish liturgy. There is a great deal of interest in learning traditional nusach, but the music attached to specific prayers is an ever evolving process and Cantors can help keep the music of the service up to date.

(I want to note here a technical difference between nusach and hazzanut. These two terms are often mixed up or described as one being a part of the other. I believe that they are very different and need to be treated differently. Hazzanut is a Cantorial tradition that dates back over 100 years to the great age of Cantorial music. Composed and chanted by some of the great hazzanim (Cantors) of the early twentieth century, (Rosenblatt, Koussevitzky , Oysher, Tucker, etc.) it represents a style of religious singing that once was very popular in synagogues but now has faded over time. Nusach is the older, traditional musical modes of the service that set the tone and style that separates the service for Shabbat from the service for weekdays and which makes the holiday services musically unique. These modes, much older than Hazzanut, are still the musical underpinning of every synagogue service.)

This implies that there will need to be extensive teaching of liturgical melodies and of the structure of the service itself. Some congregations have created a “Learner's Minyan” where those who wish to learn more about the prayers and how to chant/sing them can go, ask questions and practice leading the liturgy. Other congregations do this kind of training as part of their Adult Studies program. Some congregations have a team of teachers who record the music for others to learn, post that music on the synagogue website and then help those aspiring to lead to iron out the rough spots in their presentation. To become a prayer leader, one would have to pass muster with this committee. (Kehillat Hadar, one of the new minyanim in New York City, has published a CD of the music they use at their service, and offers sample clips of the music on their website as a way to teach and encourage more people to take a role in leading the service).

Maybe you will accuse me of being self serving but I don't think that the role of Rabbi or Cantor is going the way of the dinosaur. Their role in the congregation is changing. The role of Rabbi and Cantor is going back to its roots; that of serving as mentors and teachers of the community. The role is less up front and more behind the scenes, urging and encouraging Jews to take a larger role in their own spiritual development. I am sure that there are still Rabbis and Cantors who want and need to be the center of the synagogue service. I believe that congregations should no longer be looking for the “Pied Piper” who will lead the congregation to successful worship. I think the synagogues of the future will be looking for the “mentor-in-chief” who will guide, support and encourage spiritual growth through prayer.

Challenges in Worship

Finally, the timing of the service is also an issue; not the full amount of time spent praying, but the start time and the pace of the service. Congregations wanting to finish by noon on Shabbat, often had to start by 8:30 or 9:00 am. There are a growing number of Jews who just don't want to get out of bed to get to synagogue at that hour. This has meant, in the past, that many Jews arrive late to the service, getting there when they have had all the sleep they desire on a weekend. Many successful congregations have instituted start times of 9:30 or 10:00 am (the latest possible time to pray the morning service) and more people arrive on time. The service is sometimes kept moving because the English and the spectator parts have been removed. Kehillat Hadar keeps things moving by keeping the d'var Torah, the teaching of a lesson, short. They stress teaching as the proper place for a lecture/sermon. It should be unusual for Shabbat services to go three hours or longer, however, except on special occasions when the liturgy may have many additions that could require a longer service.

There are also many indications that the “one service fits all” model is no longer helpful. It should not surprise anyone that styles of worship can vary by social class, by experience and by age. Young people have different ideas than their parents and their grandparents about what is spiritual. They may like different music, they may like more participation, they may want to learn from each other rather than have a formal sermon. I have heard of congregations where there were discussions about why younger members were unhappy with the main service and had started their own service; the older members were angry that the younger members didn't like what they were used to. I don't really see a reason why everyone needs to pray the same way. I believe that synagogues should offer a menu of venues for different groups with different prayer needs. While an advanced study program can generate unity among the students, prayer, because it is so personal, may require a menu of alternative services to accommodate the needs of all the members.

Congregations with large buildings can offer a variety of other services meeting different worshipers' needs or provide places for smaller minyanim to hold their services. Some alternative minyanim need proper prayer space and some congregations with large buildings have room for alternative minyanim. This can be a natural place for two communities to work together.

What is an alternative minyan? Some of these alternative minyanim could be women only services, healing services, learner's minyanim, non-egalitarian services, services with a creative liturgy or those that sport longer or shorter davening times (or faster or slower pacing). Often there is an effort to have differing start times to these alternatives services so that they can all end at the same time and so all the participants can join together in one collation after all the services are done (a unified Kiddush or Oneg Shabbat). In some congregations, however, each minyan has its own collation and coordinating the end times is not necessary. This does mean that there will be members of the community who choose not to be present to hear the Rabbi's sermon or to hear the Cantor chant the Musaf service. They will be preparing their own Dvrei Torah and arranging their own music. (This is another reason why sermons should be posted on the synagogue website and a reason that Cantors should be visiting all the different minyanim and helping each of them find their own musical way).

B'nai Mitzvah

The most difficult area in all of these suggestions about services is addressing the Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremony. Over the past 50 years, in many mainstream congregations, there has been a tendency to give the service over to the family who is celebrating the Bar/Bat Mitzvah of their child. The child chants large sections of the service, may read from the Torah, chant the Haftara, give a speech and lead the closing part of the service. In addition, the family is given most, if not all the Torah honors on their special day. The parents may give a speech in addition to the one given by the Rabbi and the speech given by the child. It makes for a longer service on Shabbat morning. For a large part of the congregation, made up of the friends and family of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah child, this is not a problem at all. They have come from near and far to be present at this service. For the rest of the congregation, however, it can be anything from an annoyance to agony. In some of these cases, the child leading the service has not been a regular attendee at Shabbat services. The family is unknown to those who regularly attend Shabbat services, and the family is so focused on the child and their own family that they have little regard for those who attend every week. There are times when the family will not even share the Kiddush luncheon following the service with the regular attendees, having a private luncheon in a different room or in a different location off campus. Is it any wonder that the regular attendees at a synagogue often “dread” when a Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremony is scheduled?

On the other side, I have seen wonderful Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremonies where the family is well known to all in the congregation, where the entire family attends Shabbat services, not just for the last year, but for many years. The congregation has watched the child grow and desires to celebrate with the family. In one of the minyanim that meet at Congregation Anshei Chesed in New York City, for example, it is the custom when these families celebrate, at the conclusion of the student's chanting of the haftara, the entire minyan membership all get up and dance around the child on the bima singing songs of joy and congratulations. Families who may be unwilling to make that kind of a long term commitment to the congregation, will need to, perhaps, conduct their own services for their family and guests and leave the rest of the congregation to daven as usual. In this manner the family can have a service that they will appreciate and the rest of the congregation will not be put out by the personal and private speeches that often characterize these Bar/Bat Mitzvah services today. I do not mean, in any way, to denigrate the family or the ceremony of Bar or Bat Mitzvah. Surveys have shown that families who have celebrated at a congregation are often the most vocal about their love of the synagogue and their love of the entire community. There are just competing needs that will have to be addressed.

To make prayer a meaningful part of Jewish life today, we need to address the needs of the congregation for a real prayer experience and then offer a service that is real and honest to the liturgy. We should stop dumbing down the service and invite lay leadership to participate at every moment. We need to have music that is easy to use and easy to join together in singing and we must pay attention to the pacing of the service. We should let all worshipers feel that they are welcome, that we value their time and effort and that the service can be, for everyone, spiritually moving. If we are regular attendees at Shabbat services, and we find that the service is long and boring, then something is very wrong and the congregation should begin to find ways to make the service uplifting, meaningful and spiritual. I believe with all my heart that the issues that plague our services are not time, the traditional liturgy or Hebrew. The real issue is how we can gather together to bring God into our lives. It is not about how fast we go through the prayers, but in how the prayers go through us.

Chapter 3; Part One: Study

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Chapter Three: Responding to Demographic Changes:

The solutions to all these issues are not secret. Both scholars and those working “in the field” have written extensively on the issues and the solutions are available to anyone who wants to look for them. I include a bibliography at the end of this book. Any of them will prove my points and add the authors' own experiences to those that I will share. There are books, online resources and actual congregations who have put these kinds of practices into use and have met with great success.

Responding To Demographic Changes: Part One - Study

We live in an age of vast entertainment resources. Just sixty years ago, most towns had only one or two movie theaters, television had limited programming on just three networks, and radio stations played music mostly to get people to buy the artists' records. We have come a LOOOOONG way. Movie theaters can have anywhere from 4 to 20 screens showing a wide variety of first run movies. On almost any given week, there will be one movie that has been just released and others still running strong. Each week groups of movies will be released on DVD or Blu Ray for home viewing. A vast library of old movies are available online and by mail for less than the price of a movie ticket. Television is now viewed on Home Theaters where there are hundreds of programs, including a vast array of sporting events, that can be watched at any given moment. DVR boxes insure that even if you can't watch the program at a given time, you can watch it whenever you wish. Cable companies and the internet feature television programming on demand, starting and stopping the programs as the viewer sees fit. Records became CDs and now even the CD is giving way to MP3 players where one can buy only the songs one prefers, put them in the order one wishes (or play them in a random order) and watch music videos on demand. Finally, downtown venues have been restored with shops, restaurants and pubs that offer a wide variety of cuisines and entertainment every night of the week. Why in the world would anyone want to attend a social event at a synagogue?

Yet this vast entertainment network is, in the end, a rather vapid place to spend time. From time to time there are important films, documentaries and anthems that spur increased thought and may inspire us to change some of our behaviors. For the most part, serious discussions of important ideas are not part of “entertainment” that sells. This leaves an opening for synagogues and other religious institutions to reach out on matters of importance to individual lives. There are eternal questions that still haunt the human mind: What is the meaning of life? What do our lives mean? How can I make my life more meaningful? What are the real core values in life? How can I apply them in my own life? What does it mean to have a spiritual life? How can I make my life more spiritual? How does God fit into my life? Does God care at all about the things that I do? Can I talk to God and would God talk to me? Why do my friends get sick? Why did he die? What will happen when I die? How can I be a better parent to my children? How can I be a better child to my parents? What is real love about? Does my belief in God change the way I live my life? Why or why not? Is there a direction for my life? How can I find it? Why am I so insecure and where does inner strength come from? These are just some of the questions that, in spite of the vast information networks that we have at our disposal, we just can't seem to find the answers.

We often forget the reason why there is religion in the world. It is not, as Marx would have us believe, that religion is the way we keep the masses docile and controlled. If this were so, religion would have disappeared long ago. The reason people keep coming back to religious questions is because these questions speak to the very essence of what it means to be human. When we can't find answers to these important questions, we feel our lives are empty. To bring meaning and direction to life by helping people to answer these questions is one of the most vital roles that religion plays. Synagogues are in decline at the time when Jews need them the most. Jews are reaching out to synagogues and are distressed when they stop in and don't find the answers they seek. When they come looking for the meaning of life they find instead outdated social programming, educational seminars for children or at the level of children and worship services that do nothing to address their needs. It is time for synagogues to stop focusing on Religious School and pre-school and get on with a new agenda to meet the needs of a vast component of the Jewish community in America.

I begin with one of the most neglected parts of synagogue programming, Adult Education. It is usually the poor afterthought of the Education Committee. It has little or no budget. It is taught by the Rabbi and seems to be eternally for beginners. It customarily starts out with a dozen students but eventually attrition brings that down to about eight or fewer. Very few of the synagogue “insiders” ever attend Adult Education courses.

The evidence around us,however, is that adult studies is one of the core reasons people get involved in Judaism. Jewish education is not solely about educating children, it is also about educating adults. The Talmud asks: if one does not have the money to afford a teacher for both the parent and the child, who should get the teacher? We might think that the children need the education but the Talmud insists that the parent should be given the education and then that parent, can turn and instruct his/her child. One reason after school religious training never produced long lasting learning, is because parents and children saw it as something only for children. When children did not see their parents engaged in Jewish learning, they quickly understood that Jewish education could not be very important. One of the best ways to get our children interested in Jewish education, is to have them see their parents engaged in serious Jewish learning.

I can point to many examples of how serious Jewish education is now making a difference in the Jewish community. There is “Limmud,” the week long learning fest in Great Britain, that is making inroads here in the United States, advanced teachers teaching adults by the hundreds. Hadar, the congregation of young professionals in New York City has started a Yeshiva that attracts young adult students, some of whom have given up a year's worth of time to study full time. The Drisha Institute of Jewish Studies was one of the early groups attracting adults to serious Jewish studies. The Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem, open to those willing to take a year off and study for the sake of study, now has a program that is close to full every year and a popular summer program as well. Pardes Yeshiva and the Shalom Hartman Institute also are riding this wave, (perhaps were the earliest forerunners of this phenomenon). These programs are not rabbinical school nor are they directed to future rabbinical school students. These programs have created a wave of young students looking for advanced Jewish learning (although, I might add that some of these students have indeed gone on to rabbinical school). Ikar, the successful congregation in Los Angeles, CA requires members to get involved with Jewish education and their membership continues to grow. The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, has started a “Mitzvah Initiative” training educators how to teach Mitzvot to adults.

Take this example given by Rabbi Lawrence Kushner from the book, “Making Prayer Real” [ed. by Rabbi Mike Comins, Jewish Lights Press, 2010, p. 172] “We announced here at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco that we're going to do a class in how to read the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew. We're going to go word by word with verses from the weekly portion and analyze them from the viewpoint of syntax and grammar with a little theology. Thirty sessions; the whole year. Students would have to buy an Alcalay dictionary for 120 dollars, a Hebrew Bible without English, a grammar book – 200 dollars, all told. We figured we'd get maybe a dozen people. One hundred fifteen people signed up. I think that if we tell Jews , “...We're going to stop treating you like dummies,” they will respond. Reform Judaism, alas, is close to going down in history as the preschool of Judaism. It's one thing to have to have a low entry threshold; it's another to dumb it so down there's nothing left.”

Rabbi Eli Kaunfer in his book, “Empowered Judaism” [Jewish Lights Press, 2010; p.152-3]writes; “In my own journey with Jewish study as an adult, I have come to appreciate the ways in which an unfiltered encounter with Jewish texts is a form of spiritual practice. As I became an Empowered Jewish learner, I spent many hours talking about this with my teachers.... Torah study opens us up to the notion that there is something larger than ourselves in the universe. Part of the daunting task of learning Torah is recognizing just how much there is to learn. The more we learn, the more we feel there is to learn: we cannot know it all; we cannot control it all; there will always be worlds we have no access to. This is a serious corrective to a contemporary culture that makes claims to being able to access every scrap of information. The Internet confers the illusion that everything is knowable, that it is all available for searching. But Torah study is a regular exercise in humility, a reminder that we are not able to grasp the overwhelming complexity of God's world.”

There are congregations that offer extensive lecture series on interesting topics. These lectures are important and the information they bring to the community is worthwhile. But ongoing serious learning is still far from the conscience of most American synagogues. This has to change. Serious study of traditional Jewish texts should be one of the most crucial parts of synagogue life. One of the names for a synagogue in Hebrew is “Beit Midrash” a house of study, a school; not a school for children but a place where adults can go to learn.

An opportunity to invest more of our resources into adult education presents itself with the development of Hebrew Language Charter Schools. Many congregations are fearful of these new enterprises, fearful that these schools will undermine the basic reasons for the after school religious training that has been the backbone of synagogue life for so long. It is my opinion that synagogues should take charge of the after school programs at these Charter Schools, adding the specifically Jewish content (customs and ceremonies, holidays and rituals) that can't be taught legally during school hours. This would free the congregations (and their budgets) to work to improve what is offered to adults.

The yeshiva model has met with a great deal of success. The style is called “hevruta learning” and it involves engaging a text directly with one or more study partners (usually no more than four in a group) who grapple with the text, who share ideas, thoughts and experience with each other to gain a better understanding of what the text is about. This is followed by the “shiur” the lecture by the teacher who teaches the principles and practices that can help the students find a deeper understanding of the text. This dynamic, between students and then between the students and the teacher, insures that the studies are kept at a very high level.

Sometimes a teacher is not needed. When adults from various backgrounds in both secular and Jewish education gather to read a text, they may find that the discussion as they read together and seek to understand the text is all that is needed to discover meanings deeper than would come from reading Torah or Rabbinic literature alone. If a passage should come to the attention of the group that they cannot make sense of at all, they can then seek the guidance of a more advanced teacher or professor to help them over the hump and to share with them whatever information may be missing that would unlock the meaning from the text.

We need to make this learning available to our adult students 24/6 (let's give the computer one day off!). These classes should be recorded as MP3 files or video of the class should be recorded as MP4 files and posted to the education page of the synagogue website. Audio recordings could then be downloaded and played back during commutes to work, errands around town or while working out at the gym. Video can be watched while on the treadmill at home or when evening television is more vapid than usual. The “recordings” could be watched on a laptop at the airport or downloaded and watched during a flight. It can also be shared with friends, and links could be sent to anyone who may have an interest. We have to think beyond the classroom to make Jewish learning as easy as using an iPod. With the new cell phone technology, both audio and video can be played on a smart phone; and questions about the lesson can be emailed back to the teacher using the link on the web page.

Successful synagogues are those where adults can gather to grow in their religious learning. It is not about current events or news analysis; these are done better every day by the pundits on cable TV and the internet. But when it comes to finding personal meaning in sacred texts, the synagogue is the place Jews will go. If we offer what they are looking for, they will make their home in our congregations. If we don't, they will go wherever they need to go to find the place where serious study is applied to serious spiritual questions. The age of the participants and their backgrounds are not important. I believe that this kind of adult study will help bind a congregation together in a common bond of learning, and that the stratification of ages that seems to be an eternal part of synagogue life, can be broken down as students of all ages study together. Adult students will do the work needed to keep up with the class. Would you like to attend a study group like this? It is time our congregations started offering up advanced Jewish Text classes. The sooner the better.

Chapter 2 Part Five: Demographic Challenges

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The Problem Part Five: Demographic Challenges

We can see that the problems I have listed have their roots in many different places. In some cases they began with decisions made by community leaders over 50 years ago. In other cases different events were caused by challenges that remain beyond the control of leadership. Let me summarize the the issues so far.

Young Jews - The Jewish community is changing in many different ways. Young Jews are moving from the suburbs back into inner cities. While it is true that as they have children, the cost of housing in the city makes it hard for them to find appropriate living space at reasonable costs, but instead of going out to familiar suburbs, they are moving to homes closer to the cities to keep commuting costs down and they are not interested in the larger, “McMansions” that their parents once aspired to own. They prefer living in neighborhoods with local shopping and short walks to provide for the needs of their families without increasing their “carbon footprint”.

Baby Boomers - In addition as the Baby Boom generation aged, they were looking for something very different than what their parents had required. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, as Baby Boomers began to retire, what these new empty nesters and retirees were looking for was very different from what their parents and grandparents desired. Just twenty or thirty years ago, Senior adults were younger (retiring around age 65) and wanting to live with other seniors their own age. These large senior communities are now filled with residents in their 80's and 90's. Baby Boomers had no interest in these large senior communities. In spite of the low cost of these condominiums, Today's retirees are looking to live in communities of mixed ages. They do not see themselves as “old” and they are not ready for a life of tennis and golf. Retirees today go on adventure tours, travel all over the world, and may still be scuba diving, mountain hiking and have extended workout routines at the gym. They are older, retiring from their work after age 70 even if they can retire earlier. In fact, some retire younger, and then start a new career, working another ten or 15 years before retiring for good.

Large condominiums that once catered to Jewish retirees, now have half the number of Jews they once held and Jews are not moving in to replace those who move away to be closer to children or who go to assisted living. In Florida, large senior only congregations are shrinking fast and closing their doors because the same boomer retirees that won't live in 55+ communities, won't join a 55+ congregation. Since new communities are mixed ages, these senior congregations without religious schools and programming only for seniors, are failing at a faster rate then the mixed age congregations. The need for senior congregations as completely disappeared.

American Families - Sixty years ago, the core membership of American, non-Orthodox congregations was mostly families where the parents were married in their early twenties and were having children by age 25 or so. This demographic has also disappeared. More and more Jewish families are waiting much longer to get married. Some wait until they are finished with Graduate school at age 26 or 27, other wait until their career is on track, waiting to get married until they are well into their thirties. Many young Jews don't see any reason at all to marry, choosing to live together with their partner for anywhere from 5-9 years. Some Rabbis have reported that young Jews who marry, only marry their partner when they decide to have children. Thus we see many couples returning from their honeymoon pregnant. If they are in their late thirties when they finally marry, they will only be entering their children into preschool when they are over forty. If a synagogue only offered programs and schools for parents with children, they now have to wait an additional 20 years for the family to join. Cost conscious parents in their forties wonder why they have to join a synagogue for religious training when they have lived without the synagogue in their life for so many years already.

Religious Denominations - Denominations in American Jewish Life are also in decline. While there are significant philosophical differences between Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism, American Jews today particularly young Jews, really don't care very much about these differences. Young Jews are not concerned with “labels”. Jews today will join a synagogue of any denomination as long as it has a program that is of interest to them, an educational program that stimulates them and makes them feel welcome. In fact, many Jews would even join an Orthodox congregation if these conditions were met. While the leadership of synagogues and national organizations can point to what they consider to be real differences between the denominations, the public just does not care. The amount of Jewish law required, egalitarian issues, personal responsibility for practice, and creative prayer, that represent the practical side of denominational issues, these are not issues for Jews anymore. They will follow whatever course a synagogue requires, but only if it meets their needs in other ways. These Jews take what they need from their synagogue and then decide how much more they want to be involved in other aspects of synagogue life.

Inertia - In spite of all these changes, American synagogues refuse to change. Most of the problem is inertia, the people who are in charge, the lay leadership and the clergy, are happy with the programming just as it is and do not want to make any changes. Often they have spent years getting things just the way they want them and fail to see that the challenges that they were facing long ago, are not the challenges today. They continue to fight yesterday's wars, when the needs and challenges today are vastly different. Synagogues remain school centered in spite of evidence that there are fewer children and they are reaching them much later. Synagogues remain focused on married couples in spite of evidence that they are not reaching the coveted younger demographic because they are mostly single. The programming of a synagogue is still built on social programs that are of little interest to Jews of all ages. For all these reasons, synagogues are in decline.

It doesn't have to be this way at all. There are many ways congregations can meet the challenges of the Jewish community in the twenty-first century. It is time to examine the solutions.

Chapter 2 Part Four: Of Cliques and Fiefdoms

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The Problem: Part Four - Of Cliques and Fiefdoms

There is a kind of cycle in the time-lines of not for profit organizations. Founders get things started. A second round of leaders take the vision of the founders and grow the organization. When the vision is finally fulfilled, instead of re-visioning the program, the leadership holds the line thinking that the vision of the founders will be carried forever into the future. These leaders become entrenched in their roles in the organization; they resist any effort to change or update the vision in response to the changing needs around them, and so the organization goes into decline until it is forced to close or is revitalized when a new group with a new vision finally takes over. I often point to the March of Dimes, an organization dedicated to ending the scourge of polio in this country,as an example of having to regenerate the goals of an organization. The March of Dimes was founded as an organization dedicated to ending the scourge of polio. After many years, it was blessed with having met its goal. Polio was defeated through a vaccine and a great killer of children was no more. The March of Dimes no longer had a cause. It had a choice to close up and congratulate itself on a job well done, or revision itself. It chose to revision the organization and now it is a prominent organization working to eliminate birth defects in children.

Synagogues (and other houses of worship) are not exceptions to this time-line. With the right leaders and vision, a religious organization can experience great growth and success. When these leaders fail to pass on the baton to the next generation of leadership, when they become more interested in keeping their duties and protecting their “fiefdoms” the organization gets stale and goes into decline. New leadership will either have to work hard to break up these fiefdoms, or they will go elsewhere and start their own organization. Either way it is bad news for synagogues. These leadership cliques will eventually tire of the work and wonder why nobody is helping them in their duties anymore. Without the ability to work their way up in the organization and without any input in re-visioning the organization, young leadership just goes where they are appreciated and the remaining leadership eventually gets older and unable to meet new challenges.

Insiders and Outsiders, Veterans and Newbies

Synagogues, like many other houses of worship, have insiders and outsiders. The insiders are the “regulars” who attend almost every social and religious function and usually are the ones doing the planning and work to get the programs going. They are usually angry at the outsiders who never support the synagogue with the same level of commitment that the insiders have.

The issue here is less about not wanting to give up “turf” and more about being “welcoming”. The insiders share history, experiences and friendship and those who are outside are left in the cold. Insiders come to events, sit together, know when and where “the good stuff” (the better cake, books, seats etc.) can be found and make sure it is all reserved for them. Outsiders stand around looking and wondering if they will be welcomed into the inside or if they will be forever on the outside.

I once was in a community, looking for a rabbinic position when I was told that the real insiders in this synagogue were those who have lived in the city for three generations or more. I realized that as their rabbi, even I would remain an outsider! I decided to take a position elsewhere.

Without, what my friend Dr Ron Wolfson of the American Jewish University calls a, “culture of welcoming”, a synagogue is doomed to fail. We live in times where everyone has many choices as to how to spend their “spare” time. More and more, Jews do not waste time trying to “break in” to a group of insiders. They go instead to the congregation that makes them feel welcome.

Chapter 2 Part 3: Buildings and Locations

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The Problem Part 3: Buildings and Locations

In the 1920's most synagogues were in urban areas where the working class Jews could be found. Large U.S. cities had large Jewish populations centered in inner city housing. After World War II, Jews joined the rest of the American population in the move to the suburbs. Inner cities remained slums inhabited by new immigrants and poverty stricken minorities. For the Jewish community, for the next 40 - 50 years, the suburbs were the place where Jews lived and where synagogues were built.

And some of the most amazing synagogues were built at the beginning of this period. While urban synagogues decayed, suburban synagogues were being designed by some of our country's greatest architects; extraordinary cathedrals of glass and stone able to accommodate thousands of Jews who would attend annually for the High Holy Days as well as for somewhat smaller groups for Shabbat and holidays. High bimas and fixed pews were the style. Fuel was cheap so heating and lighting were extravagant.

When the fuel shortages of the 1970's hit, congregations began to realize the problems with these high maintenance buildings. Heating and air conditioning became costly. The fancy architecture was expensive to repair and replace. Falling memberships meant that large parts of the building would be unoccupied most of the day but the large halls made it difficult to just close off one part of the building to save on costs. Large sanctuaries that held hundreds of people were now holding services with 200 or fewer worshipers on a regular basis. Since these sanctuaries were furnished with pews bolted to the floor, it was impossible to use the large room for anything other than a large formal religious service. When the room was in use, the whole room had to be illuminated and heated/cooled. The cavernous halls only highlighted the small number of people in attendance. When a family celebrated a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, or a wedding, the number of people could fill the hall, but on a regular Shabbat, the numbers were shrinking and the sanctuary was looking sadly empty.

As the number of children became smaller, due to the decrease in the size of Jewish families, there were also empty classrooms and meetings rooms. As staff positions were cut, the number of empty offices began to rise. But the worst was yet to come.

At the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, large sections of the inner city began to gentrify. Old neighborhoods were rebuilt and young Jews began moving into the apartments and condominiums to shorten their commute to and from work and to reinvent the urban lifestyle. Old inner city synagogues began to see some revival and some actually were able to renovate and take advantage of this new urban community. Since this revitalization was being organized by young Jews, many of whom were professionals, the revitalized congregations did not look at all like their suburban counterparts. This has proven to be the testing ground for what the new synagogue of the twenty-first century would look like. And later we will examine some of these congregations in detail.

Chapter 2 Part 2: Finances

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The Problem: Part Two - Finances

The school was considered a kind of “loss leader” in the normal synagogue budget, in that it was heavily subsidized by all the membership, even those without children or those with grown children. Educating children was seen as the basic purpose of a congregation. Since virtually all congregations had this kind of a policy, we created a community where the vast majority of Jews, at least at some point in their lives, had been a member of a congregation. The average membership for a family lasted, on average, about seven years, which would give these families time to celebrate the rites of passage with their two children and then, if the children did not get involved in a youth group, or the parents did not become involved in synagogue leadership, they would quit the congregation and move on to other things in their lives. Most formal Jewish education stopped at age thirteen and youth groups settled on a more informal kind of learning for those who stayed on.

The decisions regarding membership insured that the financial health of a non-Orthodox congregation depended upon the religious school. In the 1950's, during the height of the baby boom, there were more than enough children to fill the schools. But as that baby boom passed through to college and beyond, the birth rate of the American Jewish community began to fall. Jewish parents waited longer to have fewer children. As we stated before, today, many mainstream congregations still think that parents of children join the synagogue only to provide a Bar or Bat Mitzvah for their children. But as parents wait longer to have children, there is now a delay of some 20 years before these parents who still wish to join a mainstream congregation, find a need to join. Where once dues could be collected from parents in their twenties, now the parents are in their forties and after living 20 years without needing a synagogue, they are looking for new ways to avoid joining altogether. With the decline in membership, the decline in finances is inevitable. Since the balance of synagogue financing depends a great deal upon donations, without a membership, donations are also in decline. Thus, my colleagues at the JTSA forum I mentioned above, still were looking for parents to join their schools and then join their congregation. But the very young Jews they covet so much, are not parents, and are not even married! It is a demographic that has disappeared! As synagogue membership continues to age, the drop in donations and support gets more and more acute. Synagogues today struggle to cut budgets and staffing as their membership declines, but this only accelerates the drop in membership since without the funding for new programs and the volunteers and staff to run them, they get stuck in a downward spiral. Less funding for programs, less programs to reach out to the community, less members to the congregation, more budget cuts, less programs, less members etc. etc. The actual costs of running a synagogue are not all that flexible. Most of the real costs are fixed. This financial problem is a challenge that cannot be solved by merely cutting the budget. Synagogues should be enhancing the income by getting more members to join, but the congregations don't change their culture to attract the singles and families without children that they need. The financial crisis is so great in some communities that what may be needed is an infusion of “venture capital” to turn the spiral around.

Chapter 2 Part 1: The Problem

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Chapter Two The Problem – not just for synagogues

I am a Rabbi and I write from the perspective of the synagogue. I am a Conservative Rabbi and so my experience is in Conservative congregations. But this does not mean that those of other denominations will not learn anything of interest in this book. The fact is that organized religion all over the United States is in decline and there are many churches, mosques, ashrams, temples and meeting halls that can read their own issues into what I am trying to identify and the best ways to meet the challenges that we all face. I know that each religion has its own parameters that restrict its reactions to changes in the world. Some faiths have difficulty with the expanded role of women in the world. Some religions do not accept members of different races or sexual orientation. Some are able to ask their members for money directly; others rely on free will offerings and are forbidden to ask for money at all. Some Jewish denominations have different rules regarding changes in the service and the use of musical instruments on Shabbat. I only hope that each person reading this will find something that they can apply to their own house of worship, understanding the issues better and gaining insight as to where the answers to their problems may be found. Just taking notes and presenting them at a board meeting will not bring about the kind of changes I think the religious world needs. Each group will have to examine the issues for themselves and decide which course will be the best course for who they are and for their particular denomination. The issue, to me, is to get our best minds working on solving the problems rather then wringing our hands over what we have lost.

What are the problems that synagogues face? To some extent they are the same problems that we have always faced. Issues of membership, finances, caring for our facilities, helping new families feel welcome and older leadership that does not make room for new leaders. While the problems may be old, there are some new twists that make dealing with these issues more crucial than ever. We will take them on, one at a time.

The Problem: Part One - Membership

Finding and retaining members in a synagogue is always a full time job. For synagogue board members and executive directors, membership dues are one of the most important sources of income for an American synagogue, an income line that could represent over half the income in the congregational budget. Membership rolls, therefore are not just for bragging rights; it is one of the most important financial issues that a congregation faces. For most of the twentieth century, the thinking about membership was to offer what families needed and then require them to be members in order to access these programs. In most non-Orthodox synagogues in the 1950's, this meant providing a place for a Bar (and later a Bat) Mitzvah for the families with children at age thirteen. Synagogues responded to this need by creating afternoon religious schools (as a supplement to public schools) to provide the training necessary to prepare the boys ( and later the girls) for this life cycle event. Congregations required membership in the synagogue (a “residency” requirement) to attend the school and required no less than five years of school to “graduate” into the Bar/Bat Mitzvah class. Those who did not meet these educational and “residential” requirements were not permitted to have the Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremony in the synagogue.

Eventually synagogues began to establish preschools to get families involved longer on the front end and the youth groups joined national organizations to get children involved longer after the Bar/Bat Mitzvah. Jewish summer camps and youth trips to Israel were also created to increase a student's commitment to Judaism and through the children, the commitment of their parents. The problem always was that the children would not take their studies seriously unless the parents made Jewish studies a priority in the life of the family. Since many families were members only because they wanted the Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremony in the synagogue, they had many excuses not to support the Jewish education of their children other than the minimum needed for the Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremony.

To be fair, Bar/Bat Mitzvah was not the only reason to join a synagogue. Most congregations were social hubs of the community. There were not just organizational meetings but social events, educational events and community forums that were part of the programming. There were classes in Adult Education for those who may not have had a good Jewish education as a child. (Women were a big part of these classes since the early European Jewish immigrants did not believe in a religious education for girls. As the United States moved toward rights for women, American Jews began to follow suit. Girls soon were accepted into religious schools but the mothers who had been denied the education, were in need of Adult Jewish studies and eventually were prepared for a Bat Mitzvah as adults.) Non-Orthodox congregations were measured by the size of their membership, the larger the membership, the “better” the synagogue. Some people did prefer smaller congregations but the larger ones also built large beautiful buildings and offered more benefits for the family looking for a Bar/Bat Mitzvah for their children.

Orthodox congregations did not start religious schools. They relied on a loose network of private Jewish day schools to educate their children, schools that incorporated Jewish learning into the general studies curriculum. Since this was a much bigger financial burden to families, Orthodox congregations stayed small for quite some time.

That was then, but this is now. Children, with their time seriously overbooked, spent less and less time in their after school religious programs and slowly synagogues began to decrease the amount of time required for classes from three, to two and finally one day a week, and from six to three to two hours a week. As the divorce rate went up, the amount of time children spent shuttling between parents meant that parents were less interested in losing their precious time with their children to an after school program. Sunday School programs were moved to Saturday. Shabbaton weekend “marathons” were developed to add more hours to the religious school year. Eventually parents began to ask why they needed to have a Bar/Bat Mitzvah service at all (their own Jewish education being rather limited and not seen as something that was responsible for their success) and they began to have parties without the service. Synagogue membership was in decline.

Orthodox congregations, however, began to grow. Populated by those who had a day school Jewish education, they touted their “traditional” approach to Judaism and a more participatory service. The service was not just a Bar/Bat Mitzvah event, but the rite of passage was just one small part of a community spiritual service. Some newly ultra-Orthodox groups began to offer free religious training and Bar/Bat Mitzvah without the educational or “residential” requirements, accepting only donations for their services. The families accepting this “deal” had to accept also that women played little or no role in the Orthodox service and a Bat Mitzvah for girls was out of the question.

As the twenty-first century began, a new wave of demographic changes became apparent. Jews in their twenties were postponing marriage until their late thirties. Sometimes they were living together for more than five years; others were just plain single. There was also an increasing number of divorced parents who found that the congregations they had been a part of for many years, suddenly had nothing for them as singles. Non-Orthodox synagogues were set up for families. None of the programming was suitable for these unmarried young Jews and the older divorced Jews. Synagogue preschools suddenly were seeing parents in their forties. Families were not interested in synagogues until almost 20 years later than families in the 1950's.

It was a demographic perfect storm. The twenty year old parents had turned into forty year old parents, who had already spent almost 20 years outside the synagogue that had no programming at all for these young single Jews. After living 20 years without a synagogue what could a synagogue offer them now? They had lived so long without becoming a member of a synagogue they had no need for dues, or other programs. Even if they wanted a Bar/Bat Mitzvah service they did not see the necessity of five years of dues and five years of religious school. These parents were often willing to have a family service and private tutoring and cut out the synagogue altogether. Synagogues that had built their financial base on young families and the afternoon religious school suddenly saw their membership base get smaller and older and no longer in need of the basic services synagogues were offering. Young Jews who were single and Jews without children had no reason to join a synagogue offering nothing to serve their spiritual and social needs. These young Jews began to look for alternative places where they could pursue these spiritual, educational and social needs.

Preface - Why Is My Shul Broken

2010-11-04T07:40:00.001-05:00

1. Preface

When I was a teenager, there was an essay by an anonymous author that we would discuss as part of our Jewish education on the theme of assimilation; it was called

The Last Jew

My name? My name is not important.

Who am I? I am the last Jew. The year is 2124, the place is the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. I am in this museum, in a cage on exhibit. People pass my way, day in and out, staring, pointing, and even sometimes laughing. On the walls surrounding my exhibit are the remnants of a Jewish culture; a talit, a Torah, the books of the Talmud. Each day, as I sit here watching the people pass, I wonder to myself how six and a half million people who existed as Jews a little over a century ago could have possibly vanished. My father and grandfather used to talk with me about the Jewish communities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; about the large populations in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and world-wide organizations like United Synagogue, B'nai B'rith and so many others. I recall my father telling me how successful and prosperous the Jews in America were. And about a land called Israel. And yet, all this has vanished--all this has disappeared. I contemplate the reasons, I recall the events, and I search for an answer. I now believe that I know how the Jews in America and in the world disappeared. Small things at first, things that happened gradually. Jewish families stopped attending Shabbat services, the parents stopped sending their children to religious schools, Hebrew High School, day schools and Bar Mitzvah classes. The Shabbat candles were never lit. My grandfather told me that they were still good Jews--some of them spoke Yiddish, they attended Yom Kippur services, they held a Passover Seder each year. Some of them were Jewish by heart; others by tradition and others by stomach. However, the books tell me that in time, this too, ended. To attend a Kol Nidre service became a chore, not an honor--to hold a Seder became a task, not a joy. The rituals and observances of Judaism began to vanish, and this I believe was the first step. Intermarriage was in order. The Rabbi became a businessman, not a teacher. Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform were quarreling. I was reading of a Rabbi, Mordecai Rosenberg, who demanded that Jews fight for emancipation between the American community and the Jewish community, to put aside all differences. In time, the Jew did become equal. He attained material success, and he achieved sustained equality. The Jew was at the same level socially as any Christian. Hatred toward the Jew soon died off, and nowhere was there heard a shout of bigotry towards the Jew. And with this fight for equality, all differences were put aside, including religious differences. Jews stopped hanging mezuzot on their doors, as it merely proved them different. Jews when asked if they were Jewish, would either give a brisk "no" or no answer at all. They were Americans first. A non-religious Judaism was established in America. Why didn't these people see that a non-religious Judaism couldn't exist? Judaism obviously needs Jews, but also, Jews need Judaism. Without one, the other is dead. Why didn't those people see it? Why did Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews fight?

And then, the final blow to the Jew came. It occurred about 50 years ago, and so I can recall it vividly. The Arab nations around the Jewish State of Israel grew restless and strong. As they have since the beginning of recorded history, the Arab nations wanted Israel destroyed. And they acted. With two nuclear pellets, three and a half million Israelis were obliterated, and the land that had once flowed with milk and honey was now charred beyond fertility. When the news of the incident flashed across the globe, the Jew in America turned his head, denied concern and replied, "Really, what could I have done?" Yet, little over 150 years ago, a man in World War II was supposed to have slaughtered six million Jews in Germany, and my father told me that people swore they would never forget. They promised that they would always support the Jews across the continents. They pledged their donations towards the development of Israel,and they vowed their allegiance for the progress of all

Jews. However, in time the allegiances were forgotten. Any responsibility of the American Jew to Israel was ignored. How forgetful a people can be! When the people lost their pride in themselves, their religion, and their Israel, they lost everything. As it was once said, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" I am the last American Jew. In less than twenty years, I too, will die. And never again will another Jew set foot on this planet.

My G-d, my G-d, where did we forsake you?

A lot has happened in the past half century.

The assimilation that was once such a vital concern for Jews has morphed into a resurgence of Judaism in America. Israel has made peace with two of its most significant neighbors and the world has mostly stepped away from the possibility of a nuclear nightmare. Jewish ritual, especially home rituals are becoming more important and American Jews no longer really see Jews as an “Ever Dying People” (from the essay by Simon Rawidowicz ). In fact, it has become more and more likely that Judaism is going to be around for a long, long time.

But that does not mean that it will continue in exactly the form in which it has always existed. Just as the religion of Biblical Israel, the religion of sacrifices and a hereditary priesthood that is recorded in the Bible, gave way for historical reasons to Rabbinic Judaism, the religion of the Talmud; and just as Rabbinic Judaism made room for Halachic Judaism, born of the Mishna Torah and the Shulchan Aruch; so too we are living in a world where Judaism is going through a great change, one that reflects the changing demographics and vision of the Jewish People.

This does not mean that the Torah, Talmud and the great codes of Jewish Law will no longer govern Jewish life. Nor does it mean that we are ready to give up on Shabbat, Kashrut and Jewish morality. These continue to be, to the surprise of many, the core around which Judaism still is centered. But Judaism is changing. This time it is not persecution or exile that is driving the change. This time change is coming because the world has changed in some fundamental ways that have never really been seen before. Further, these changes are now happening at an unprecedented rate.

The Jewish community, its organizations and institutions, unfortunately, have been slow to keep up and catch up with all the changes that are happening. The result of this failure to progress is that the familiar institutions of the Jewish community, organizations that once guided most aspects of Jewish life in America, are slowly losing their following and there are new institutions and (as we shall see) “non-institutions” that are beginning to take the place of all these organizations that have failed to change. Jewish Community Centers, Jewish Federation, B'nai Brith, are just some of the old school organizations that are struggling to find a role in a new Jewish world.

I am a Rabbi. My world is the synagogue. For over 2000 years, the synagogue has been the central institution of Judaism. It was the school, the religious center and the meeting place for all that was Jewish. Over the last 50 years, however, synagogues in America have been in decline. Membership is falling, budgets are not able to be balanced and denominations, the backbone of synagogue life, are becoming meaningless. The role that synagogues play in American Jewish life is declining. The national synagogue offices are struggling to serve their member organizations and seminaries find themselves wondering what should and should not be included in the curriculum for training the clergy and staff for the synagogue of the future. All of this is happening while more and more Jews are looking for a place to learn and pray in numbers we could never imagine. What is going on? What do Jews today, not just young Jews, but Jews of all ages, what do they want from their faith and why can't they find it at their local synagogue?

All over the United States the clergy and lay leadership of synagogues are asking these questions. And yet, synagogues have been slow to change, slow to keep up and , from where I sit, they keep trying to do “more of the same” figuring that eventually, American Jews will come to their senses and come back to their synagogue.

I recently attended a forum, sponsored by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, moderated by the Chancellor that featured four rabbis from the community. Two rabbis were from large, wealthy and influential synagogues. The other two rabbis were young and upcoming influences in the community. There was far more than just an age gap between the two groups. The elder Rabbis kept insisting that if Jews would just put their children into religious school and take that school seriously, then all would be fine with synagogues. The younger colleagues claimed that home rituals and home study would be the wave of the future and synagogues needed to get on board. As I listened to both groups explain their positions, I realized how much my own thinking had changed. I am friends with both of my colleagues who had started their careers just a few years before I was ordained. I once agreed with their position. After spending a year with younger colleagues I began to pay attention to a growing body of research that told me that the old way was gone and it was not going to come back. There is a new kind of Judaism that is growing right under our noses and I began to pay attention to it, and to point out the issues to those who insisted that Judaism would not change.

I wrote in my synagogue bulletin in October of 2010: “A woman came up to me after Selichot services this year and said, “When I saw the new book for Selichot, I was upset that the traditional book would not be used. I was used to that book and didn't want to change. But now that I have used the new book, I just wanted to tell you that I think it is wonderful.” I thanked her for the compliment.

A colleague of mine took a class toward his doctorate and, just before Rosh Hashana, accidentally erased all his notes from his laptop computer. He needed to use those notes to write a paper for the class and in the waning minutes before the High Holy Days, he realized that the notes were gone and he would have to rely on his recordings of the class and the notes of others to finish his paper. He told the story to his congregation and then added, “What happened to my notes is in fact, what happens to each of us regarding life. We stand here on the cusp of a new year, 5771, and everything, every moment of year 5770 is gone, passed by, never to be experienced again. There is nothing we can do to bring those moments back. Oh, there are impressions and memories, just like I, of course, remember some of the points made in class. Like my lost notes, we cannot hold on to time.”

There are still members of Temple Emeth who believe that if we do everything like we used to do, then we will grow and become, again, as successful as we used to be. I don't blame anyone for thinking this way; Jews in congregations all over this country are trying like crazy to re-create the way synagogues used to be. The problem is that Jews are not the way they used to be. The Jewish community is not the way it used to be. America has come a long way since 1950 and is not the way it used to be either. Anyone who has run their own business knows, that you can't live off what used to be. If you don't innovate, update and/or supplement past successes, you begin to fall behind the competition. This does not mean we have to throw away all that came before, but we need to make it new, improved and better for new people to create their own memories around it.”

Recently I attended a screening of the movie, 100 Voices, where Cantors visiting Poland admitted that the music of the liturgy that they were bringing back to Poland, no longer resonated with congregations today. The changes are real and important to lay leadership, clergy and common “Jews in the pews”. The changes cover almost every aspect of synagogue and organizational life, but they remain true to the core of what Judaism has stood for since the time of the Torah and the Rabbis who interpreted it. Just as the sages of antiquity tailored Judaism to the needs of Jews after the destruction of the Temple, we need to reinterpret Judaism to suit the needs of of Jews in the face of extraordinary demographic and social change.

I have stopped being frightened and have started to be open to the new possibilities. I now preach and prod my colleagues, my national organization and lay leadership to pay attention and embrace the new expressions of faith that are now growing so quickly. But I have come to realize that there is too much information to put in one lecture, one sermon or one seminar. It is time to organize the entire process; to see what is changing, why it is changing and how synagogues can change to meet the challenges and opportunities that the future is presenting.

I want to be clear. There is nothing in this book that is original to me. I have built on the experiences of colleagues, professors and teachers who have been working on this for at least the past ten years and who have shown, without a doubt, the need for a different kind of synagogue for a new and different age. I thank these teachers for their work and hope I will do them honor through my writing. I will reference their work and the influence they have had on my thinking. With this book, I hope to make clear to Rabbis, Synagogue professionals and lay leadership the direction we all need to take if we are to create a synagogue for the world in which we live rather than the world of the 1950's.

One final point. This is not an indictment against Rabbis, Cantors, Synagogue Presidents, Synagogue Boards of Directors nor Ritual Committees. Nobody, as far as I can tell, has gone out of their way to undermine and destroy the structure of the Synagogue. In fact, everyone has worked very hard to preserve and promote all the synagogues represent in Judaism. The world has changed in ways that nobody predicted. We are all working hard, doing our best serving the Jewish Community. It is my hope that this book will help Synagogue lay leadership and Clergy rethink their response to the changing needs and perhaps find a path to the future that will not only insure a future for the Jewish Community in the United States, but will be a future that they too will want to live in. I hope I will bring hope and light to the issues and will have a positive impact on Jewish Life.

My Sweet Lord

2010-05-22T20:54:00.001-05:00

05/20/10

One of my favorite Religion writers is Lisa Miller of Newsweek magazine. In the double issue of Newsweek (May 24& May 31, 2010) she wrote an article about Yoga and its Hindu roots. (http://www.newsweek.com/id/237910 ) I do recommend the entire article but I warn any Jew who reads it that it might make you think that if Yoga is a Hindu practice, that may make it too pagan for Jews to participate in any way. Judaism is vehemently anti pagan, we are forbidden to take part in any activity that is connected to paganism, so if you love Yoga, you might want to stay ignorant of its Hindu roots. Hinduism clearly falls under Judaism's definition of paganism.

The question that Ms. Miller asks however, is an important question. Can we co-opt rituals from other faiths and use them in our own way for our own purposes? In fact, Judaism has done this many times in our lengthy history. Clearly the Lulav and Etrog have been borrowed from pagan rituals. Much of biblical sacrifices was taken from the rituals of the people who lived around the People of Israel. Circumcision may have been borrowed from Egypt and much of our laws in relation to conversion seem to come from Roman common law.

The article then quotes a professor of religion at Boston University, Stephen Prothero, the author of a new book “God is Not One” who has this quote, “The American creative, materialistic, pluralistic impulse allows religion here to grow and change, taking on new and unimagined shapes.” It got me thinking about how American Judaism has been received in Israel. It is a topic that is never far from my mind, especially after reading the news stories coming from Israel over the past weeks: about how non-fundamentalist Judaism is being walked on by a bill in the Knesset, about a Conservative/Massorti woman in Israel assaulted for having the marks from tephillin still on her arm, and the latest example of harassment by the Haredi toward women wanting to pray at the Western Wall in a non-fundamentalist fashion.

I began to see why these ultra Orthodox Jews are so angry at what we have made of our Judaism in America and have now exported to the rest of the world. It is an example of the “American creative, materialistic, pluralistic impulse” at work in Judaism. What Conservative Judaism has added to the Jewish faith is something that is a unique addition, one that requires American Jews to bring it to the Jewish table.

I am sure that there are those who would see these additions to Judaism; egalitarianism, liberalism in ritual and in Halacha (Jewish Law) and the establishment of homosexuality as no longer being an “abomination” in Judaism, as examples of how American Jews have “watered down” what Judaism stands for and have breached Jewish Law in ways that have severed any connection to what “real” Judaism is all about. And yet, it does not take a very sophisticated examination of the last 2000 years of Jewish history to see that in every place that Jews have lived, they have brought something from the local culture into Judaism. The next time you see a Haredi Jew who says that Judaism never changes, ask him where Judaism picked up the long black coat, the fur hat, and the belt he is wearing. I can promise you that they are not indigenous clothing worn by the Sages of the Talmud. (who probably dressed like Romans, who are also not a Jewish sect).

There is a story of a man in Krakaw that dreams of a treasure buried near a bridge in Budapest. He goes to Budapest and finds the bridge but it is guarded by soldiers. He tells the captain of the guard that he had this dream about a treasure buried under the bridge. The captain laughs at him and says that he does not believe in dreams, if so he would be in Krakaw looking under a stove for treasure. The man thanks him, goes home and finds the treasure under his own stove. The moral of the story is that the treasure is in Krakaw but knowledge of the treasure is in Budapest. Sometimes we have to go far afield to find the information we need to move ahead in life. The same applies to faith. Sometimes we have to go into exile to find the knowledge we need to keep our faith growing and meaningful, and not stagnant and irrelevant for modern living. American Jews have added, in our own unique way, a new dimension to world Jewry. I don't think that this is a bad thing at all, and the “purists” who think that by holding at bay any changes at all are making our faith poorer and less relevant.

A Judaism that continues to struggle with modernity, from America, from Europe or in Israel is a living, vibrant faith.

Turn! Turn! Turn!

2010-04-27T21:09:00.001-05:00

A season for everything, a time for every experience under heaven...

A time for planting and a time for uprooting the planted...

A time for tearing down and a time for building up …

A time for keeping and a time for discarding...

A time for silence and a time for speaking... [Ecclesiastes 3:1-8]

All across the country, synagogues are finding themselves in trouble. In these economic hard times, it is no surprise that donations to religious organizations are down and that synagogues are facing an economic squeeze. But it is not the economy that is creating the bulk of this problem. The real trouble that congregations are finding is a drop in membership and a lack of concern by the larger Jewish community.

It is not a problem unique in the Jewish community to synagogues. Federations and Jewish communal organizations that rely on donations are also feeling pressure. Without a credible number of volunteers to assist any Jewish organization, all of our communal institutions are at risk.

The reason for this drop in interest in synagogues and in the Jewish community, is the result of our collective inability to acknowledge a demographic and the spiritual shift that has been going on for the past decade or more. We have closed our eyes to the situation, usually assuming that if we work harder we can win back those who have left us. I am reminded of a story about a fly trying to get through a glass window by trying harder and harder to break through. There is a door open about ten yards in the other direction but the fly does not see the open door and the easy path to all the fly desires. He only hears the voice, “try harder” and so he tries and tries to break through the glass, and he will die on the window sill.

We see the goal clearly, to serve and lift up the Jewish community of America. We seek nothing less than addressing their spiritual, emotional and educational needs. And if they don't know what they need, we will tell them. But they do know what they need, and they are telling us, but we are not listening. Instead of paying attention to their needs we are working harder than ever to give them what they don't want and we are surprised that our efforts do not bear fruit. We are dying in plain view of the goal that we seek but for some reason, we don't change direction or our approach.

What has changed that we don't see? First of all there is the demographic shift. The young, professional Jews today are not similar to those that lived just twenty years ago. Synagogues for the past fifty years have been built on the backs of their schools, with the assumption that if we bring in the children, we will bring in their parents as well. It never really worked right, but it did work. Seventy percent of Jews at any given moment were not members of any synagogue but almost all of them had been part of a synagogue at one point or another in their lives. We took that as a given; that we could not hold onto a member for life, so we tried replacing those who left us with new younger families just starting out. Each family was good, on average, for seven years, about the time it took to have a Bar/Bat Mitzvah for two children. After that, maybe a youth group could keep a family around for a few more years, and if we got lucky and the parents did get involved in the culture of the synagogue, we might have a few more years until they burned out or moved away.

But a funny thing began to happen. Jews who used to marry and have children in their early twenties began to wait, and wait and wait. Suddenly 20 and 30 year old Jews were mostly single or just living together. Marriage was held off until they were in their late thirties and forty year old Jews were parents of preschool age children. Synagogues that relied on their school found that they had to wait an additional decade to attract young families to replace those who were leaving. But ten years of living without a synagogue indicated to these families, that they really didn't need a synagogue at all in their lives. After all, where was the synagogue when they were single? It is a good question. We never reached out to young Jewish singles. Synagogue programming was always for children and families.

Then there is the technological revolution. Jewish communal institutions fell behind as technology surged ahead. Only a handful of synagogues set up websites and those that did, often never took the time to keep them updated. Shining on the home page was a picture of the synagogue building. Followed by information about last year's Purim party. But buildings don't draw in people, nor does an out of date web page. What was minimally needed were pictures of people having fun and a list of things that are happening they would want to attend. But even as new Jewish web pages open, synagogues still find themselves behind the technology curve.

New congregations have been starting out by going viral. Minyanim in Los Angeles, Manhattan and many other cities started out merely by setting up a web page and announcing on the internet that those interested should come to a service. Social networking, Facebook and Twitter quickly gathered an interested crowd. Rather than publishing a Shabbat announcement brochure, most information in these new congregations is spread by website. And yet many established congregations do not invest even minimally in technology and continue to hire personnel who have little or no internet experience. To almost everyone under 50, if something is not on the internet, it does not exist. They don't go to restaurants that don't have an online menu, they don't go to stores that don't have a web page and they have little interest in a synagogue that does not list its activities on the internet.

The Jews we are seeking have needs that are vastly different than the needs of Jews just two decades ago. It is not just about singles vs. married Jews. Young Jews today do not need synagogues or Jewish organizations for their social life. Young and mid-life Jews already have sophisticated networks of friends and favorite things to do. These Jews do not feel limited in life by antisemitism or prejudice. The entire social network of a synagogue, and the networking that used to be such an important part of synagogue life is no longer needed. The internet connects them to friends and entertainment. Cable television offers hundreds of channels to keep them home and movie theaters offer 16 or more screens so that there is always something to do. Young single Jews today live in gentrified sections of downtown, where they are near work and near trendy bars and restaurants. They live in apartment buildings that have fitness centers. There is no way for a synagogue to be the center of their social life.

Jews today wait longer to have children. This means that a Religious school can no longer be the center of synagogue life. For too long our Religious school was the reason a synagogue existed. We wanted to train young Jews figuring that some day they would grow up to be involved in the Jewish community. The Jewish population surveys tell a different story. Religious school did not help raise up a new generation of committed Jews. Many Jews today feel that Religious schools actually drove them away from synagogues. They learned that Jewish education was only for children and when they became an adult, they had no need for Jewish learning. Many times the curriculum of Religious schools never developed beyond fifth grade and the students only learned how to game the system until a Bar or Bat Mitzvah and then they were done. Population surveys tell us that Jewish summer camps and Israel experiences were far more influential to a child's Jewish education than Religious school. Our education of teens was almost non existent, and we have learned that teens and young twenty somethings are at the most critical time in their Jewish education. And we offer them next to nothing.

If these are the problems, what are the solutions. There are three areas that need to become the core mission of a synagogue if it wishes to thrive and grow.

First, we need to actively invite adults into meaningful programs of Adult Jewish Education. Young and mid-life Jewish adults are looking to be engaged by their Judaism. They are looking for teachers who will let them grapple with texts, will encourage them to engage in discussions on how Judaism speaks to the moral, ethical and spiritual life they are seeking. They want to read source texts on how Judaism wants them to act in family, business and social situations. They want to know that Judaism is a living religion that has something to say about what is going on in their lives. Surveys, overviews and beginners' lessons can not be all that we offer. These classes need to be followed up with more advanced level classes. We are all guilty of not providing the advanced level of Judaica that these Jews are requesting. In 1950, many Jewish adults had skipped college to provide for their family during the depression or had joined the U.S. Army to serve in WWII. Today, our population has multiple advanced degrees and has little patience for beginners' classes. We need to provide for them the serious education they require. We need to heavily invest in teachers and materials for advanced Jewish learning. The Melton program has shown us that money is not the deterrent to Jewish learning. If we offer high level classes and clear parameters for learning, we can attract Jews to Jewish learning. Melton does it without synagogues; I believe the learning could even be more significant if it was done under the auspices of synagogues.

Second, Jews today want to pray. For many years, synagogues often acted as if we did not want people to pray; we thought Jews were looking to be an audience. Cantors and Rabbis for years ran the show from an elevated bima at the front of the room. The congregation just watched or followed along in the siddur. Today, Jews want to lead the service and are willing to learn what they need to know so that they have this skill. They look to Rabbis and Cantors to be their teachers and guides. Jews today prefer services led from the center of a circle or from a stand in the middle of the congregation so that they feel like they are an important part of what prayer is all about. A modern synagogue must understand that the days of “one size fits all” services are over. There needs to be multiple minyanim; one for those who like to sing, one for those who like traditional melodies, and one for those who are looking to pray in a learning environment. Some may want quick davening and some may want more singing. Some may look for a teacher to give a D'var Torah; others may want to lead the teaching themselves. We need to have a big enough tent to include everyone in our buildings.

Additionally,I believe that we are also experiencing a new golden age in Jewish music. There seems to be little interest among young Jews who want to pray to listen to a Cantor sing. Jews today are interested in melodies that are easy to learn, upbeat and with enough repetition so that, if you don't know the tune at the beginning of the prayer, you are singing along at the end. They would rather chant a wordless niggun then to listen to a Hazzan lead a service. I know of Cantors that have embraced this new music and have had much success in guiding others how to use it to lead a service. I have also seen Cantors who belittle this music and insist that the only “real” cantorial music is that from the beginning of the last century. While there is still a following for this kind of music among seniors, and this music may have some life yet on the concert circuit, old style cantorial music is quickly becoming a liability for congregations seeking new, younger members. The issue is not about using musical instruments on Shabbat. I don't think that younger Jews really care at all about the pros and cons of this discussion. It is all about if the music itself is engaging and uplifting. The rest is merely a matter of personal preference. If the music is right, whether or not there is a guitar, flute, piano or if it is all acapella, just is not an issue.

Finally, Jews today, young and mid-life Jews, want to know that they have made a difference in the world. Many of them were responsible for service projects in high school and took social action spring breaks in college. Now they are successful in business but they look out the windows of their corner offices and wonder if their lives have made any difference to the world at all. Social Action/Political Action (SA/PA) is missing in their lives and synagogues are in a unique position to provide guidance in this area. Certainly there are some standard projects that need to continue. Services to the elderly, to the homeless and hungry are all important. Giving to Federation and other Jewish causes is also part of this mix. But these Jews want to get their hands dirty. I have seen synagogues start food co-ops to provide local grown food for their members, organizing farmers' markets in their parking lots. A bus load of Jews has gone way out of town to help an organic farmer weed his garden. Picking up litter from the highway, mentoring at risk students, writing to legislators and lobbying for Jewish causes, writing letters to the editor and opinion columns for newspapers and blogs are other possible projects. Party politics may not be the best course for a synagogue but there are a host of issues that are non-partisan and even issues of interest for interfaith dialogue that all can be part of a congregational SA/PA program.

To do all of this, a synagogue needs to be connected to the world. Sections of the synagogue should have a wireless connection to the internet so meetings can be enhanced with video conferencing and so that questions can be quickly answered. Information should be distributed through websites and social networking sites. Synagogues should make sure that almost all office transactions can be performed on the internet even if the synagogue office is closed. (We find that parents often are online late at night and this is when they decide to attend a synagogue event.) In our 24/7 world, it is important for synagogues to at least be open 24/6. Should the daily minyan be able to text a call for the tenth person?

There are still issues with synagogues that remain unresolved. There is a great question about whether or not a synagogue needs a big building anymore. In an age where everything can be outsourced, we may not need to maintain expensive buildings. Meetings can be held in a multipurpose room or in the homes of members. Sanctuaries may need movable seating rather then fixed pews so that the room can be flexible for when there are more or less people praying and so that the room can be used for more than one or two days a week. Clearly when there are multiple minyanim sharing the space, a larger building with many prayer/meeting spaces can work. It may be better for everyone if smaller groups can come together to share space and responsibilities and maybe share volunteers so that empowered Jews can pray and be involved in different activities as their personal/family situation evolves over time.

Dues are another difficult issue. Should there be membership in the community or should it all be a la carte? Do we need large staffs to do the work or should we go small and rely on volunteers to carry much of the heavy lifting at the synagogue? Can we raise enough from the sale of holiday tickets and donations to keep synagogue doors open? Should we look to a “community organizing” model where people who are served pay to keep the service going? Does a synagogue need to provide food after every service or should we rely on our members to sponsor a kiddush by actually bringing food rather than just making a donation?

There is a difficult issue of Bar/Bat Mitzvah. Can we continue to turn an entire service over to the family of a Bar/Bat Mitzvah for their “event” or is it even possible to limit the celebration to just one small part of a Shabbat Service? Does a synagogue have control over the services or can families create their own service that takes place under the synagogue “umbrella” but not necessarily in the “main” service\?. Should there be celebrations in the “auxiliary” minyanim or do all life cycle celebrations have to be a part of the “main” service? There may not be one answer to all of these questions.

We need to stop arguing the details of Halacha. Other than Rabbis and synagogue officers, Jews today do not care at all about the things we are arguing. They don't care about the length of the service, they don't care about musical instruments. They are not concerned with the details of Kashrut. They are not concerned with riding on Shabbat. Once they are a part of a community/synagogue that meets their educational and spiritual needs, they will follow along the halachic path that comes with it. After all, Chabad does not seem to have a problem with their Orthodoxy once they have attracted the many Jews who came looking for serious learning and prayer. How much more so will modern Jews be comfortable in an egalitarian synagogue that welcomes mixed marriages and gay singles and families?

Clearly there are more questions than answers but these are the parameters of the directions we need to address. Synagogues can not act like General Motors and assume that people will always want to buy whatever it is that we are selling. That proved to the be short path to bankruptcy. To grow and flourish, we need to rethink the primary mission of a congregation. Synagogues can no longer be a Beit Tefillah, Beit Sefer and Beit Kenesset, a house of prayer, study and assembly. We need to establish our mission around actions: Torah, Avoda and Gemilut Hasadim; Study, Prayer and Acts of Kindness/Tzedakah. We need to listen more to the needs of Jews today and retool our most basic institutions to serve our community.

Rabbi Tarfon teaches: The day is short, the task is great, the workers are indolent but the reward is great and the Master is insistent. [Pirke Avot 2:20]

Let us move forward together.

The Letter

2010-04-01T11:58:00.000-05:00

This is an exchange about issues in Conservative Judaism from the Shefa Network . The issues raised are important and I have added my reply to the end. I have changed the names of the writers to protect their privacy. It began with the link to the article in the Boston Globe. You can find it at this link:
http://www.boston.com/yourtown/brookline/articles/2010/03/28/conservative_judaism_struggling_with_changing_demographics/

This is how it started:
On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 10:47 PM, Gary G wrote: Thank you very much for distributing this profoundly important article.
The Conservative movement needs to wake up quickly and recognize that there are some fundamental issues that are effectively shutting young singles and couples out of existing Conservative congregations.
Besides not offering spiritual and educational experiences that create a draw for this demographic, there is the problem of the economic status of many younger Jews making it difficult for them to purchase homes that are within walking distance of most Conservative synagogues, and how, in general, it is an incredibly expensive proposition to establish an actively participating Conservative Jewish household which, in the end, creates a huge and often insurmountable disincentive for young people to get involved at a point in their life when their incomes are limited in comparison to the expenses they face.
I forwarded this article to my 29-year-old daughter who is an accomplished software engineer and manager in a small high-tech firm and her main comment was the incredible frustration that she feels with the fact that in her community, in order to live within walking distance of a Conservative synagogue and own a home in that neighborhood (never mind the costs of sending children to religious school or day school), one needed to be able to afford a home in a market whose bottom end is well above what she could reasonably afford. So she has chosen to be a home owner over being located close to the Conservative synagogue and lives in a comfortable home in a decent working-class generally non-Jewish neighborhood that is across town from where the Conservative synagogues are located. But it means making a significant effort to travel across town to the upper class neighborhood where the synagogue is located, and knowing that it will not be possible to honor the Sabbath by not walking to shul because of the fact that she can only afford to live in a neighborhood that is several miles away from the synagogue. And she is a Jewishly identified young woman who celebrates Shabbat and the holidays and went to a community day school through the junior grades.
And I don't think that her circumstances are unique.
This is a problem that really needs to be addressed in a creative way by the Conservative movement.
Wishing all a Chag Sameach and hope that your Seders were enjoyable and memorable.
Kol Tuv,
Gary

Then came this response
On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 11:33 AM, Darcy F. wrote:

Thank you very much to those who opened the discussion of factors that may exclude young Jewish adults from active participation in Conservative Judaism. I would like to add a few more observations from the perspective of someone who's 35 and still more or less fits into the "young adult" rubric.

The residential geography issue that Gary Goldberg addressed is important. The dilemma of whether to live within walking distance of shul or buy a home in an affordable neighborhood far away from shul is a common one, but sometimes the choices are even starker than that. When I was on the academic job market several years ago, I went to six on-campus (i.e., final-round) job interviews. Three of the six institution were located in towns with no Conservative synagogue. One town had a Reconstructionist synagogue, which wasn't exactly what I wanted but probably would have sufficed; the other two institutions were each located 50-80 miles away from the nearest synagogue I would have been willing to attend, meaning that there was simply no way I could work at either of these institutions and also go to shul on a regular basis. A close friend of mine recently took a job at a small college in a small town that is over an hour's drive from the nearest synagogue of any stripe. Her geographic isolation, combined with a demanding work schedule, is so acute that she wasn't even able to attend (or host) a Passover seder this year. She was heartbroken. Before you judge Jews who knowingly choose to live in towns with little or no Jewish community, remember that they're facing limited job choices within an unpredictable economic landscape. They have spent years preparing to practice their professions, and they want to take the job offers that will allow them to serve their fellow men in the ways in which they are prepared to do so. This, no less than shul attendance, is a form of tikkun olam. Being obliged to choose between practicing your religion and doing the work you care about, believe in, and can do well is going to be heart-breaking, whichever choice you ultimately make.

Another practical problem that some young Jews face is pressure to work on Shabbat and chag. In recent decades, the concept of the weekend has fallen by the wayside in many professions. Some employers simply assume that young professionals are available to work six or seven days a week; some combine the standard five-day week with an extensive program of weekend conferences, training programs, and other extras. Getting time off for holidays that fall on weekdays can be tricky. U.S. law requires companies with more than fifteen employees to "reasonably accommodate" their employees' religious observances unless doing so would cause the employer "undue hardship." This rather vague law leaves observant Jews dependent on the good will of their employers and colleagues. In cities with large Jewish populations and in companies and institutions that have considerable experience with observant Jewish employees, this often works out just fine. In other settings, Jews can easily be pressured-- or required-- to work on major holidays. This pressure falls most heavily on younger Jews, who are less established in their communities and careers and have less collegial good will to draw on. Even in superficially hospitable settings, there may be friction beneath the surface. An Ivy League Hillel rabbi once told me that he fielded multiple telephone calls every autumn from professors who wanted to know whether Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah were "real" holidays. The professors explained that they were under the impression that certain Jewish students were simply inventing holidays in order to get out of class. When attitudes like this are prevalent among non-Jews-- even very highly educated ones-- it's not surprising that many young Jews cave to social pressure to go to school or work on Jewish holidays. They do not wish to be cast as lazybones or liars.

A third issue is diversity. The American Jewish community is very, very white and, even at this late date, a trifle xenophobic in some quarters. To those of us who were raised a generation after the Civil Rights Movement, who attended genuinely integrated schools and colleges, who live in racially integrated neighborhoods and spend most of our days in integrated workplaces, it can feel strange to walk into a lily-white synagogue community. It's less noticeable in a congregation of twenty or thirty, but when, on the High Holidays, I walk into a room of 200-300 daveners and see not a single person of color, I sometimes feel disconcerted. Though Conservative synagogues tend to be more socially liberal than Orthodox ones, some congregants are still rather quick to comment on any sort of physical difference. Even I (fair skin, brown hair, blue eyes) have sometimes been subjected to speculative disquistions about how I "don't look Jewish." I imagine that Jews who have fairer hair or darker skin hear these comments more often than I do. I recoil-- not just because such comments make me feel uncomfortable around the particular person who made the remark, but also because they make me ashamed of the social environment that tolerates such commentary.

In the long run, being appropriately welcoming towards Jews of color, prospective converts, non-Jewish spouses of Jews, and interested spectators will probably go a long way towards making not just Jews of color but also younger white Jews who are accustomed to function in "diverse" settings feel more at home in the synagogue. I have two specific suggestions that might help. In the last couple years, the JCC of Manhattan has run a series of programs under the banner of "Jewish multiculturalism": an Ethiopian Shabbat dinner, an Indian Jewish Purim celebration, and so forth. I find it tremendously moving and comforting to celebrate Shabbat with a room full of people who exhibit varied complexions and accents and who, as a bonus, are eating food that is not kugel. I would also encourage Conservative synagogues to partner more with churches, mosques, and community organizations to conduct basic tikkun olam projects like food drives and blood drives. The goal of this would be to establish that the synagogue is a community institution that engages and serves the surrounding community, not just the Jews. Non-Jews should feel comfortable coming to their local synagogue for a food drive, a class, or a community event. The more open, inclusive, and engaged with the local community a synagogue is, the more likely young Jews are to feel proud of it and to want to affiliate.

Needless to say, these issues are tricky. It's inevitable, I think, that living Jewishly will constrain where one can live and what work one can do to a certain extent, and that's not all bad. As Frasier once observed on the eponymous sitcom, tough choices can be good for us because they teach us about who we are. But some of the choices facing young Jews today are so tough that they're unwholesome, both for the individual and for the community. A Jew should not have to give up hope of owning a home or of doing the work he wants to do in order to live near a synagogue and remain Shabbat and holiday-observant. There has to be a middle way. Part of the solution might involve reaching out in innovative ways to underserved neighborhoods and underserved towns; part of it might involve publicizing the nature of Shabbat and holiday observance and lobbying for public policies that are more respectful of such observance; part of it might involve actively encouraging conversion to Judaism in the hope of fostering a larger and more engaged population of young American Jews, who would eventually sustain a critical mass of involved Jews in a larger number of communities. I realize that all of these suggestions are likely to be controversial. Thank you to those who read so far!

Respectfully,

Darcy

My Reply:
Darcy,

You and Gary bring up some very important points about Conservative Judaism basing your remarks on the article from the Boston Globe. The issue of falling membership in our movement has a great deal to do with changes in where Jews are living. Remember, that Conservative synagogues over 50 years old, were probably founded in "inner city" settings and, as Jews moved out to affordable housing, the synagogues moved with them. Now, as cities gentrify, will we see synagogues migrate back to the city? Perhaps but I think the independent minyan movement shows us that the young Jews moving back into the renovated apartments downtown will find their own spiritual home, creating in the process their own synagogues.

It was the Conservative Movement however, that first declared (rightly or wrongly depending on who you ask) that riding to synagogue on Shabbat does not make a person a "sinner". This "heter" may be horribly abused in the suburbs but that does not make it inoperable for those who wish to have a Shabbat in places where there is affordable housing but no synagogue. Riding to synagogue (but not other places) is only one aspect of Shabbat observance and the need to ride to synagogue and find a Shabbat Community there, does not make a Jew a "Shabbat desecrater". We all make allowances in our Shabbat observances when there are other issues pressing on us and we work hard our whole life to increase our Shabbat observance until we are happy in balancing Shabbat and the rest of our life.

When I was in rural Connecticut, there was an old synagogue there, founded in 1909 that had only a few Jewish families left. One year, they decided to put in the local paper that they were sponsoring a "corn party" at the end of the Summer. To their surprise, over 100 local Jews showed up, Jews who had no idea that there was a synagogue nearby. I suspect that even in far flung places there are more Jews than we imagine, only waiting for someone to convene a minyan. That is how almost every synagogue has gotten its start.

It many surprise you but your parents and grandparents, when they were starting their working life, also had to make the difficult decisions between work and Shabbat/Hag. You can find a great essay on it in Hermann Wolk's book, "This is My God" (first published in 1959) That is the lot of those of us who live in the diaspora. In Israel, Jewish holidays are national holidays. So we ask if we can have off from work/school, and we work on Sundays and late into the night to make up our lost hours. We rely on the good feelings of our supervisors and bosses to understand that if they can accommodate our religious needs, then we will be happy to help with other staffing problems, like working on Christmas or during Christian Holy Week etc.

As for the diversity issue, that is something we need to teach our congregations. Conservative synagogues have only recently decided to get into the "social action" world, and partner with other congregations and other faiths and denominations. You are correct, Darcy, we have not done very well in this area and I do believe, like you, it is a key ingredient in attracting young members to our failing congregations. Social action, serious Jewish education (another of our failings) and, as the Boston Globe article mentions, multiple services to meet the many different kinds of Jews out there, these three will go a long way to helping you, Gary and others find their way to a meaningful, spiritual Judaism that is sponsored by the Conservative movement.

Nothing in Judaism is handed to us on a silver platter. If you really seek the kind of community you describe, then put it out there with our social network and see which friends are also looking. That is the first step to finding what you want from Judaism. You can build it yourself, join with a group an existing congregation and work together to get it to evolve toward you needs and goals, or you can compromise your observances for a short time, sighing like Franz Rosenzweig "Not Yet!" (a quote also widely abused) If you really intend to increase your observance over your lifetime, then, like everything else in life, if you really want it, it will eventually become possible, often sooner then one might think. ("If you will it, it will not [for long] be a dream")

Darcy, you ask all the right questions and you instinctively know the answers. But you will have to do the work needed to make your spiritual dreams come true. And that will make them all the sweeter in the end.

Randy Konigsburg,
Rabbi
Delray Beach, FL

To Life, To Life L’chaim

2010-03-23T19:28:00.000-05:00

I stayed up late the other night to watch the US House of Representatives’ historic vote to bring health care to all citizens. I kept thinking, as the votes were counted, that it is about time that the United States joined the rest of the civilized world in providing affordable health care to all. It was quite a political/historical moment. Usually I don’t like to comment on political issues. There are many people who are paid lots of money to speak intelligently on political issues. I am a pulpit Rabbi and my main concern is the well being of the members of my congregation. So my political opinions are all my own and subject to change when I have the chance to do some more research on the facts.

But Health Care is not just a political issue, it is also a moral issue. Judaism has had a long standing concern for the most vulnerable in society. The poor and oppressed have, since the time of the Torah, been singled out as needed to be defended by those in power in society. The list from the Torah is long. We are forbidden to oppress the orphan and widow. We have to let a slave go free if we injure his body. When we free a slave, we have to make sure that he has what he needs to start life over. We need to set aside the corners of our fields to be reaped by the poor. If we drop something while we are harvesting, it is left for the poor to glean. Land can’t be sold forever; it must return to its original owners at the beginning of the Jubilee year. Indentured servants are freed every seven years. There is a tithe that is set aside for the Levites and for the poor. We are commanded to lend without interest, cancel those debts in the sabbatical year and not refrain from lending when the sabbatical year is pending. This is not an exhaustive list but it is still impressive.

The Talmud even tries to legislate exactly how much we should invest in charity depending on if we want to be stingy, moderate or generous. One should not give too much or too little. It was forbidden to live in a city that did not have a community fund for the poor, a soup kitchen and a doctor among other necessities. All of this points to a social need to care for those who were at the bottom of society. To bury the indigent, to provide for poor brides, to care for the elderly, all of these were an essential part of communal responsibilities.

What we have here is Judaism trying to adjust capitalism to be fair to all those in society. It is one thing when society encourages and promotes those who work hard and earn a living. If one works hard enough and is smart, one could also become quite wealthy. Acquiring wealth is the main goal of a capitalistic economy. Judaism is not comfortable with the reality however, that while some people will rise to the top, there will also be those who sink to the bottom. Therefore, Judaism teaches that we have responsibilities to those who have not succeeded. Rambam declares that there are eight different levels of support for those who are in need. Some levels speak to the motivations of the giver. Some protect the dignity of the poor. The highest level is to help a person get back to work so that they can, eventually, support themselves and their families and no longer be in need of support.

Health Care is a part of this system. Since it is well known that health issues can bring an individual and a family to poverty, we have an interest in preventing this kind of poverty. Since the poor get sick and don’t have the means to visit a doctor, there is a potential that serious disease could be spread throughout the community. We are not permitted to do something that could endanger life, and health care is one way we prevent loss of life. Remember also, it is forbidden to live in a town that does not have a doctor. It is not a stretch to say that if the health care is not affordable, then what use is the doctor to the poor in the town?

There is a story of the “good citizens of Chelm” who had a dangerous road leading to the city and people would fall off the cliff and get hurt. After deliberations the citizens of Chelm decided to build a hospital at the base of the cliff. While building a hospital in that location could certainly save lives, how many more lives could be saved by investing in a proper “guard rail” at the edge of the road? When I heard so many representatives, opposed to health care crying out that government was interfering in people’s lives, I thought of that guard rail. It was as if they were saying: “Why should we interfere with people who are not careful on the road? What right do we have to declare that one stretch of road is dangerous and another is not?” Yet, Judaism insists that we have a moral responsibility to look out for each other, by building guardrails, promoting preventative medicine and by providing, for everyone, affordable health care. What good is Medicaid if it does not prevent families from having to lose virtually all their savings and resources before they can access health care? Real health care is care that applies to all members of society according to their ability to pay.

The free market philosophy is that, over time, the best services at the best prices will become available to everyone in society. The problem is that this philosophy can only work if all the service providers are committed to offering the best service at the best price. To prevent collusion between providers and to prevent agreements that subvert the free market to the benefit of the service providers, government needs to step in and foil those who would attempt to profit from the system in a corrupt way by creating an unfair advantage. We have seen how insurance companies all too often, move to protect their own interests rather than the health needs of the community. We hear stories of the abuses; the cancelled policies, the refused coverage, the exorbitant renewal premiums that make sure that those who are well, can get affordable coverage, but if one should have a condition that makes it impossible to get a new policy, the rates are adjusted to be so high that the policy becomes unaffordable and the sick must go without coverage. Regulation of insurance companies will guarantee that the best coverage will be offered at the best price and consumers will not be afraid to access their coverage due to fear of sudden cancellation.

I am sure that there will be many unscrupulous people who will try and defraud this new system as they have done with Medicare and Medicaid. I am sure that there will be provisions that will need to be adjusted, added or repealed. We are imperfect human beings and our ability to evade the law is great if we have the desire to do so. I have no doubt that we will be making changes in this Health Program for many years to come.

I can’t speak about if the Health Plan approved the other night will pay for itself. If it will or will not reduce the federal deficit. Whether or not it is good for the states that must provide the pooled coverage. Whether or not it will promote or kill jobs, or whether or not it will harm the economy. I will leave those questions to those who study this bill. I only know that we have a moral responsibility to see to it that every member of society has appropriate access to health care, so we all are able to live not only productive lives, but healthy lives as well.

Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show

2010-03-08T20:47:00.001-06:00

Parshat Ki Tissa
2010

Shabbat Shalom

This Shabbat we have read about the lowest moment in the history of our people in the wilderness. The people, anxious that Moses has been on the mountaintop so long, begin to fear that he has died and there is no one to lead them to the Promised Land. They have no leader and without Moses, who will bring to them the world of God? Our people were frightened and feeling alone.

So they start to demand a God that they can see. After all, Moses was their only link to the invisible God and now Moses is gone. Every other nation had a god or multiple gods that could be seen and worshipped directly. Can we really blame them for wanting a golden calf? Some scholars claim that the calf was really not a god at all; the calf was merely the pedestal upon which God would stand. God was invisible, riding on the back of the calf but the calf gave the Israelites a place to direct their prayers.

Others blame God for the golden calf. After all, God has left Israel in Egypt for hundreds of years. All their experience with religion had been in Egypt where there was a god for everything and the gods were larger than life. Some Sages claim it is like a parent that sets his son up in the hair styling business and puts the shop in a part of town where all the vain and shallow people congregate. Then the parent is shocked that his son has become vain and shallow. “Don’t blame your son,” the friends of the father say, “after all, you set him up in a bad part of town.” So too, it is God’s fault that Israel strayed, after all, God sent them to live among the Egyptians! Do you ever notice how when children get in trouble, they always find a way to blame the parent!

The details of the story focus on the sin of the people for demanding a god they could see. I look at these passages and understand that the people have a serious concern and there are no really good answers to their problems. Moses seems to have vanished. The people are lost and afraid. A god they can see would be their “security blanket”, to help them feel the closeness of God. The golden calf was an object they could point to, admire and direct their anxiety toward. I guess there is a bit of Aaron, Moses’ brother in me. I can’t help feeling sorry for the people. After all, could we honestly say that if we were in the same circumstances, we would have done better?

It is true that we don’t fashion gods out of gold anymore. But we do put our trust in lots of things that clearly are not God. We put our trust in our possessions, that they will protect us from hard times. We trust that our investments will be there to pay for our retirement and then are horrified to find out that when the economy takes a dive, that our investments are unreliable. And apparently we could not trust those who were supposed to prevent the misuse of our retirement funds, they too were fallible and could not prevent either Bernie Madoff or the financial crisis. Do we rely on our Doctors and Lawyers and Politicians to save us from tragedy? Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. People used to rely on Insurance to protect them from tragedy, but today we know that sometimes it is very hard to get an insurance company to pay what they owe us.

We also all have our superstitions that we rely upon to protect us. The lucky charm that we take with us when we leave our homes. The mezuzah that we think will protect us at home and the Jewish jewelry that somehow brings us under God’s protecting wings. Dare we ask ourselves what we are really expecting to happen when we stand up and add our friends’ and loved ones’ names to the Mishebayrach for the sick? Is kissing the Torah s sign of respect or do we expect good luck? What about if we kiss the Rabbi? (No, that would be a bad idea. Way too many germs out there.) We may know that there is a God that we cannot see, but we rely all too often on things we can see to save us from the dark forces that surround us.

So then, what SHOULD we do to face the future with confidence and certainty? If Judaism, if God, knows that we are insecure human beings, what does our religion and our faith have to teach us about where we should look if we seek to find God?

The first place we should look if we seek the image of God is in the face of the people around us. Not just those who sit around us in synagogue, but those among whom we live, work, eat and play. Each human being is unique from each other, but all of us are created in the image of God. It is not in our differences that God can be found, rather, God is found in the core parts of each and every one of us, deep inside where we are all the same. I am not talking about raising up one person to the level of God; I am talking about finding that spark of the divine that exists in every person, old and young, male and female, religious and secular, Democrat or Republican, black, white, red or yellow, rich or poor.

I think Moses, when all was said and done, understood the fear and anxiety in the people. When he returns to the mountain, he too is unsure and insecure. Did he do the right thing in punishing the people? How could he blame them for their sin if they really did not understand the full meaning of a God that sees but cannot be seen? He needs God to forgive the people but this is the God who destroyed the world with a flood, and overthrew the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins. What would prevent God from destroying the Israelites for this grave and serious breach of the new Jewish law? Moses does not know what to say to God about the people and he is unsure himself about the nature of this God, who saved Israel from Egyptian slavery, but demands complete and perfect loyalty. Moses returns to the mountain and returns to God with one request, to see the “presence of God”. What Moses actually sees is the subject of Jewish mystical literature. I am only concerned with what Moses hears.

He hears that famous passage :
וַיַּעֲבֹר ‘ה עַל-פָּנָיו וַיִּקְרָא ‘ה ‘ה אֵל רַחוּם וְחַנּוּן אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם וְרַב-חֶסֶד וֶאֱמֶת. נֹצֵר חֶסֶד לָאֲלָפִים נֹשֵׂא עָו‍ֹן וָפֶשַׁע וְחַטָּאָה וְנַקֵּה

“The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord! The Lord! A God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin:”

When Moses hears this he understands that God has forgiven the people, because the essence of God is forgiveness. If we are to understand that human beings are created in the image of God, then we must also understand that these qualities of God are the qualities that we too must cultivate if we are to discover the nature of God’s essence.

When we are gracious and full of compassion, we can see the point of view of others easily and can work to ease their discomfort and to calm their souls. When we do, we can “see” the image of God at work. When we are slow to anger and when we fill our hearts with abundant kindness, we are bringing the presence of God into the world. When kindness leads us to forgiveness of even the most dark sins, we can easily experience the divine in ourselves and in others. When we bring these qualities of God down to earth, we are creating the foundation so that together we can move forward. Life is no longer stuck in the present or in the past. When we bring God into the world, we also make possible the future.

A Hasidic Rabbi once offered this prayer to his students, “if you can treat every person next to you as if he were the messiah, waiting for just one more act of kindness so that his presence can be revealed and the world redeemed, if you can treat that person to every act of kindness, then even if that person is NOT the messiah, it will not matter.”

We bring God into the world when we reach out our hands to those who are in need, both Jews and non-Jew, no matter if they are in Delray Beach, the United States, Chile, Taiwan or Haiti. When we hear of earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis or fire and we open our hearts, our hands, our homes and our wallets to those who are alone, afraid and suffering, we are bringing God into the world, and making the presence of God into a reality. When we visit someone who is sick, comfort someone who is bereaved, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, stand up for the oppressed and clothe the naked, we have created the image in which we can focus our prayers and our eyes.

The golden calf should never be worshipped; we should instead worship the golden heart. We should not berate others for not being pious enough, rather we should aspire to live the kind of life that we would like to see in others, and then shower all those around us with the kindness and concern that will make others sure that if they too seek God’s presence, they only need to emulate your actions and open their hearts to others. We need to be less judgmental, and more forgiving. We need to be less impatient and slower to anger. We need to be less strict with the law and more merciful in our dealings with others. And above all we must be kind.

When we feel alone in the wilderness, when we feel anxious about life and insecure about what the future holds for us, when we find ourselves looking for a Moses to lead us out of the wilderness and into the promised land, we need look no further than our own hands and our own hearts to unlock the secret of God’s presence in our lives and in the world. God is not on the mountain top where we must climb to find God. And God is not across the sea that we must sail far and wide to find God. And God is not deep within the earth requiring our strength and stamina to find God. God is in every meaningful relationship. God is found whenever we open our hearts and God is close at hand whenever we turn to our neighbor in compassion and kindness.

May we all find God today and every day, in our actions and in our hearts as we say…

AMEN AND SHABBAT SHALOM

Chantilly Lace

2010-03-02T19:42:00.000-06:00

Parshat Tetzaveh
2010

Shabbat Shalom

There is a lot happening this week with our Torah reading. This is Shabbat Zachor, the Shabbat we pause to remember Amalek and those, throughout history who have hated Jews for no apparent reason. It was enough that we were vulnerable and different, that made attacks on the weakest and infirm possible. On this Shabbat we remember that the only real recourse we have against those who have this causeless hatred of our people, is to be on our guard and always be prepared to do battle against them, as Joshua does in our Maftir and Saul does in the Haftara.

This is also the Shabbat before Purim. As Shabbat ends tonight, we will gather not only to read the Megillah but to also dress in costume and let ourselves engage in all manner of silliness. All too soon it will be Pesach and we will have some serious religious work to do, but for now, we can dress up and act out all in the name of good religious fun.

But, in the plain vanilla world of the Parsha, we had a Torah reading that would be greatly appreciated by those observing Fashion Week in the Garment District in New York City. Last week the top models in the country walked in shows sponsored by the greatest fashion houses in this country and around the world. Buyers from all over came to see what was in style for the coming year and begin to make the purchases that will show up in showrooms and department stores this coming fall. In the Torah, we see God as fashion designer, setting out the patterns for the clothing for the High Priest and for all the others who would officiate in the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary that is being constructed.

Why all the fuss about clothing? Because clothing does make a difference. If you suddenly come across some rather large teens in a dark alley, you may feel afraid until you realize they are dressed in the uniform of Boy Scouts. If you are feeling ill, a nurse in uniform can go a long way in helping you begin to feel better. I was in the airport in Atlanta with thousands of people walking in every direction. Suddenly, a group of soldiers entered the main hall and everyone stopped what they were doing to applaud the soldiers, thanking them for putting their lives on the line and defending our country. Clothing can and does make a big difference in how we look at others and how they look at us.

And it applies right down to Temple Emeth here in Delray Beach. It applies to the way we dress for prayer in synagogue. It always fascinates me that many Jews make such a big deal over head coverings when, according to Jewish law, there is no Halacha, no law at all that commands men to have their heads covered. In fact, Jewish law only requires women who are married to have their heads covered out of modesty. Somewhere in the thirteenth century Jews started to wear special hats that eventually evolved into Kipot. We don’t know when or where the custom started. Some scholars suspect that kipot evolved out of the special “Jews Hats” that some medieval communities forced their Jews to wear. Whatever the start of kipot may have been, it has become almost a standard of Jewish practice today and no man should pray without a kipah on his head.

The only real Jewish garment for prayer is the Tallit. A Tallit is any rectangular piece of cloth with special fringes at each of the four corners. The fringes consist of 8 strings and 5 knots and are called Tzitzit. The gematria of the term “tzitzit” equals 600 and if you add the strings and knots you get 613, the number of Mitzvot. We wear the Tallit so we can look at the tzitzit and remember to do all the mitzvot. Seeing the tzitzit is so important that we do not require a Tallit at night, since we cannot see the fringes in the dark!

Some of you know that I am a big supporter of women also wearing a Tallit. There is no Jewish requirement for women to wear a Tallit. It is one of the positive mitzvot that must be done at a particular time, so women are exempt from this mitzvah; exempt, but not forbidden to wear it. The exemption stems from a time when women’s time was not their own. They had responsibilities to the home, the family and to their chores that came before other time bound mitzvot. In Jewish history, there are not many women who chose to wear a Tallit, but there were some who did so, and nobody told them they could not wear it.

Since the middle of the 19th century, when modern denominations of Judaism began, there was a strong backlash against any changes in Jewish Law. Somehow it became fixed that women should not wear a Tallit. In studying the history of this, it has always seemed to me that it was a way to keep women away from serious involvement in ritual matters. They were not allowed to wear a Tallit and without a Tallit they could not lead or participate in services. So, for over 100 years women were kept away from serious religious practice.

If you ask an orthodox Jew about this kind of segregation of the sexes, he might say (I am less sure of what orthodox women might say) that women have their own special role to play in Judaism. Women’s spirituality is based in the home and men’s spirituality is based in the synagogue. They are two equal but separate kinds of faith. I feel that in a modern world where men should be doing more to help raise a family and do the housework, then women should also be free to express their spiritual feelings in synagogue, on an equal footing with the men. And that means women should be free to wear a Tallit.

What complicates this matter is that women are exempt from the mitzvah of Tallit. It would be unfair to suddenly “require” women to wear a Tallit in shul. A requirement such as that would instantly create a whole new category of sinners in Judaism. It is not going to happen. There is no reason a woman should be required to wear a Tallit to come on the bima for an aliyah or to lead the service. If a woman should choose to wear a Tallit, then that is a decision that needs to be made with much thought and consideration.

Tallit is not a ritual that can be taken lightly. If a woman should want to wear a Tallit she should commit to it for a serious length of time. It is not something one wears for a special occasion but then opts out the following week. It takes time to get used to wearing a Tallit, and to feel the difference in prayer as one gets over the sense that “everyone is looking at me as if I am strange for doing this”. In many cases, women have chosen not to wear the same kind of a Tallit that a man would wear. To be a proper spiritual garment, it should, like a man’s Tallit, reflect our feelings of individuality in prayer. Men may personalize the kind of Tallit they wear, the color of the Tallit and the kind of Atarah, the neckband that can personalize their Tallit. Women today have their own types of Tallitot, made of more feminine material, in softer colors and reflecting better their spiritual needs. I have seen women make their own Tallitot, sewing the hems and tying their own fringes as a way of connecting with the meaning behind the ritual. I have seen grandmothers work on a Tallit with their granddaughters, incorporating the colors and style of each one into the new Tallit. I have seen women ask close friends and mentors to help tie one of the tzitzit to give that corner added significance. Under the atarah of the Tallit my sister wears, is a bowtie that our father used to wear. When she wears her Tallit, she is reminded not just of the mitzvot, but of our father, who taught all of us the meaning of the mitzvot.

If you are sitting near a woman who is wearing a Tallit today, ask her about the Tallit. There is often a story behind how it was made and why she chooses to wear it. I ask those women who are regulars here at Shabbat services to think about the spiritual influences in your life, and if there is a way to translate that learning into a Tallit that you might be proud to wear. Ask in the Sisterhood Gift Shop if they can find some examples of women’s Tallitot that you can see to get an idea about what a Tallit in your life might mean to you. What would the men in your life say if you wanted to wear a Tallit? What would your daughter say? What would your granddaughters say? Contemplate what a Tallit would mean in your life and think about what your mother might say, if you were to tell her? Many of the women in the last generation before us would have loved to contemplate what we are considering but it was just too far beyond their reach. We live in different times and I suspect they would be proud of how their daughters have chosen to express themselves Jewishly.

And as for the men, who ARE required to wear a Tallit in shul, there is no reason you have to settle for the plain small Tallitot that we keep in our lobby. Even a man’s Tallit can be an expression of his spiritual feelings and his own personal spiritual journey. Ask your children and grandchildren to think about what kind of a Tallit might reflect their appreciation for the spiritual guidance you have given them over the years.

The Tallit is a very powerful and meaningful ritual in Judaism, as much today as it was in past generations. The only difference is that we can extend it to the women who now pray and study by our side. I ask our women here today, don’t say, “Why should I wear a Tallit?” consider instead, “What could a Tallit mean to me?” Start that discussion, with your family, your friends and your Rabbi. It could be the beginning of an important spiritual journey and a closer relationship with God.

What we wear does matter. Think about it and follow your heart toward God. May our awareness of the Mitzvot lead us to God, and may we place before us a reminder of where our faith is taking us as we say…

AMEN AND SHABBAT SHALOM

Our House is a Very Very Very Fine House

2010-02-21T20:54:00.000-06:00

Parshat Terumah

2010

Right from the beginning of this week’s Parsha, God announces that the people should build a sanctuary to God so that God can dwell among the people. It is a very radical request from God and the theological and practical results of this request can affect almost every aspect of our lives. It seems so easy, build a temple to God. But, as my bible students will tell you, there is nothing easy or simple in the Torah. There are many different translations, commentaries and ways of understanding a text. We can easily miss something important if we read past a simple verse too quickly.

In our Parsha, the Torah goes on to list all the physical items needed to build a portable sanctuary. There are boards and screens, wall hangings and tent covers. Indoor and outdoor furniture. It would lead us to think that from the beginning, this Parsha is about building a building for God. If we look at the first verse of Parshat Terumah, however, we see that the reason for the building is not for God at all. It is so that God can be among the people. It is less about a dwelling place for God and more about a meeting place between God and human beings.

What do you think about sharing public space with God? Just how does one spend quality time with the Creator of the Universe? Ancient people thought that to be in the presence of God, one should use that time to share with God a meal. That is the reason why animals were sacrificed in ancient days, A sacrifice was just the way we could eat a nice meal together with God. But think about that image, God and human beings sharing a meal. Eating with God raises in our minds all kinds of strange questions. What does one say when one is sharing a meal with God? Does God pay attention if we use the wrong fork? Does God forgive us if we have a stray piece of spinach caught in our teeth? Should we share the usual small talk that is customary at our family table or should we think of the meal as if it was a formal state dinner? Should we only speak when our “host” speaks to us and even then, we deal only with “lofty” ideas? After dinner does one share a good cigar with God? A sniffer of brandy?

Can you see where this is going? Perhaps what we need to do is to consider that maybe the Torah is not talking about a real house at all. Maybe Torah wants us to consider what it would take to spend some quality time contemplating God. Our surroundings are not as important as what we feel and how we respond to being in the presence of God. For example, think about the furniture in the Mishkan; a box that contains the tablets of the law, and some historical artifacts from the time our people spent in the desert. There is a candelabra, a table with bread on it; an alter for sweet smelling incense. These are not things that God needs. God does not need historical reminders, oil lamps, bread and incense. We need them to give us some sensory appreciation since God is beyond all of our senses.

According to the Torah, where can we find a visual representation of God? To see the face of God we will have to look into the faces of the people around us. We are created in the image of God and if we seek to find God, we need to look to others and look deep inside ourselves. What does it mean when the Torah tells us that God wants to dwell among us? First of all, it means that the relationships we have with other people are where a true understanding of God can be found.

When we are kind to each other, when we reach out to help each other. When we take the time to think about how someone else feels before we act, we are creating a space where God would like to dwell. When we act, even against our own self interest, if we are doing it for the right reasons, then God will want to dwell among us. Think about Yom Kippur, the holiest day on our calendar. Getting God to forgive us is actually quite easy but it is easy only after we have reached out to receive forgiveness from each other. It is easy to be at peace with God, we only need to first be a peace with our neighbors.

What applies to the Temple of Jerusalem can also apply here in our synagogue. We know what we need to do to be in God’s presence right here in Delray Beach. Our surroundings are beautiful. This synagogue has created a quiet space that helps us promotes our contemplation of God. But the surroundings of Temple Emeth are not for God. The comfortable chairs, the artwork, the siddurim and humashim, these are all here for us to use. They do not represent or call down God to our community. It is our actions, the Mitzvot that we perform, the acts of kindness we show each other that make this a place where God would love to join us.

I often look at this saying in front of the ark. Da Lifney mi atah omed. “Know before whom you stand.” It is a rather profound statement, deeply spiritual if we take the time to consider it. “Know before whom you stand.” Think about what it is asking us to do. What does it mean to know? Can we know anything about God. What does it mean “Before?” Is God in front of us, behind us, beside us or all around us? “Whom.” Just what kind of a “who” is God anyway? Clearly God has no body, but is God just a conscious idea? Is God consciousness itself? Can we locate ourselves before God if we are not sure even who or what God is? I am standing, but who am I in relationship to God? God is eternal and I am finite. God is everywhere and I am here. God is good and I struggle to do good. Who am I and why do I deserve to stand before God? What if it doesn’t really mean that I have to stand but it means I should consider that God dwells with me all the time and I have to live my life contemplating just that thought. This saying over the ark seems to be telling us that we should treat every minute as if we are being watched and judged by God.

That idea is a very frightening thought. Could we even exist if we were being judged by God all the time? How could we ever live up to the standards that God has for us? We know in our hearts that sometimes we do the right thing for the wrong reasons. Sometimes we don’t do what is right because we are tired, frustrated or angry. If we were always in God’s presence and if God were always judging us we would soon become paranoid or depressed. We could never live up to that standard, no matter how hard we may try. This is why it is so important never to forget that God loves us. We are standing in the presence of a loving God. A God who cares about what we do, about what we think and a God who wants us to live better lives.

God is our Creator, so God must be more like a parent than a judge. God knows our frailties and our faults, and God loves us anyway. Sometimes we do things in life because we know that our mother or father would have wanted us to act that way. It is the example of the loving relationship with our parents, a relationship that never dies, that can describe what our relationship with God must be like. God helps us live better lives and God loves us when we fall short, so we will have the strength and courage to try again.

I will get political here for just a minute, what do you think would be different if our political leadership contemplated their relationship with God in their deliberations and choose not to contemplate what the next election might bring? Such a political life would be filled with a representative trying to do what is the right thing for the people he or she represents and should that effort meet with failure, then our leaders would have to get back up and keep trying. Politicians who contemplate their relationship with God would be planning for the future and not deferring to the future what may not be politically expedient today.

When we build better relationships with our spouse, our children, our grandchildren, our brothers and sisters, our friends and neighbors; when we extend our hands and our hearts to others; When we feel the pain of those around us and let that pain move us to ease their pain; in all of this we are building a Mishkan, a sanctuary to God. A place where it is possible for God to dwell among us. When we are angry with each other, careless and inconsiderate, we do not create that holy space, and God is far away. With just a change in attitude, however, we can span the chasm and find ourselves once again in God’s presence.

It is fine to build beautiful buildings. It is better to build bautiful relationships. It is important to do the right thing. It is even better to have the right attitude. It is wonderful to be at peace with the world, it is even better to know that when we are at peace, we are in the presence of the Divine.

The Temple of Jerusalem is gone. We no longer have any of the furniture, wall hangings or sacred instruments. But we still know that God dwells among us. God is right here when we love our neighbor as our self. That is the sanctuary, that is the holy space, where God delights to dwell.

May we find our way to kindness and compassion and may they always lead us into the presence of God as we say…

AMEN AND SHABBAT SHALOM

I Fought the Law and the Law Won

2010-02-14T19:52:00.000-06:00

Parshat Mishpatim - Torah Study

Text:
א וְאֵלֶּה הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים אֲשֶׁר תָּשִׂים לִפְנֵיהֶם.
And these are the rules you shall set before them.

Commentary:
A. Knowledge of the law is to be the privilege and the obligation of the entire people, not the prerogative of specialists or of an elite class. [Etz Hayyim Torah commentary, p. 456 on our verse]

B. Rabbi taught: Be as attentive to a minor mitzvah as to a major one, for you do not know the reward for each of the mitzvot. [Talmud, Mishna Avot 2:1]

C. Our tradition has always understood that "mitzvah" embraces a range of meanings broader than "commandment" alone. This is certainly true of popular Jewish usage of the word mitzvah. In common usage the word is generally understood as "good deed." JTS renders our key term as "instructions" that were "enjoined upon" the Israelites and not only as "commandments" that they were "commanded." The range of meanings demanded by our tradition's use of the word over the centuries and to the present day is broader still. Those meanings include, but are not limited to, actions that we feel obligated to perform, that engage us, that we are responsible for, that we undertake out of love.
We must know what we as Jews are committed to do and why we do it before we tackle the more complex and difficult issues of halakhah. Conservative Jews have long debated, and still do, in what sense we are a "halakhic movement." Heschel—who liked to speak about the "polarity of halakhah and aggadah"—taught fifty years ago that we cannot begin to think about the matter of halakhah unless we have first gotten clear on mitzvah. Our intention is that this discussion of mitzvah will lead naturally to that one. [JTS Mitzvah Initiative, from the JTSA.edu website]
D. A loving parent does not show genuine love by telling a child, “Do whatever you want.” That would not indicate love, but lack of concern and responsibility. The truly loving parent says, “I care very much about you and although I cannot live your life for you, I want you to have the benefit of my experience.”Judaism is a religion of love because it does not leave people to find the way unaided. [Harold Kushner in “Likrat Shabbat”siddur by Sydney Greenberg]
Questions:
1. What does the word “Mitzvah” mean to you? Is it a command that you “must” do? If not, how do you approach the mitzvot in the Torah? Are they “good deeds”? “laws”? “suggestions”? Are mitzvot the most important part of Judaism? What might be more important?

2. If someone on the street told you that your shirt was ugly would you pay attention to him/her? If your spouse told you it was ugly, what would your reaction be? If a stranger told you not to steal, would you pay attention? If he assured you of a severe punishment would you then pay attention? If your parent told you not to steal would you pay attention? If God tells you not to steal would you pay attention? What role does the punishment play in observing mitzvot?

3. Why do we think that there are some mitzvot more important than others? How do we relate to the mitzvah of honoring parents that is different from shatnez (prohibited clothing made of mixtures of wool and flax)? Honoring parents comes with a reward (long life); does that make a difference? Why or why not?

Adon Olam

2010-02-14T13:34:00.000-06:00

I recently came across an essay by Rabbi David Hartman, from a few years ago, from a speech he gave in Los Angeles, CA. In speaking about the covenant that God made with the People of Israel, Rabbi Hartman gave three examples of how God views the covenant as one of love and not of authoritarianism. The first example he gave is from the dialogue between God and Abraham just before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is a telling moment that begins with God asking the question (to whom?) if God should share the divine plan for the cities with his servant Abraham. The fact that God even bothers to share the information with a “servant” is telling, but the story goes on. Abraham insists that God not destroy the righteous with the wicked. Abraham is not quoting a Biblical verse, or a halacha from some other source. There is this innate understanding in Abraham, it is his own “moral intuition” that brings him to question God’s actions. Then the bargaining begins. Why doesn’t God tell Abraham to stop his prayers since there are not even ten righteous people in the city? God must love the confrontation with his “partner” who feels morally strong enough to critique God.

The second example is from the Talmud. Rabbi Hartman notes that when God tries to intervene in the deliberations over the oven of Akhnai, Rabbi Joshua rebukes God saying, “Lo bashamayim hi!” “It is not in Heaven”. Halacha is a human invention based on what we know of what God has given us. God decided what would be in the Torah, now we get to decide what will be Halacha. In the Academy we get to tell God to be quiet and not interrupt our deliberations. Outside the Academy, what right do we have to criticize how God runs the world? We silence God in the house of study, God silences us when we confront the incomprehensible in our world.

Rabbi Hartman’s third example is the crossing of the Red Sea. This miracle is the paradigm of all miracles of God acting in history. Since the destruction of the Second Temple, we have been waiting for the next miracle, the arrival of the Messiah. That is why there were so many who opposed Zionism for trying to force God to redeem our exile and bring us back to our land. They thought that Zionism was a rejection of tradition. Instead, Zionism was an act of covenantal empowerment. We chose to learn agriculture, banking, and self defense and bring about our own redemption. We take responsibility for our own history. It was our own initiative that ended Jewish homelessness.

According to Rabbi Hartman, we should not be asking God to solve our problems, we should seek instead that God should be with us. He writes, “Therefore, for me, the spiritual moment in contemporary Jewish history is a covenant of love. Here, reward and punishment cannot work anymore in the modern world, because we have other forms of gratification and other ways of creating obedience to the law. God is now sought not because of a function but because God is God.”

In the struggle to understand what a “Conservative Jew” really is, much of our movement has gone off in a wrong direction. We have struggled with the concept of Halacha and observance, when to me; the real issue is if we have something to offer modern Jews. I can worry about those who are tied to the law and will not vary an inch, and those who are so unattached to Judaism that they don’t care anymore what God or humans have to say. This is what I worry about because I am a pulpit Rabbi and these two poles describe many in my congregation. But when I think about who I am, and what I am looking for in the world, Conservative Judaism teaches that in this covenant of love between God and humanity, we have to be responsible for this world and for what goes on here. God wants and expects us to struggle, argue, and ponder all the messiness of life and then do what we can do with what God has given us, to make this world better: To continue the process of Creation by striving to bring order out of chaos.

The God that many people seek is the God who tells Adam and Eve how to live their life and then punishes them with exile when they disobey. It is the God who destroys the world with a flood, saving Noah, so that humans will be better to each other. It is the God who confounds the languages of the people of Babel, when they decide to build a tower to heaven so they can wage war with God. I think they are looking for the wrong God. The Torah itself seems to teach us that God understands that this kind of a power arrangement does not work. Punishment does not make people obey. Destruction does not induce humanity to be kind to each other. (How else can you interpret Gen. 8:21?) God can confound the languages of the earth but people still seek to “wage war” against God.

So God chooses a different path. Out of the blue, God picks Abraham to begin a covenant that will guide just one nation (There are seventy nations in the Torah, Abraham is promised to be nation seventy-one). A covenant based not on punishment or anger, but on love. God gives us the tools we need and then nudges us from time to time with big ideas that help us move our society along. God does not want us to be perfect. God only wants us to keep trying to make ourselves and our world better. From time to time we silence God for interfering with our struggle (“Mother please, I’d rather do it myself!”) and sometimes God tells us to be silent if we complain that God is not helping us enough. (“You made your bed, now go lie in it.”) We wait for God’s miraculous redemption at our own peril. WE are the redemptive force in the world and through our actions we will tame the chaos and bring order to our messy world. Sometimes the Halacha will not fit into the system we created as well as we would like. But if our innate sense of Justice is anything like our ancestor Abraham’s, Halacha or not, we will keep trying to do the right thing. Maybe we will discover that in spite of our best hopes, things are not as good as we think they should be but we will learn from our mistakes and pick ourselves up and get back to work.

And God will love us anyway,

Forever.

Don’t’ Stop Thinking About Tomorrow

2010-01-30T20:36:00.001-06:00

Sermon Parshat Beshallach

2010–01–26

Shabbat Shalom

The story in this week’s parsha is not only about the epic battle between Pharaoh and Moses, but it is also about Moses leading the people of Israel. Ancient Israelites are not all that different from Jewish communities today. New things made them uncomfortable and they keep looking back, with nostalgia, about how good life was in Egypt.

But let us take a closer look at the story of the crossing of the sea . We all know the script: Pharaoh regrets letting the slaves go. He sends out the Egyptian army in pursuit. The army catches up with Israel and we find them trapped between the approaching army and the sea. The People of Israel are terrified. There is danger in every direction. Moses, Aaron and leadership of the tribes are not sure what they are supposed to do. One brave man, Nachshon ben Aminadav, leader of the tribe of Judah, and the brother in law of Aaron, moves forward and he enters the sea. The people then behold the greatest miracle of them all; the sea parts offering an escape for the Israelites.

But the people are still scared. Do you remember the movie, “The Ten Commandments?” As the waters part in the movie the people are filled with awe, but their faces also show they are very sacred. They start across hesitantly, looking over their shoulders at the advancing Egyptian army. With fear and trembling, they leave Egypt for the other side of the sea. But when they emerge on the other side, there is great relief; there is joy; music, singing and dancing. For that day, there was happiness in being saved and seeing the dreaded army of Egypt suddenly destroyed.

That is not only a story from our past; it is a paradigm for the future. The way into the future often starts with terror about unknowns, with danger in every direction. We are very happy to keep the things in our life the same and we only get up and go when there is no other choice. We get comfortable until we become too scared to stay in one place any longer.

This is true of ancient Israel, it is true right here in the United States of America in this age of Change, and it is true of Temple Emeth. There are challenges facing our congregation, issues that threaten not only our financial health, but the very existence of our community. It has been reported in our local newspapers, not just our congregation, but all senior congregations are in serious trouble. Membership is falling, synagogue membership is aging and younger members live elsewhere and, if they attend synagogue at all, they attend elsewhere. The research today shows that Jews want to live in communities with a mix of young and older families and they want their synagogues to have that same mix of members.

We are comfortable where we are, but we easily see that Egypt is attacking. We cannot survive as a community, as a congregation if we stand still. Look at some of the sister congregations around us. Deerfield Beach has merged with Habad to save itself. Coconut Creek and Margate are shrinking very quickly. There are no new or younger leaders willing to take on the issues. The established leadership has no one to whom to pass the leadership mantle.

We could just give up; we could just let it all fade away as the population of King’s Point slowly becomes less and less Jewish. Our membership continues to slowly decline, and the economy is not helping us either. More and more Jews are asking themselves if membership in a synagogue is worth the expense. Should we just close our doors? Just what do we have to offer new members that they can not get elsewhere, in their community clubhouse, in the local strip malls or on the street?

I was not brought to Delray Beach to oversee the end of Temple Emeth. We have some unique strengths that can help us not only weather this crisis but emerge, in just a few years, stronger and better. We don’t need to change what we are doing, we only need to expand the opportunities in our congregation to welcome those who still long for a Jewish spiritual experience.

Conservative Jews in Delray will need to work together to create a strong community. I am sure you have heard many rumors about merger talks between our congregation and Anshei Shalom. There are plenty of differences between our congregations, big differences, but the reality is that we need each other. Talks between our congregations may be long and difficult at times, but I am hopeful that we can find a way to work together to create a stronger community.

Over the past years, we have fallen behind other Conservative congregations. Everyone who visits us from the north is surprised to find we are using old siddurim and old humashim. These are books that other congregations replaced 30 years ago. The prayers in our siddurim have not changed all that much but the world around us has changed a lot. Since the siddur we used was published, there have been new prayers written about the Holocaust, Israel, and the reunification of Jerusalem. There are even prayers for the secular holidays that we celebrate in this country. Contemporary siddurim include women and those who convert to Judaism in our prayers. Prayers are translated using the same English that we use. Thanks to Shirley and Vernon Leopold, we will be dedicating new siddurim just before Pesach.

The Jewish community is very large and includes all kinds of Jews. That is why we need to make our community and our synagogue a very big tent. We may need to have alternative minyanim meeting here on Shabbat. Some Jews want a smaller egalitarian minyan run entirely by lay leaders. There are others in our community who will want a non-egalitarian minyan because they are not comfortable with full participation by women. Perhaps we need a learners’ minyan where people can go to learn to pray. Our tent has to be big enough to include all who need to express their thanks to God. One size no longer fits all daveners. We need to let people know that all are welcome here. One congregation that embraces all.

Our parties for holidays, our Shabbat dinners and our entertaining shows attract an audience of members and non-members that are very important to what Temple Emeth is all about. These must continue. But we also need new programming that will reach out to those who do not need a congregation for their social life. What do they need? They need programs of social action. The Jews we seek to join us are busy all day long, but not with anything of any substance. Their lives are a mile wide but only an inch deep. I spoke about this on Rosh Hashana and some came up to me and said, “I am too old to do social action anymore, leave that to the younger people.” And that is exactly right. We need to attract younger people by offering them ways to find meaning in their lives through rolling up their sleeves and getting to work. We are organizing two new social action groups now, and with God’s help, we will have more as the year goes by.

It is well documented that over the last ten years, Jews join synagogues for three reasons: to pray, to do meaningful acts of hesed and to learn about their heritage. I happen to love our Adult Education program. It is varied and unique in the community. I would not change any class that we offer. We just need to offer more. Young retirees and empty nesters are looking to find a personal place in Jewish Learning. The local office of the Seminary now offers adult classes in people’s homes. These are serious text classes. Habad also offers them in the conference rooms of downtown law and real estate firms. They can’t open these classes fast enough. We also too need to take our text classes, in Bible, Talmud and Ethics into the homes, offices and conference rooms where Jews are hungry for learning. Just as my daughter Ashira last week taught Torah to this congregation, we need to bring that teaching into the communities that surround us with home study groups and maybe even some business study groups. If we invite our neighbors to join us in the serious study of Jewish texts, it is only a matter of time before they will join us in prayer and social action as well.

The Talmud teaches that the world stands on three things, Torah, Avoda and gemilut hasadim. All the surveys that have studied why some congregations grow and why some die seem to hinge on these three things. The Teaching of Torah, meaningful services and acts of kindness to others. Adult Education, a prayer environment that offers choices to all who search for God and social action projects are what we need to add to our congregational menu to bring in the very people we need so much to move our community forward. It is not about “changing everything we have always done” because what we need is not to “reform” the congregation, nor to “reconstruct” the congregation. What we need is to expand what we are doing to make Jews who are lost and searching, welcome in our community.

We are in a unique position to make all of this a success. We have a community that is more than just condominiums. We have many mixed neighborhoods filled with many Jews who are seeking a spiritual home. When this economy recovers, we will be in a city where there will be plenty of building, both to our west and to our east; west of the turnpike and east into the neighborhoods of downtown and east Delary. From Yamato Road to Woolbright, from the ocean to 441, Temple Emeth can emerge stronger and better over the next five to ten years. Yes there will be some changes, but there will also be much that is the same.

The people of Israel were the same people on the Sinai side of the Red sea as they were on the Egyptian side. The difference was, now they were free from all their fears. The future may always be uncertain, but at that moment, as yesterday’s problems drowned in the sea, they joyfully danced and sang. So too we must leave our fears of the past behind and face what the future holds. There will be plenty of difficult decisions to make and yes, we will probably pine for the “good old days” when we had thousands of members. But our future calls for a community of young and old alike, working to make Judaism and the world a better place.

And that is something to sing and dance about.

Shabbat Shalom

Father and Son

2010-01-11T20:34:00.001-06:00

Parshat Shemot
2010
Delivered as a dialogue between Rabbi Konigsburg and Hillel Konigsburg (who participated in creating the dialogue.)

Rabbi: In this week’s parsha, we find Moses standing in front of the burning bush. It is a pivotal moment in Moses' life and in the history of the Jewish People. For the first time, God speaks directly to a human being in order to create history and it marks the beginning of a relationship that echoes to this very day. It all begins simply enough, with a bush that burns but is not consumed. It is a simple miracle that catches the eye of Moses and brings him into the presence of the divine. The sages ask the question, why a burning bush? Why not in thunder and lightning? But the Rabbis see in this miracle a test. Moses will have to watch the bush burn for some time in order to realize that it is not being consumed. That is the way it often is with miracles, they happen all the time, all around us, but we have to take the time to see them, to realize that we are in the presence of a miracle, that we are in the presence of God. Let me give you a few examples... First of all...

Hillel: Now just wait a moment! So you are suggesting that the burning bush represents the many miracles that surround us every day. What miracles? What are you talking about?!

Rabbi: Hillel, is this so hard to imagine? The whole world is filled with miracles; the grass that grows, the sunset, the impact of a beautiful song in our soul. The idea that helps humanity, the cure for a dread disease, the hero that saves the innocent, all of these are the miracles that we experience almost every day.

Hillel: Wait, wait, wait. These aren't miracles! Ever hear of these things called Biology, Physics, Harmonics, Psychology? The ability for plants to convert sunlight into nutrients through the Kreb's Cycle is not a miracle. The reflection of light waves at the corner of our atmosphere is not a miracle. The subjective interpretation of vibrations through air is hardly a miracle. They are part of the scientific reality that shapes us.
- Now, the burning bush on the other hand, that was a miracle! Fire that doesn't consume a bush?! Now that is a miracle that no physics book can explain.

Rabbi: Do you honestly believe that any good special effects creator couldn't make a bush burn and not be consumed? The issue is not the science behind it, the issue is really the impact of what we see on what we believe. A falling apple did not cause Sir Isaac Newton to discover gravity, but that apple, at that moment, created in the mind of that man an idea that reverberates through time. He paid attention and the world changed.Reply

Hillel: Now you really don't make sense. First of all, there is a difference between reality and fiction. A special effects artist can create seeming physical impossibilities, but only a fool would think that such a creation is actual. On the other hand, the real world as we experience through our senses - such is a world that represents truth. When Newton had a run in with that notorious apple, it completed the series of events, thoughts, memories, and experiences that allowed Newton to piece together a larger picture. In a manner of speaking, he was at the right place at the right time - continually throughout his life up to that point.

Rabbi: I am not sure what you are getting at. You could make the same claim concerning Moses. He also was the right man in the right spot. The only Jew who knew what freedom was. The only man who had the experience to lead the Jews to freedom. He just needed to be pushed by God to remember that he was a Jew. That the people enslaved were HIS people. All Moses had to do was take all his experiences up to that point and focus them on freedom for the People of Israel

Hillel: Exactly! Where is the miracle in that? That is just a complex web of experiences.
- The miracle in the burning bush was that the bush burned and was not consumed.

Rabbi: The miracle is in the moment of realization. The moment when rational mind meets the big idea, and suddenly, what is impossible becomes possible; that the world, with all its flaws, suddenly can be repaired. It is in the call that the miracle is found. Even if the bush was consumed, the fire started to burn in the heart of Moses and that lead to the greatest story of redemption in the history of Western Civilization. That is why there is no thunder, lightning or extravagant special effects. It is the connection made between what was seen and what was learned which is where the miracle can be found.

Hillel: So why the burning bush? Why contradict the laws of nature? After all, Newton found enlightenment from the banal experience of gravity.

Rabbi: First of all, I don't agree that gravity is a banal experience. Just because it has a name does not mean that we understand it. We really don't know why things fall to the ground. Newton only gave us the formula to describe how things fall, but we really don't know why they fall. No one has ever seen a "gravity"
- In a similar way, Moses was living a fine life as a shepherd and would have never remembered his life in Egypt unless there was a catalyst, a burning bush, to get him to pause and contemplate what he was seeing and to realize what it would mean in his life. Remember, it not only burned, it also talked!

Hillel: But why a burning and speaking bush?

Rabbi: Because at that moment, it was the right event to catch the eye of Moses and bring him out of his dream into the realization that his life could be more than just another shepherd. How many shepherds passed that bush and didn't see what Moses saw? It was the contradiction of the bush not being consumed that helped Moses see the contradictions in his own life. He was no shepherd. He was the leader who could do what no one else could do, lead Israel from Slavery to Freedom.

Hillel: So, a miracle then is the moment of realization, not the actual event that served as a catalyst for that moment.
- Then carry out your argument to the extreme. If moments of realization are the miracles, then there are infinite miracles every day. The mere fact that I can remember where I placed my shoes and car keys would be a miracle, along with the fact that I choose to eat eggs instead of cereal and the realization that my kippah is on inside out.

Rabbi: Exactly. All of life is a miracle. It is a miracle that we are alive, that we breathe, that our bodies work; that we see beauty all around us. That we pick the harmony out of the static that surrounds us. The things we call miracles, are the moments and the stimuli that trigger the "divine call" that changes an everyday moment into a moment of clarity and awareness. Reply

Hillel: But then what is the difference between a miracle and simply being?

Rabbi: We go through life as if it were a dream. We don't pay attention to life as it unfolds. We are distracted by blinking lights, screaming advertisements and a myriad of distractions that keep us from understanding that every moment is a gift from God and all of our actions have the ability to bring us closer to the divine.

Hillel: So then, our disagreement lies in syntax. If one were to argue that miracles are extraordinary events that contradict the natural fabrics of the world, then miracles would be rare occurrences.
- However, if one was to define miracles as you have, then the numerous moments of realization that each of us experience would be classified as miracles and would be quite a common occurrence.

- But why then do all the miracles of the Torah revolve around physical anomalies? The parting of the sea - The 10 plagues - Miriam's well - Water from the rock

Rabbi: These famous miracles do for us what they did for our ancestors, they get us to stop and contemplate what Moses, Miriam, Aaron and the People of Israel considered. Even if we could explain them scientifically, that it was a low tide, a savvy desert expert who knows where to find water, or red silt in the water that killed the fish, it would not make a difference. I may not know exactly what happened but I do know that what happened changed someone's thinking and the world has never been the same since.

Hillel: Ok, good point. So if we are to conclude that miracles are not the events themselves, but the reaction to the events, then miracles do indeed happen all the time.

Rabbi: And all we need to do is to wake up to God's call, a call that goes out every day to anyone who will listen, and then let that call change our lives. All we need to do is to stop and listen, and we will hear God telling us to remove our shoes, because the ground on which we stand is holy.
- May all of us stop to see the wonders of the world around us and may that sense of wonder and amazement, lead us to find God in the world and in our heart. May God bless us with open eyes and open minds as we say Amen and Shabbat Shalom.

The Greatest Love of All

2010-01-04T20:44:00.003-06:00

I sent this out to the Shefa list and, with a few modifications, I share it with all my readers today.

Let me start by saying that I am a "company man". I believe in the institutions of Conservative Judaism and while the structure may need some improvement, I don't mind working with what we have.I am also a realist. I don't have any nostalgic preferences for what we have done in the past. I only know that it is important to teach the ethics and the rituals of Judaism to Jews where ever they may be. And that I am committed to teaching a Judaism that is pluralistic, egalitarian, and equally open to all Jews who share the Positive Historical approach to Jewish History and Halacha.

With both of these ideas in mind, I believe that the reason our institutions are dying and our denomination is shrinking is because we have never really been good at the things we need to do now. We have hung on to our past for so long that we no longer reflect the needs of those who should be finding a home here, and this includes all those who think like us but who don't affiliate with our movement. Each of these areas below needs an entire essay to explain but I will keep this short. These are my opinions on what we can do now to re-energize our movement;

1. We have, in the past, built our synagogues around our schools. Jews today marry later and have children much later. By the time they need us, they have already lived over 10 years as an adult without us. Our synagogues must be something more than a school for children of members.

2. Our Cantors have been dedicated to preserving music from the golden age of Cantorial music at the beginning of the twentieth century. Jews today are creating new music for liturgy and there may even be a new golden age going on but our congregations and many Cantors have decided to stick with the past. The issue is not musical Instruments on Shabbat vs. no musical instruments, the real issue is what kind of music will be use for prayer. There are many Cantors out there who really "get" this, but I find that other Cantors margialize the new contributions of their mostly younger colleagues

3. Synagogues see themselves as social centers for Jews. Today, Jews of all ages, and particularly young, single, professional Jews, do not not need a synagogue for social or professional reasons. There are way too many other, more interesting ways to spend their free time. We need to program what is missing from the lives of Jews today. For example...

4. Our synagogues have never been committed to ongoing, get your hands dirty, social action/political action. Jews of all ages today are hungry for meaning in their life and we give them very little to do that will help them feel they are making a difference in changing the world. They can't get this from the internet or from cable television in High Definition. We need, as never before, a strong social action/political action agenda for Conservative Jews. We have some, but we can do better.

5. Our synagogues give only poor lip service to serious Jewish studies. All Jews today are interested in a serious examination of texts and spirituality that is less about indoctrination and more about how to live a better life. You can tell how much we value Adult Learning by how little our congregations spend on it. We need to make Adult learning a major budget item and a key part of synagogue life.

6. We offer one main service in a world where one size no longer fits all. Here I could blame Rabbis who are either afraid to let their members daven in a different room or who would rather daven in the other room but are "stuck" in the main service. We need services that we are proud of going on all over our buildings.

7. I believe nobody will care how long services will take if they are engaged in meaningful prayer and thought provoking study. They don't need another 3 hour show that is the same thing every week. If the service we will conduct before Universal Health Care is passed ( or rejected) is the same as the service we will conduct after it is passed (or rejected) then what we do is meaningless to the people who we want to reach. We need to engage our congregations in prayer and study if we want them to attend Shabbat tephillot (prayer)

OK so all of you who have said, "the time for meetings is past, it is time for action" here is your action plan. Start with any of these seven issues and see how quickly your congregation will become vitalized. Ignore them at your own peril. BJ, Ikar, Hadar, and, Anshei Chesed in NY are living proof that this works. Ron Wolfson and Synagogue 3000 have been collecting data to prove the point. We know what we need to do, so lets roll up our sleeves and get to work!

Mother and Child Reunion

2009-12-27T19:42:00.000-06:00

Mother and Child Reunion

Sermon Saturday Morning

Parshat Vayiggash

2009

Shabbat Shalom

Commentators on the Bible look at the reunion of Joseph and his brothers and they raise an interesting point to ponder. Joseph was away from home for 21 years before he was reconciled with his family. Why is it that he never sent a message home to his father telling him what had happened and where he was? You would think that a young boy far from home would want to get in touch with his worried father. But for 21 years, Joseph makes no attempt to contact his family. Why?

To be fair, when he was a slave in Potifer’s house, he probably did not have the freedom to send a message home. Why would his master allow him to contact his family? And for the years he was in prison, it certainly was impossible to send a message to anyone. But for eight years, he has been the second most powerful man in Egypt. Why would he not send a message to his family through one of the many servants he had in his household?

Rambam and many other commentators are puzzled by this failure of Joseph. Joseph knew that his father loved him and must have been heartbroken when Joseph disappeared. Joseph must have surely missed his father and he would want to be reunited with his father as soon as possible. And yet, this is clearly not the case. Joseph seems to not care at all about his father, his family and the life he left behind.

Suddenly, in this week’s parsha, Joseph breaks down crying and finally admits his real identity to his brothers. What happened that suddenly he has such strong feelings for the family he has cut out of his life? Clearly it is something that Judah says, in his long speech to save the little Benjamin from the accusations of theft at the end of last week’s parsha. It is interesting to note that Judah mentions the word “Father” 14 times in 17 verses; all intended to invoke pity and compassion in the heart of this cruel Egyptian viceroy. I don’t think any of this worked at all on Joseph. It was something else Judah said, that triggered Joseph’s tears.

Why did Joseph forget his family? I think that from the moment he was sold into slavery, he expected his father would do what any father would be expected to do. Come looking for him. Interviewing travelers, sending word to distant cities, riding across trackless deserts to find his missing son. But the years went by and nobody came looking for Joseph. What could be going through Joseph’s mind? How many years did he watch the horizon thinking that any moment his family would arrive and save him from his slavery. How long did he wait for the father who never came? Finally Joseph came to the only possible conclusion; his father was in on the plot. Jacob had sent Joseph to find his brothers. Jacob must have known and approved Joseph’s sale into slavery!

For 21 years he believed that his family had thrown him out. Joseph had no need to contact his family. They didn’t love him or care for him at all. We, the readers know the full story but Joseph only knows that nobody at all came looking for him. Nobody cared.

Suddenly, in Judah’s speech, Joseph hears, for the first time, that Jacob believed that Joseph was killed by a wild animal. Suddenly the whole picture changes. Of course Jacob loved Joseph. Of course he would have turned over every possible stone to find his lost son. But Jacob thought Joseph was torn apart by a lion or a bear. Jacob had buried what he thought was the remains of his son, so he never thought to go looking in Egypt or anywhere else. Joseph had jumped to a conclusion that was plain wrong, and quickly the tears well up in his eyes. “I am not dead, I am Joseph, does our father really still live?” In just a few sentences the family is reconciled and the hurts of the past are all forgotten. Jacob will die with ALL his sons around him. All is forgiven and all turns out to be a blessing.

I sometimes wish I could teach this lesson to everyone who comes to see me with a tale of a family broken by perceived slights and dishonor. Sometimes it is a parent who “dares” to remarry after the death of a spouse and the kids are unforgiving. Sometimes it is a parent who feels that the children don’t sufficiently honor the very parent who gave them life and raised them from an infant into the ungrateful adults they are today. Sometimes it is words spoken in anger that hurt so much, a family is torn asunder. Sometimes brothers and sisters just drift apart, neither one prepared to call the other to find out what went wrong.

I know, I really know. Family divisions run deep and are hard to heal. It is not for me to judge at all why there is a wedge between members of a family. I have heard the stories of the pain, the hurt, and the ungrateful slights. It is not for me to say that one side or the other is “really” at fault. Many times parents have said to me that if I had ungrateful kids like their children, I would write them out of my family too.

I also know, however, that families can be reconciled. And when they do reconcile, they often discover that, like Joseph, much of what they remember as painful, was not really true at all. And if it was, at one time, very hurtful, time can heal that wound and the love that draws us together seeks to reunite us with those who are estranged. When families are reconciled, they cry over the love that has returned, and they cry over the lost years, when they could have been close had they not wasted the time in what has turned out to be a petty feud.

Please don’t be mad at me if I ask you, as we rapidly approach the end of one secular year and the beginning of another, to try once more at reconciliation. It may not make a difference. There still may be too much pain and hurt to be reunited. I can’t promise that it will make everything better, but I feel that it is always worth it to try. Don’t think that I don’t understand what it means to extend a hand and have someone turn their back on you. I know that heartbreak. I know that hurt. But I also know that reconciliation often does not come easily but it is, in the end, always worth the time and effort. It may take a while to reunite a family, it may take years. It may take us to our dying day. We can’t and shouldn’t make ourselves crazy chasing after something impossible. In spite of all of this, I believe that it is important to remember, every day is a new day, and life is a long time. Reconciliation can come in a moment, in the blink of an eye. It is important that we should always be ready, to open our eyes, open our hearts and open our arms to the love we long for.

If Joseph can forgive his brothers, and he does forgive them for all that happened, we too must find our way to restore our family ties. Maybe something we will say in 2010 will be the key to unlocking the love that seems so far away and we too can be reconciled with parents, siblings and children.

My prayer, as we see the light of day once again push back the darkness of night, that we too will find our way through the darkness of anger and pain, and try once more to restore light to our lives and to the life of our family. May God bless us in the New Year with light, life and love as we say…

Amen and Shabbat Shalom

Stand By Me

2009-12-20T12:39:00.000-06:00

Stand By Me
Sermon Saturday Morning
Parshat Miketz
2009

Shabbat Shalom

This is the final day of Hanukah. While we still say Hallel, and Al HaNissim, we realize that the gifts are all given and the latkes and sufganiot are all eaten and tonight we will just put our Hanukiyot away for another year.

Hanukah is the festival of dedication. The time we remember how the Maccabees fought so hard to be able to live in their land, free to worship God as they pleased. They did not stop when they rededicated the Temple; they did not stop their war with the Syrian Greeks until they had liberated all of the cities of Israel.

We live in a different time. We live in a time when we have a State of Israel, a State that has been the center of our faith for over 60 years. I am sure that there are many people here who remember a time when there was no State of Israel. Israel is our modern miracle. There is now a special Al HaNissim, a special prayer that we recite on Yom HaAtzmaut, Israel Independence Day, that is parallel to the Al HaNissim we say on Hanukah. The two miracles are thus linked through our modern commitment to a free Jewish State.

But how are we to show our dedication to Israel today? We may live in the United States but we understand that all Jews, all over the world, must stand with Israel. Israel is there for us and we must be there for her. Certainly there is no shortage of people in the world who would like nothing else but to see the Jewish State fail. So far, these enemies remain disappointed. Israel, even with all her problems, is an active democracy in a neighborhood of dictators and oppression.

So what must a Jew in Delray Beach; on Long Island, New York, or in Boston Mass. do to show our support for Israel? I think that there are five ways we can support Israel. In a perfect world, we would be responsible for all five equally, but given our different economic and personal health issues, we should at least try and do as many of these five as we can.

Far and away, the number one, most important thing we can do to support Israel and to show Israel that we stand by her side, is to go and visit Israel. I say this not only because we are offering a trip to Israel in April, but because I want everyone to know why I think such trips are important. During the first Intifada, when it seemed that every other day a bus was bombed in Jerusalem, a 48 hour trip to Israel was put together and I and many other rabbis from around the country went directly to Israel to show our support in those trying days. Many people asked me then why I would go to such a dangerous place like Israel. I would answer simply that for 2000 years other people told Jews that they were forbidden to visit Israel. Now that we have the freedom to visit, why should I let anyone scare me away? My ancestors would have risked their lives for just the possibility of visiting Israel. For them and for those who live in Israel, I visit as often as I can and encourage others to visit as well.

If we are not standing IN Israel, we should be standing up FOR Israel. Israel needs the support of the entire Jewish people. This is a political decision and we must not waver in our political support for our Jewish state. Our work for the United Jewish Communities, both the money we give and the rallies we attend show that wherever we stand, we stand with Israel. It is not a small thing. Notice when you attend such a rally, how local politicians take the time to come out and attend. The size of the crowd is important and our presence makes a statement about our support for Israel.

AIPAC is another organization that continually stands up for Israel. If you have never lobbied a Representative or a Senator in Congress, you can not know how important it is to let our Congressmen and women know, in person, that we care enough about Israel to walk the halls of the nation’s capital to speak up for the State of Israel. Between appropriation bills, bills that support the military and immigration to Israel, and those bills that condemn Israel’s enemies, lobbying Congress is a meaningful way to help our Representatives know the importance of a good national relationship between the United States and Israel. If you have never been to an AIPAC Policy Conference, I encourage you to attend. You will meet high level experts in foreign relations, have dinner with members of Congress and the diplomatic corp. and you will have the chance to visit our representatives in their own offices to speak to the issues that are important to the American/Israel relations. UJC and AIPAC are eight letters of the alphabet that spell important support for Israel.

The third way we can support Israel is to stand up for Pluralism in the Jewish State. I believe that if there is a danger to Israel, it will come from those religious fanatics who do not understand either the politics of living in the world today, or who are willing to send others into war to protect their own self interest. There are many Zionist organizations that work to make Israel a better society. I prefer over the secular or the religious parties, the party of pluralism and Conservative Judaism, Mercaz. I don’t know if you realize that in our synagogue lobby are the forms to become a member of this unique Jewish institution. Funds donated to Israel go through the Jewish Agency. The Jewish Agency is made up of representatives of all the official Zionist parties. Mercaz is one of these parties and the more representatives we have, the more money goes to projects promoting religious freedom and pluralism. Mercaz makes sure that all monies that go to Israel are distributed fairly to all Israelis, not just those in favored parties.

The Masorti Movement does the daily work to provide Masorti/Traditional Judaism to the citizens of Israel. Masorti is the Conservative Movement in Israel. It operates Masorti synagogues and institutions. It pays for rabbis the State refuses to pay; it provides care for Russian immigrants, food and clothing for the poor, Jewish education for children that is fair and balanced and egalitarian. It also provides a Jewish education for Jewish children with learning disabilities and physical disabilities. To see one of these children become Bar or Bat Mitzvah is a joy that bring tears to the eyes of all who understand the meaning of what religion is all about. When we travel to Israel, we will have the chance to see these Masorti institutions in action.

The next level of support for Israel is to support the growth of Israel. We need to help Israel invest in her future. That is role of Israel Bonds. Israel Bonds allows us to participate in the massive public works programs that bring electricity and roads to every part of the country. Along side of Israel Bonds is JNF, the Jewish National Fund. For almost 100 years JNF has developed the natural resources in Israel, especially the forests and the water supply. JNF not only plants the trees that have helped Israel push back the desert, the first country to ever reverse desertification, but it also provides the water used by almost every segment of Israeli society. Little wonder that here at Temple Emeth; we have special events to help raise money for both Israel Bonds and JNF where we also honor those who have helped Israel during the last six decades of growth.

The final level of support we can give to Israel is to support the People of Israel We can do this through our support of the Magen David Adom, the Red Magen David, and our support for the many universities of Israel. ARMDI supplies not only ambulances for Israel, but critical care clinics and they operate the country’s blood banks. Support for ARMDI is support for the health care of Israel.

Hebrew University, Haifa University, Bar Ilan University, Ben Gurion University and the Schechter Institute are important schools that provide the best education to the young men and women after they have finished their military service to the country. I know that there are many yeshivot in Israel that also ask us for money but I choose not to support those who do not support a pluralistic society in Israel. These large universities and the Schechter Institute, the Masorti Rabbinical School in Israel, reach out to all segments of Israeli society to provide the science, technology and the humanities that are the basis of modern civilization. They also all provide intense Jewish learning, with some of the greatest scholars of Bible, Talmud and Jewish History. When we support Israel’s great universities, we are supporting the future of Israel.

There is much we can do to show our support for Israel. With our money certainly, but with our time and with our hands and feet as well. While every dollar we give to Israel makes a difference, we make an even bigger difference when we put our whole selves into our support for Israel. I can only ask that you join me and the many other members of Temple Emeth to visit Israel this spring. The information is out in the lobby, read it, and if you are ready to go, ask in the office for a registration form and send it back with your deposit. Reserve your place on this mission of support for the land and people of Israel. If you can’t join us, then use one of these other paths; political support, support for a pluralistic society, support for Israel’s infrastructure and support for the people of Israel, to let our Jewish State know that we all stand by her side, in good times and in bad; so that Israel will be the light of our faith and of the faith of our children and grandchildren even to the fourth and fifth generation.