The State of Synagogues

INTRODUCTION

I believe that synagogues are timely and timeless and can and should be responsive to the changing social contexts while bridging our ancient and rich tradition. The setting in which most American Jews are educated is the synagogue. Thus, if Jewish learning is to flourish we need to understand the transformations impacting that setting. I will address some of the changing social contexts in which synagogues find themselves and some of their implications: the narrative of scarcity, transactional vs. relational, the universalistic vs. particularistic focus, the nature of choice, and our changing understanding of the synagogue space and its application to congregational education.

THE NARRATIVE OF SCARCITY

Membership rosters at many synagogues and similarly, at congregational schools, have been on the decline for a number of years for several reasons, including, but not limited to, changes in patterns of belonging/ joining, individuals marrying and having families later, and a reversal of the suburban flight as many empty nesters move back to urban centers. We see this acutely in the geographical areas that experienced the most proliferation of synagogues in the 1950s and 1960s. As those running these synagogues realize that there is no quick marketing or programming fix to this trend of membership decline, panic has begun to set in. This panic and anxiety often leads to a narrative of scarcity. As resources are diminished, synagogue professional and lay leaders begin to fear any new entity that might appear in their backyard. What results from this lens of scarcity is often a pervasive and unhealthy competition. This competition can exist among synagogues or between synagogues and entrepreneurial ventures, JCCs, Chabad, or anything that appears to be a threat to the diminishing pool of prospective members.

The problem, as we are all aware, is that we continue to compete over the same third of the pie instead of applying a lens of abundance and seeing the opportunity that is ripe with the remaining unengaged two thirds of the pie. By changing the lens, synagogues could be more open to exploring creative partnerships and approaching their challenges with innovation. Synagogue change agents spend a lot of time on changing the narrative. They do this both with individual synagogue leaders and/or their boards by starting with “appreciative inquiry” and focusing on the existing assets (both material and people). In addition, they try to help synagogues uncover what their market potential is and then focus their efforts and their vision on that market. By honing in on their unique value and focusing on a particular niche, synagogues may remain stable and possibly experience growth. Trying to be one size fits all and offering something for everyone often is not good for anyone.

TRANSACTIONAL VS. RELATIONAL

Living within the larger context of a service economy has led many synagogues to become service stations—you pay for what you want and get it right away. This dynamic has led us down a rabbit hole mired in dues, abatement committees, and the erosion of the shared covenant between all stakeholders who the synagogue community is built upon. And this transactional relationship is not limited to the synagogue as a whole, but to its various components (i.e., congregational schools), which are more and more viewed as à la carte services. In Connected Congregations: From Dues and Membership to Sustaining Communities of Purpose, Beth Cousens writes expansively on this. We live in a context in which the word “community” is used freely in a wide variety of contexts, so much so that I use this word with caution. However, synagogues are in the business of building spiritual communities of purpose, and these communities must be nurtured over time on the core building blocks of relationships and what Allison Fine, author of The Networked Nonprofit and most recently Matterness calls “matterness.” Matterness is what individuals feel when they are connected to a synagogue and they feel known, valued, heard, and seen. Creating this environment takes time and intentionality; it is a practice. The trend we began to observe in the publication, Are Voluntary Dues Right for Your Synagogue? A Practical Guide, was that synagogues, in turning the conversation from mandatory to voluntary, were not merely saying, “This is a choice”—because it had been already for a number of years—but rather were saying “through your financial contribution and involvement you get to have a role in making this community happen.” While this dues model is not right for every congregation, the conversation that it evokes is most certainly critical for all. The financial model upon which most synagogues are based assumes a religious school fee built into everyone’s membership, even while sometimes adding on an additional fee for religious school families. As we see more and more people questioning the overall membership dues model, synagogues are moving toward considering alternative funding and engagement models. Congregational schools might benefit from being part of these critical conversations as they will not only be impacted by the outcome, but may have some valuable thinking to contribute given their deep connections with families and their children.

UNIVERSALISTIC VS. PARTICULARISTIC

Living in an “I” world, we have seen time and again that people seek connections with others through networks and communities, enhanced, expanded, and made more accessible by the ability to be virtual. And we have seen vast networks form to impact social change. The synagogue, rather than being seen as one of the original loci of community, is seen as antiquated and out of touch. As people lean further toward universalism, Judaism in general and synagogues specifically continue to be symbols of particularism. This dichotomy is forcing us to bifurcate our identities and the way and with whom we spend our time. In other words, synagogues become the place where we “do Jewish” and connect only with Jews, while the rest of our identities, particularly those thirsty for social change, are relegated to finding an outlet outside of the synagogue and are divorced from our Jewish selves. We are bombarded in our daily lives and through the media with images of social injustice. What if we could make meaning of these injustices and act on our values with others who felt similarly within the context of our synagogue? The clergy could speak about these issues from the bimah, the synagogue could join in solidarity with other local faith communities to address these issues, and synagogues could be the place where religious and moral obligation meet regularly and not just on mitzvah day. Now let’s be honest: to really do this means to sometimes hold in tension what we are told by our religious tradition and what we know through our contemporary sensibilities. But this authentic dialogue between the past and the present, between modernity and tradition, between the sacred and the secular can and should take place within the synagogue and its congregational school and would make both newly relevant.

OUR CHANGING UNDERSTANDING OF THE SYNAGOGUE SPACE

As our lives are increasingly mobile and virtual, it seems somewhat anachronistic that our synagogues are confined to the synagogue building. The implication is that we rarely think outside the walls of the synagogue building to meet people where they are and that we are often willing to go down with the building rather than adapt to our changing needs. In addition, we exclude, and often feel threatened by, some of the most creative modern iterations of “spiritual communities” because they don’t “look like” synagogues. In the face of changing needs, over the past year we have seen creative and innovative uses of existing synagogue buildings. Some synagogues are deliberately downsizing while others are seeking creative partnerships to share space. There are models of collaborative education, as well as models in which the education is taken out of the formal classroom and into other spaces such as people’s homes, museums, and coffee shops. For many years as synagogues were expanding, we invested heavily in prime real estate, and now that that real estate poses a real threat to our sustainability, there is an opportunity to embrace this limitation as a way to think more creatively about our use of space.

THE NARRATIVE OF CHOICE

We live in an era of infinite choice. This proliferation of options has created an open marketplace for just about everything. We are no longer in the days when the sole option for supplementary Jewish education was at the synagogue. Private tutoring, non-synagogue-based benei mitzvah training programs, and online training have grown in the marketplace. Synagogues can no longer afford to assume that families will come to the school because it is the only choice. Not only must the synagogue compete on quality, but it must also compete on price and the ability to customize or personalize the experience. There are significant implications for all Jewish educators as they consider alternative models and frameworks for engaging the 21st-century learner. As we learn from David Brooks’s article “The Moral Bucket List,” we need to focus on building both the “résumé virtues,” skills one brings to the marketplace, and the “eulogy virtues,” the ones that are talked about at your funeral. While synagogues contribute somewhat to the résumé virtues, where synagogues truly might corner the market is on helping build eulogy virtues. Synagogues and synagogue educators are in the core business of developing mentschlichkeit.

CONCLUSION

These issues reflect but a few of the changing social contexts that synagogues and their congregational schools currently face and must urgently address in order to continue to thrive. While the synagogue, on the one hand, has all of the gravitas and weight of tradition, it has also seen great change since its inception. This legacy of agility is one that we must build on in order to assure its future. Synagogues must continue to be responsive to the changing social contexts while bringing to bear all that their tradition has to offer.

Adina Frydman is the executive director of SYNERGY at UJA-Federation of NY, which helps synagogues thrive and, in doing so, seeks to advance the national field of synagogues. Prior to her current role, Adina was the director of SYNERGY Regions and SYNERGY Westchester program executive at UJA-Federation of New York. Before coming to New York in 2008, Adina was the director of Focus Israel at the St. Louis Jewish Federation, where she worked to foster engagement between synagogues and Israel. Adina received cantorial ordination from Hebrew Union College. Along with her husband Rabbi Avi Katz Orlow, she has four children and lives in White Plains, New York.