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communities and consumers
Launch point: B'rachot 8a, where the Amoraim are discussing places for torah study versus places for prayer and (later commenters) whether it is appropriate to suspend study in order to pray with a minyan. That is, if you're already in the study hall and there's no minyan and it's time to pray, do you pray there or go join the minyan? Some argue that study is more important than supporting the community in the minyan. This led us to a more general discussion: the tension between supporting community values and partaking of community offerings.
For the side that supports staying in the study hall, torah study is the ultimate mitzvah -- what we're made for (or rather, what elite scholars are made for). The sage best serves the community by limiting time away from the study hall, even if it means not making a minyan in the synagogue. The conclusive argument against, ironically, is that it will appear that he is shirking his obligation to the community (the minyan) even while he believes he is fulfilling that obligation (study).
This led us to talk about supporting the community in general. Why do congregations have trouble getting people to show up for weekday services? It's a source of frustration to some of us that our congregation of over 800 families can't reliably get a minyan for one weekday service a week. We thought that by narrowing the focus we'd avoid splitting the resources; there are probably people out there who will show up once a week but not daily, so we decided to limit the days. But it didn't work. (We used to do two days a week; that didn't work either.) Even the people who I think of as the dedicated core do not reliably show up. Yet people say they want it to exist.
People who want to -- a couple times a year -- show up to say mourners' kaddish want it to be there for them, but don't necessarily want to support others in similar quests. It's a "consumer" attitude -- what does the shul do for me? -- rather than a "community" attitude -- what do my fellow community members need? I think it's inherent in large shuls; in small shuls you know everyone and that makes it more personal.
Now it's not just us, not by a long shot, and it's not us in all things. People do show up for Shabbat and holiday services; people attend mitzvah day and participate in other acts of community service; people volunteer their time in the school and on committees and the board; people cough up a fair bit of money to keep the place running. All of this is important and I'm not trying to dismiss that. The people in charge of all of these activities will tell you that there are not enough people doing these things, but there are some. But we were talking primarily about worship.
I pointed out that if you're inclusive then you have to expect a wide range in commitment levels, from twice-a-year Jews who write a dues check and have no other contact on up to the folks who organize the community-service teams and show up every Shabbat and do a zillion other things. Our congregation has a long-standing policy of being a "big tent", of welcoming everyone who wants to be part of our family. But that doesn't mean you have a lot in common with the fourth cousins three times removed, y'know?
So why be a big tent? Why are there huge congregations? (That's not a universal truth; Pittsburgh has very large and very small congregations, and near as I can tell not much in between. But the small ones exist in all movements.) It all comes down to money. Synagogues require infrastructure, and infrastructure costs money, and a lot of that cost is fixed costs that are the same whether you have 100 members or 500. So if you can spread those costs out over more people, you make the per-person load more bearable. We run congregations the way we run businesses, because we do, after all, have to pay the mortgage and the gas bill and the salaries.
But if your 500-member congregation loses 200 members, you're going to have to either raise dues a lot or cut services. Maybe you can't afford a cantor any more, or you cut back the Sunday school, or whatever. And that may cause even more people to leave, because they aren't getting the services they're used to for the dues they pay. Because consumers expect value in proportion to cost, and the community might not have been strong in such a large congregation.
And it's always easier on the way up than on the way down. The 300-member congregation hasn't yet had a cantor, say, so they don't know what they're missing. The 500-member congregation that loses 200 members and its cantor feels a tangible loss. Eventually, if that keeps up, you merge, find a source of fresh people, or implode. Too often, implode.
I'm not worried about my congregation; while I might not know three-quarters of the members to see them on the street, I believe the core is healthy and we could survive a minor setback in membership. (Not the 40% I was talking about earlier, but that sort of thing either happens over a long time or is caused by some major event. We're studying demographics and the like now to address the former, and we're pretty good about not having major negative events.) Our congregation isn't going to disappear or make drastic changes.
But congregations of consumers are at more risk than congregations of community members, so it's worth thinking about ways to turn the former into the latter. No answers; just something to throw on the back burner.
This could probably do with more of an edit, but I have to go to sleep so I can go to minyan in the morning. :-)
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That's proceeding in two waves, near as I can tell. The idea couldn't get off the ground until we had identified a group of people who could read torah now (where "now" is "when we had the discussion"). We had five people who were capable and willing to be regulars, and that was enough to give everyone confidence that there would be coverage. Since then we've added two more regulars (though one of the originals has temporarily dropped out), and we have another three or four who have committed to doing it once and then they'll see from there. So we could conceivably double our torah-reading corps, but half of them needed the other half to get the idea that they could actually do this. If the starting group hadn't been there, the others -- who turned out to be perfectly capable, but didn't know it yet -- never would have stepped up. If this had been a case of our regular torah reader leaving, they would have seen it as a loss, not an opportunity.
You're right, though; it does sometimes go the other way. When I was leading Shabbat services at another local shul (not my own), it was because their cantor had left and they specifically recruited me and half a dozen other people to do it in rotation. They later hired a cantor, so that went away -- there seems to be a significant contingent in that congregation who believe that lay people are ok but only as a stopgap until you can get a professional. That's not the way it's supposed to work.
Hmm. In thinking about it, our Shabbat-morning group is definitely a community (a subset of the congregation, but a tight community within that), while the folks who show up for Shabbat at the other shul are just "people going to services", near as I can tell from having been there. And similarly, the weekday morning minyan there is very encouraging of lay people (in fact, usually there's no rabbi at all); that's the minyan where they've asked me to learn to lead the service. And that group, too, is a community -- the same people showing up all the time.
So if you can build that community, there's tolerance or even encouragement of members of that community to take on new roles and try new things. The answer to "we lost our $resource" is not "oh no, whatever will we do? [wring hands]" but rather "ok, let's fix it -- who's up for learning something new?".
If the remaining 300 members from that 500-member congregation function as a community, scaling back the professional services is no big deal -- people will step in, for everything from leading services to cleaning up after the kiddush. If they're not a community, then it's sort of like your health insurance dropping the dental coverage you're used to without dropping rates, and you grumble a lot and maybe go looking for a different insurer.
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(Actually, I think we'll structure it as a torah-reading class, with chanting being part of that. Some people are willing to read but not chant; that's perfectly fine in our congregation, and I don't want them to think they have to learn to chant in order to participate. But there are other skills that a class can help reinforce, including using the trope to tell you where the phrases are even if you don't actually chant.)