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synagogues: affiliation and participation
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cahwyguy published a digest of mail.liberal-judaism that
included a pointer to this
profile
of an unaffiliated Jew. So all of this has been rolling around in
my hind-brain for a few days.
My friend's focus in Judaism is on God, as is mine. We both would boggle at the idea of personally participating in worship just to go through the motions. What's the point in that? If you don't believe in the God you're praying to, why bother? And if you're not going to pray, why join a synagogue? As he put it, that's a pretty expensive ticket for something you don't believe in. But, of course, people do, and they do it for good reasons.
Part of the issue is that synagogues, and Judaism, are not just about worship. This is a religion but also a people, and some people join synagogues (and even come to services sometimes) purely to express that identity. It's not why I do it, but that doesn't make it any less valid. That said, it doesn't seem likely to have long-term viability, at least in America; while people do affiliate for that reason, I suspect that the numbers are going down. There are other ways to express your Jewish identity, and there are lots of competing identities available here in this country. (As one of the rabbis I studied with this summer put it, "the god of soccer is a vengeful god". He was talking about Saturday-morning attendance, but the idea generalizes.) Synagogues probably aren't the path for the peoplehood-focused Jews, long-term, but they're being used that way now. (And even if they are viable long-term, these are the people least likely to show up to functions -- so you're really talking about membership rolls and dollars, for the most part. Which builds your building, but not your community.)
Even if worship is a priority, the synagogue might not be the way you express it. The chavurah movement (informal, home-based worship groups) showed us that. While this is more work, it also provides control, flexibility, and opportunity. For some people, that's a win. If my synagogue didn't have the informal Shabbat-morning minyan, it would have been necessary to invent it, because the bar-mitzvah dog-and-pony show that is typical of most liberal congregations' Shabbat morning services doesn't do it for me.
The essay from the unaffiliated Jew expressed a lot of feelings that I share, most notably that there is usually no role for educated lay people in synagogue life. Most lay people have few opportunities to lead worship, and that seems to be the way congregations want it. I've written about that before. But this doesn't just manifest in (not) leading worship. As the author points out, adult-ed classes in synagogues are often aimed pretty low, with little for the more-advanced student. This is a very real frustration for some people: Judaism has an intellectual aspect that many synagogues do not sufficiently address. I am astonishingly lucky to have a rabbi who is willing to study with me one on one, at my level, every couple weeks; I've made huge strides in the last few years because he is willing to do that. But note that even our synagogue, which is pretty good in the adult-ed department, would not be able to meet my intellectual needs from just the standard offerings.
Some people participate in synagogues not for worship or for education but, instead, for social reasons. This works well or badly based almost entirely on (1) demographics and (2) diversity in the synagogue's offerings. If you're a family with a kid or two in the religious school and some time to spend hanging out with the sisterhood (or whatever), you'll find plenty of opportunities in most synagogues to be a real part of the group. If, on the other hand, you're a young single professional, you might not. The 20-somethings and 30-somethings without kids are under-represented in synagogues (at least in the more liberal movements), and there's a chicken-and-egg problem: synagogues cater to those who show up (which seems reasonable), which places more of an emphasis on those groups, which makes the synagogues seem even less inviting to people from other demographics who wanted to find a synagogue -- so they don't join and the cycle repeats. (This is, of course, not unique to synagogues.) I'm committed to my synagogue and even I have sometimes felt pushed away by an over-emphasis on other demographics.
People sometimes ask: what can we do to get people to come to services? The question one has to ask in response is: what kind of people do you want? Do you want the people who are currently worshipping, but elsewhere? If so, you have to find out what the salient differences are -- why did they form that chavurah, or why do they find other groups more attractive? Do you want the people who are already members of your congregation, but who rarely or never come to worship services, to come? You won't get most of them (the ones who are there for non-worship reasons), though you might get some who are worship-inclined but don't like your services. (If they're members, and they're worship-inclined at all, they have checked out your services somewhere along the line. So they didn't like what they saw for some reason; your task is to find out why.) Or do you want to attract the unaffiliated? In that case, remember that you're pitching not just your worship services but your entire synagogue -- demographics, education program, participation opportunities, and everything else.
Attracting people to your services isn't enough; you have to attract them to your synagogue too. People belong to synagogues because there is something that pulls them in, but it could be any of a bunch of things (possibly worship, possibly not). Even if you attract people to your worship services, there has to be an attractive synagogue there too -- people your potential member would want to spend time with, and things for them to do together.
On the flip side, just because someone has joined your synagogue doesn't mean he has the faintest interest in worship. In some people you might be able to cultivate that interest, but in others you won't. For them, worship is just another offering from the synagogue, one they don't partake of, and they'll see it as exactly equivalent to people who don't go to classes or don't work with brotherhood or don't work with the religious school. It's tempting to dismiss those people, but it's a mistake to do so. They're engaged Jews (which already distinguishes them from many folks); they're just not engaged in the same ways that I am. There's room for both.
Re: surprise
Size certainly makes a difference. My synagogue does quite a bit, while a smaller one near my house (according to their ads) has some sort of adult study once a month and no regular weekly torah study. So there's quite a range. The smaller Orthodox congregations don't advertise more than their service times, so that's hard to judge.
Movement clearly makes a difference. As I wrote in the older entry I linked to, Reform has two tendencies that are relevant here: more of a desire to have "the pros" do things (so talented lay people may never get the chance to lead), and less education on average. For a lot of kids, formal Jewish education ends at bar mitzvah. The educated adults I know came, or came back, to it later in life; I don't know anyone in my congregation who did something like yeshiva.
Gender makes a difference in some places. One of the large local Orthodox congregations has a lot of interesting-sounding classes for men, and oh yeah there's a women's class on something. They probably don't have very many women who are interested; I'm not dumping on them. But if I were a man I'd have a lot more educational opportunities within that community.
Re: surprise
Or possibly the women have informal groups (like the ones you and magid (http://www.livejournal.com/users/magid/) discuss in another comment string) which aren't publicized the same way. Offhand I can think of 3 such groups, all of which meet in private homes and none of which is mentioned in synagogue publications, which allows them to stay small enough for their hosts' apartments, allows for timing adjustments at the last minute with a few phone calls, etc.
Being unofficial also has the advantage of allowing for not inviting people whose personalities or learning styles are known not to blend well with those already in the group, which can be very useful for avoiding no-win situations, especially in a group without an obvious leader (e.g. the synagogue rabbi).
Re: surprise