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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.
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*chuckle*
And what you said about people vs religion is one of the things some of my Protestant friends are unable to grok about some (not me, but some) Catholics.
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As a friend of mine once said, "I'm a monoatheist. I don't believe in a god. And the God I don't believe in is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."
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This gave me a case of the giggles, and I've quoted it in my own journal. If that bugs you, let me know and I'll get rid of it.
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surprise
*blink* I'm not used to either of these problems, but a bit of thinking led to 3 possible reasons (and for all I know it's some, all, or none of them): Orthodox vs Reform, big synagogue vs small, one synagogue vs many in the same neighborhood. (From what you're written it sounds to me like you have few local synagogues (perhaps only one per denomination) and they're not very big. The one I go to now and the one before that (2 different neighborhoods) are both small and there are many synagogues nearby to each. The one before that was much bigger (and in yet another neighborhood) but it had several minyanim within it (at least on shabbat mornings) and also had several other synagogues nearby).
The latter two reasons seem reasonable to me 'cause big and multiple encourage more (and more diverse) educational programs and give more opportunities for leading services, and the first reason seems reasonable to me 'cause, as a general rule, the Orthodox people I've met have been more likely to have been encouraged to learn enough to lead services and to think of Jewish learning as a life-long activity (i.e. not something to end with the end of Hebrew school), so there will be more people interested in more advanced classes (and perhaps willing to lead them).
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.
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I hope you don't mind that I've gone ahead and added you to my friends list -- I don't want to miss any fascinating entries like this trying to catch them on Nathaniel's friends page!
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Is there a core group of educated laypeople in your shul, or is it mostly you? If there's a group, is it worth trying to start some kind of class without necessarily working through the shul, either by finding a teacher on a topic, or group study of texts, or online courses taken together? If there's not a group, are there people in other shuls who'd be interested in more advanced learning?
When I was growing up (going to a Conservative shul), I saw adults went to services, helped the Hebrew school, maybe were involved in the Brotherhood/Sisterhood, neither of which seemed very concrete to me then. And even now, I'm not sure that groups of the same name would do the same things in other shuls. Whereas I know at my minyan that the chessed committee organizes meals for new parents, mourners, and others in need. And the home hospitality coordinator arranges meals (and sometimes a place to stay) for people who need. And the kiddush committee organizes kiddush. And so on. Which to me makes it easier to see what the options are for getting involved that aren't "just" services.
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There is a woman in our Shabbat morning minyan who seems interested in building a text-study group (complementing, not competing with, the existing torah-study group), and I've been encouraging her to do that. (I need to ping her after the holidays.)
My synagogue actually has several discussion-oriented groups, probably more than the norm. We have two weekly torah studies (parsha of the week, which meets during the work day so I can't go, and the Shabbat morning group), a monthly Rosh Chodesh group, a monthly men's discussion group, and two bimonthly book discussions (one during the day, one in the evening). I think what I'd personally like -- and this is harder so I'm not surprised it doesn't happen as much -- is more lectures or similar trasmissions from experts to the rest of us. Discussions are great in that they allow everyone to participate and you get a mix of ideas; they should be complemented by infusions of expert material.
Hmm, I wonder if the answer is a seminar, where each group member takes a turn at presenting a topic and leading a discussion. That could be fun! I may suggest it to the woman who wants to do more text study. (I think, actually, that this what the Rosh Chodesh group does, but their topics haven't grabbed me much so far. I'm not much into "women's studies" as distinct from "people's studies".)
And even now, I'm not sure that groups of the same name would do the same things in other shuls.
Oh, probably. At least in the congregations I'm familiar with (Reform and Conservative), brotherhoods and sisterhoods are populated mainly by the generations that remember the Cleaver lifestyle. I look forward to the death or transformation of these groups in my lifetime. Actually, I personally feel that these groups are a violation of the core Reform principle of egalitarianism, but I know I'm in a small minority there. Err, I'll stop before the rant sets in. :-)
You have a good point about the chessed committee etc; I don't know if these weren't there when you were a child or if they were there but they weren't the sorts of things children got involved with. I suspect, actually, that the sisterhood did a lot of what's now covered by these committees, which I see as a sign of progress. I think that's more likely than that no one was performing those tasks before. All that said, a synagogue can do all the wonderful things in the world, but if that fact isn't visible to potential members, it may as well not exist.
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Though I suppose if you've built a community around it, you can then tailor the content of the liturgy somewhat. I've only been to a couple Reconstructionist services; they definitely made changes, but they kept a lot of stuff that I would think would be troublesome for people with that belief. (Like, say, Aleinu.)
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I never liked the gender specificity of the Brotherhood/Sisterhood, either. What I saw was the Brotherhood putting on breakfasts on Sundays (with a speaker), while the Sisterhood did lots of organizing of Purim fairs, mock seders, and such. None of it was about helping individuals, rather than groups.
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I'll add two other things:
1. The experience of feeling looked down on at services for not wearing sufficiently expensive clothing. (Y'know, we're not allowed to wear leather shoes on Yom Kippur, shouldn't that extend to fur coats?)
2. If the 25-35 childless set feels excluded from the synagogue, just imagine what it feels like when you're 40 and childless... as Ben Dreyfus said, "The emphasis on marriage and children tells us that we are only valuable as a means to an end, and not as individual human beings with dignity."
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If the 25-35 childless set feels excluded from the synagogue, just imagine what it feels like when you're 40 and childless...
Oh, I don't have to imagine that -- I'm over 40, have no kids (nor do I want them), and in synagogue life am quasi-single: I'm married to someone who does not participate in synagogue life. (That's not a complaint about my husband; I knew that up front and agreed to it.) When it's "family" this and "children's" that and events that are priced per family rather than individually and when there are few outlets for adults who just want to be adults with other adults... it gets frustrating. In this regard my synagogue does some things well and some badly, but it seems to be gradually creeping in the right direction. The real question is whether enough congregations will go far enough in this direction before they become irrelevant in too many people's eyes.
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-- From a sermon by Rabbi Eric Yoffie, at the UAHC convention in 1999
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-- From a sermon by Rabbi Eric Yoffie, at the UAHC convention in 1999
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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