OLLI Resumes

My senior program follows our state university's undergraduate calendar.  They afford their students a substantial winter break, enough weeks to do some serious traveling or volunteering.  These weeks also permit the senior division to hold minicourses, usually weekly for a few sessions, invariably online.  I have never attended, prefering control of my unscheduled weeks, usually with a few days travel.

But as Phil the Groundhog made his annual winter prediction, our classes reassembled.  My preferences did not go as well as last time.  Closed out of a course on enhancing drawing skills.  Closed out of a course on baseball that I would have liked to take.  Accepted to a course on what I thought was Guitar for Beginners.  It turned out to require a level of pre-requisite skill that not only did I not have but could not reasonably catch up on my own.  In the past I've only dropped one course, driven by disdain for the experience with the professor.  I will need to drop this one to make room for somebody else.

That leaves me with four classes, three in person lasting the full semester, the fourth by Zoom the second half.  All take place late morning, which allows me to complete treadmill exercise before heading off without having to modify my customary time or reduced a few minutes from a session.  

I drove to my first class.  Since the school's first time slot had gone to its midpoint when I arrived at the campus, I expected to find myself needing to park in an overflow lot.  There turned out to be ample spaces where I've parked in the past, though the handicap-designated lot adjacent to mine seemed full.  I pulled into a space a little farther from the entrance tha the specific space I seek out when I arrive for the early session, but not that many extra steps.  Usually, I take a thermos of coffee, but opted not to.  They offer coffee, but require students to bring their own insulated mugs.  Mine do not fit beneath the Keurig's dispensing mechanism, so when I take coffee, I make it at home.

Not many people in the lobby when I entered.  Tom the Officer who makes sure the  students, the frail elderly and more sturdy like me, make it across the roadway safely, must have been reassigned.  I walked inside.  Bitterly cold weather, though probably a few degrees warmer than what Phil the Groundhog encountered at dawn a hundred miles north of us, caused us to dress warmly.  I replaced my beanie cap and fleece gloves into the coat, pocket, hung it on a hook on the coatrack, then picked up my ID tag.  They changed the format slightly.  While I have lanyards from previous years, I took a new one.  The plastic sleeve that accepts the name tag now clips to the lanyard.  I found the previous safety pin unreliable.  Mine and many others would slip off, causing the lost and found employee in the office to chase a fair number of us down to return what had dropped onto their floors.  I think the current plastic clip will perform better.

Not many people in the lobby when I arrived, but morning classes were still in progress.  Once they let out, the central area filled with people.  Likely a mixture of those departing from their class, new people like me awaiting their first session, and a fair number who enrolled in two classes that morning. 

Still nearly a half-hour before my class would begin.  I sat in the library which has the most comfortable chairs for a few minutes.  Often I would stroll outside on the patio, sometimes venturing beyond to the small collection of gardens.  They had one doorway blocked off.  I do not know if their security staff thought the outdoors too icy for seniors.  The chill itself seemed adequate deterrent.  Instead, I traversed the lower atrium, then took the elevator to the second floor where my class would meet.  Chairs lined the upper corridor, many occupied.  I looked for an empty room with desks to maybe sit down and write.  None empty.  As I poked around, a former professor who ran a very worthy course, stood at the entrance to his assigned classroom greeting the new students entering.  We recognized each other.  Despite our name tags, I addressed him as Reverend, he called me Doctor.  His class would be new to him, but still philosophically based.  He opted for a short textbook rather than a series of Great Courses CDs, which have come to dominate many of the live OLLI sessions.  Some current students entered.  I moved along to my class, treating myself to a few moments in a chair in the hall before taking my seat in the classroom.

This professor had quite a lot of experience as a senior health care manager, just right for his course on American healthcare.  We received a list of topics for each lecture.  And for the most part, that's what they are, with selected audiovisual supplements.  The class engaged with each other about half the session.  I left content that at least one class will go well, after a few iffy offerings the previous semester.

Following the class, I walked downstairs, then across the parking lot to my car.  No problems exiting.  I could have driven home but opted to dirvert to the supermarket for a few staples.  Then home.  It had been a gratifying morning.

Making Dinner at Home

Every day I make an effort to read an article in The Atlantic.  I have a paid subscription, selected a few years ago.  The choices tend to be top-heavy with political themes, many reasonably compatible with my own world view, often assessing the boundaries of propriety.  Those are sometimes what I read.  More often though, I select the daily reading outside the political realm.  One on the evolution of family supper caught my eye.  My supper has evolved considerably over my lifetime, though not in parallel with the historical approach taken by the author.

 https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/10/work-its-whats-for-dinner/599770/

Currently, American adults span a lot of variants.  I am an empty-nester couple.  My son is a well-paid professional with homemaker wife and infant child.  My daughter is a single mother with an infant child on maternity leave.  I live in suburbia; they live in central cities.  I have great fondness for my kitchen and what it enables me to do. So does my son, though he lives a brief stroll from a street with five restaurants on each block, all of which will deliver.  Other than an occasional pizza delivery, I've never ordered a prepared meal delivered to my home, let alone the ingredients to make it myself.  As a kosher consumer, my options center around availability.

In childhood, my home in the 1960s had a nuclear family.  Wage earner father, homemaker mother who took charge of meals.  We also had kosher takeout as a treat, living in an area of many kosher homes. Mother shopped, made supper, which we mostly ate together, though that was also the era of TV dinners consumed on snack tables in the family room. Supermarkets had far fewer selections than the megamarts of today. In that era, a few families became unexpectedly wealthy, or, more accurately, high-income from salary or commissions.  When profiled, they seemed to select eating out more as their reward for more discretionary income.  We rarely ate out, other than an occasional pizza or going out for ice cream.

College brought me mostly to student cafeterias.  In medical school I had an apartment with a kitchen.  Studies took a lot out of me.  Not having a car my first two years limited what I could obtain from a supermarket, though that expanded greatly in my more mobile junior and senior years.  I ate supper with other classmates at an affiliated hospital the first two years, then mostly my own kitchen.  Restaurants were rare, but not absent.  I took a particular liking to a vegetarian place near my apartment, often a Shabbos dinner treat.  

Upon marriage to a graduate student shortly after receiving my degree and beginning residency, her university offered us a small apartment with a kitchen nook.  I had income for the first time, not a lot but mine.  The major university sat near trendy shops.  In my wife's years there, she had collected her favorites, still within an easy walk from university housing.  Her schedule being more predictable than mine, she handled meal preparation, but I did the shopping as the one with the car.  Meals became hybrid, our kitchen mostly, a favorite evening out once or twice a week, depending on my call schedule.  My final year and beyond to me to apartments and soon a house with real kitchens and much less convenient access to alternative places to eat.  My schedule and my wife's had some predictability.  By necessity, she got a car.  Our two children arrived, changing meal responsibilities.  

Though our circumstances changed, so did the world around us. A few entrepreneurial types saw the opportunities that dual-income couples with much of their days out of their personal control might bring.  We never sought fast food, but casual eateries, Sunday brunches, pizza chains, and eventually brew pubs became part of our supper options, though we never compromised on eating as a family.  We made few exceptions.  Having to tend to critical patients or late consults sometimes kept me away.  Kids had rare school activities that kept them from our supper table, whether at home or an evening out.  Supper had been allocated as the time when we assembled, as it is today.  When we visit our children in different cities, supper remains communal in their homes.

As my children progressed through childhood and beyond, not only did options of where to eat expand, but what could be accomplished in my own kitchen also evolved.  I took a liking to preparing meals, designing from simple weeknight to elegant Seder for many.  Borders Book Store z"l had endless books on their discount tables that I purchased.  Cable TV entered my home during the 1980s.  I gravitated to the Cooking Channel or Food TV.  In its early days, the shows demonstrated master chefs or food journalists helping interested folks like me to get more creative and proficient.  The endless competitions that replaced them would not come until much later.  The internet brought food sites, Kosher and beyond, all searchable by menu, cuisine, ingredient, though they did not make cookbooks with explanatory chapters obsolete.  Meals became a gathering time, but also a challenge to assemble and satisfying when done.  Convenience came later, but I had already spurned fast food.  As my skill and interest in making my own meals expanded, and they kids moved to adulthood, the need to delegate meal preparation to somebody else largely disappeared.  And the few places I sought out, largely brew pubs, have gone bust.

Meals today for me, now a Senior, remain a home obligation.  My wife and me, who even in retirement spend our daylight hours pursuing our individual interests, eat together.  I do not have snack tables to eat while watching TV.   Indeed, as televisions have gotten grander and less expensive, and channel options exploded, my wife and I watch different televisions with very different shows.  But we assemble for supper, which I prepare most nights.  I shop for ingredients at a megamart and at Trader Joe's. I know I will need to have something a little special each Shabbos.  When I shop, I look for things that make easy weeknight meals.  Garden Burgers, pasta that can be boiled and doused with jarred marinara sauce and sautéed vegetables,  potatoes white and sweet that can get shoved into an oven with an hour's neglect, frozen soups that heat in boiling water, tomatoes or cucumbers for slicing, vegetables that can heat in boiling water.  I rarely depend on a microwave. Each night we have an entrée, a starch, and a vegetable of some type.  Rarely wine or soda.  Occasionally beer for me.  Simple meals, occasionally elaborate with guests.  Always with my wife.  She's the centerpiece.

So, as The Atlantic essay noted, meal patterns have varied with technology, culture, and personal obligations.  While mine have taken a trajectory over time and circumstance, it was not that large a trajectory.  My household's supper still has elements of my childhood suppers but its share of advancements.  What we eat has shifted in small ways.  Who shares the table and which table really has not.

Choosing Paid Substacks

Creative, learned people abound.  At one time, they competed with each other for space in publications.  Many make their living from what they write, so the sponsoring magazine either hired them on a salary or paid them by the piece.  Advertising subsidized the publisher who saw content as some blend of mission, resource, and expense.  A consumer like me would either subscribe to the publication for an annual fee or head over to the library's magazine section to browse their collection.  

Electronic distribution of what is basically intellectual property has upended this tradition, both for creators and for consumers.  An era not very long ago attracted bloggers, mostly amateurs like me, who got intrinsic satisfaction from what we could put out for readers, but generated no money.  The pros, people of real expertise either as journalists covering a specific area, professional writers, or think tank experts not only needed a forum but a means of generating revenue from their knowledge.  Thus, we now have Substack, a forum where people or groups become entrepreneurs, selling their own subscriptions to their content.  As much as I like reading many of these, the market seems flooded.  With an annual subscription to each running about $80, a certain amount of selectivity is needed.  That sum not only offers content but the ability to interact as a reader.  Many have become echo chambers, pitching ideologies mostly parallel to what the sponsor promotes.  Those subscriptions might be better spent on authors whose views expand your own rather than validating personal beliefs.  

Many, if not most, of the popular authors have kept their salaried positions.  I need access to very few, if any.  Their Substack sites mostly do not have exclusivity of what they put forth to the public.  So what the subscriber seems to be purchasing is membership in a community as much as enlightenment from the sponsor's ideas.

At present, I pay for one, $5/month, for which I get two articles each week and a chance to express myself.  I think I would be willing to purchase one more at a similar or slightly higher price.  I've already let one subscription lapse, one of the most widely subscribed to Substacks.  What was promoted as independent journalism became one more echo chamber.  With the many out there, I still look at the selection much the way I would in a public library's magazine nook.  Take a few issues, read them.  Subscribe to two, both with multiple contributors.  While the interactive feature attracts me, and has added immensely to the one subscription that I have, I rarely read other readers' thoughts.  Perhaps I've become jaded by open cesspools like Twitter.  There is much to be said for having an editor to screen what others get to read.  In another era, not too long ago, many newspapers had open comment forums, mostly now eliminated by experienced editors opting to have no comments rather than unscreened toxic ones.

Most internet forums have undergone some revisions in the two decades that everyone has had access to unlimited platforms.  Some would classify as enhancements, others as descents.  I would predict that as much as learned people should be able to make a few shekels distributing their thoughts, the price requires considerable selectivity for who to read regularly.  I'm not yet ready to move beyond the single subscription that I have now.

Tabulating Expenses

While an Osher Institute course on Excel did not materially advance my skills, its basic addition and searching capacity have enabled me to get control of my finances.  Good fortune has left me very comfortable on the resources side.  Still, I watch what I spend, though pay a financial advisor to watch what my wife and I invest.

Every month on or about the 20th, I go through bank and credit card statements.  Each expense has a category, though for individual outlays, the best classification can be debated.  If I eat out at home, it's Eat Out.  If I eat out on a trip, it's Travel.  Gas fill ups at home are Gas, while staying at a hotel away, it is Travel, whether I drove my car or a rental.  Tolls are Travel irrespective of where they occur.   Comcast's monthly fee gets called entertainment, even though the internet does not often amuse, the land line gets paid in that bill, and we get TV service.  It makes it appear that I entertain myself more than I really do.  Health insurance gets logged separately from auto and home and life.  I do my best to keep the compromises consistent.  

As I log each individual expense each month, I note which are on autopay.  It's quite a lot.  No insurance premium or utility bill will get overlooked that way.  Credit card payments also get taken out of my checking account automatically, though each card's carrier gives me a heads up a few days before.  My Medicare supplemental premium does not.

At the end of each quarter, I tabulate quarterly expenses by category.  The wizardry of Excel allows me to total the groceries column, the by dragging, the same formula calculates each other category.  I do this at the half year and as an annual summary.

I spent a lot of money.  Biggest chunk by far, taxes.  My investments did so well, at least on paper, that the financial managers silently cashed out periodically, leaving me with big bill to settle with the IRS.  I never saw much of this as income, just as an appreciation of my holdings, but one that required a transfer to my checking account.  Living expenses don't seem that extravagant.  Average $90 a week at the supermarket, purchases of Stuff from retailers or e-tailers totalled less than groceries.  My auto payments ended.  Maintaining my house ran $17K for the year.  Some big ticket items, a plumbing revision, heating repair, landscaping.  And cumulative smaller expenses from lawn mowing to biweekly house cleaning crew, an expense that essentially replaced the car payments that had reached conclusion.

We are pretty generous with donations.  Mostly small ones.  The larger ones come from my IRA mandatory distribution.  We try to share what we have and make a statement about what we value.  Travel came well below our means, maybe about half of what we should spend.  And dining out locally does not amount to much.  Like many others, the cost of each evening has crept upwards.  It will not affect our financial position if we went out more, but it's not worth the cost or the shlep back and forth.

So the numbers tell me that I live sensibly.  Could spend more on myself, but don't really feel a need for any more stuff.  Need to reassess the value of the biweekly housecleaning, some $5K over a year.  No need to rejoin the JCC, though reducing the cleaners by half would more than pay the annual fee.  Some kind of household repair becomes periodically inevitable.  And maybe take a major trip in the coming year.  And hopefully a much reduced tax liability.

Old Cartoons

As a grade schooler, 1957-1963 or thereabouts, my early mornings started with cartoons on days without pressure to dress for school.  Looney Tunes stood out.  Everyone knew Bugs Bunny and his associates, who eventually found their way to a US Postal Service series of stamps and swag.  My home TV for that entire era only delivered black and white, so the color Looney Tunes had to wait for matinée shorts at the movies or occasional reels run in school.  They weren't my favorites.  I took more of a liking to Flip the Frog and Farmer Gray aka Farmer Alfalfa.  To the best of my knowledge, those were never colorized.  Later, I would turn on Crusader Rabbit at 7AM every Saturday morning.  Farmer Gray had no audio dialogue, though occasional subtitles.  Flip the Frog spanned the entry to talkies but the skits remained mostly silent.  Music accompanied each, often the finest classics ever composed, though unknown to me as a grade schooler.

Democratization of cyberspace and YouTube enterprises have reconnected me to my old favorites.  When I watched them as a child I did not know when they had first been produced.  It turns out that Farmer Gray and Flip came to the cinemas in the pre TV era, early 1930s.  They each ran about seven minutes, making them suitable for a movie theater prelude to a main matinée.  On TV, they stood alone.  At the time I watched them, they were already about 30 years old, though my parents may have seen some in the original.  They seemed remote, already part of an obsolete screen history at the time I sought them out on television.  For perspective, my daughter watched She-Ra Princess of Power and my son the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Each series is older now than Flip and Farmer Gray were when I watched them, but neither registers as obsolete.  Neither do Looney Tunes of a slightly later time than Flip or Farmer Alfalfa.

Absence of dialogue posed a challenge for the cartoonists.  They had to make the pictures memorable.  Looking now, I find the plots and diversions witty.  Heads lopped off but easily replaced.  Emotions between a loving feline couple conveyed without words.  Modern cartoonists have become too dependent on accompanying audio to tell the story.

By the time of Crusader Rabbit, also initially in black and white, the stories became serialized.  Each episode lasted about five minutes, just right for selling sugared cereal to youngsters of my age, followed by another five-minute clip that resumed the story.  The cartoons stopped being stand-alone.  Their creators eventually moved on to Rocky and His Friends.  The Rocky/Bullwinkle tales also had brief cartoon installments of a longer story.  The Fractured Fairy Tales, Aesop, and Mr. Peabody took a standalone format.

As I reconnect to Flip and Farmer Gray, there seems to be something timeless, though both series lasted only a few years each.  They remain entertaining today.  They also leave me with admiration for the wit needed to produce them in the absence of words.

Under the Bed

Some semi-annual projects carry over.  Progress without completion in the first cycle but visions on an end point with just another six months.  Repurposing my son's bedroom to another use twenty years after he vacated it has gotten my attention.  It's a big project, though one that probably could go to completion with some professional input.  It would not be fair to call him a hoarder.  He accumulated stuff gradually over a long time.  I had tried to make his room function for him, providing him a desk, workable chair, adding shelving to his closet.  But organization never captured his attention.  My father transported my dresser, nightstand and bed when he moved south in 1988, his grandson reaching the transition from crib to bed at the time.  Now I find myself not only with the furniture but a cluttered floor.  Over six months I hacked away at surfaces.  Thrift agencies got generous donations of clothing, though I separated things my son might find sentimental.  Those went in a drawer.  Paper got recycled.  Awards and correspondence from people and agencies important to him went into a secure case with a zipper.  Some drawers got purged.  Nothing has yet been relocated to a different part of my house, nor has anything been transported to his rather spacious home some five hours away.

His bed served as a flat surface to put things as I worked.  Eventually, though, that would become the centerpiece of the room, even if nobody else ever sleeps on that bed again.  Its mattress was my mattress, now 70 years old.  The mattress and box spring probably would not be sold today as too shoddy for a good night's sleep.  As a teenager, my father had to place a sheet of plywood between the mattress and box spring for support.  The bed frame had moved from its wall, needing to be repositioned.  The plywood and box spring had also shifted from their best sleeping position.  And what might have come to rest beneath them challenged my imagination.

Moving everything seemed a two-person job, though perhaps a younger, more muscular he-man could have managed it.  I made a date with my wife to do this.  Mattress moved into an adjacent hall. Slight slit in my left pinkie but no splinter moving the plywood.  Box spring had a plastic coating on its upper surface, a wise addition for the two year old who slept on it.  Its lower surface had a gauze covering stapled to the wood frame, now mostly separated making the inner coils of that box spring readily visible.  They seemed intact.  That ant the plywood also took their place in the adjacent hall.  Then I removed the three supporting slats, screwed their by my father after many episodes of my childhood where they dislodged. leaving one side of the mattress and box spring to slide off the frame.

With the floor exposed, likely for the first time in 38 years, I could see what accumulated.  My son had a feather comforter.  Earlier in the project I had harvested this.  Its duvet cover removed for washing, I could see considerable feather shedding from the blanket.  After washing the cover, I inserted the comforter back in with some difficulty, not noting any torn areas that might allow feathers to escape.  The floor beneath the mattress, though, looked something like a white bird mixed with a lot of other things.  I separated the objects into three basic categories:  paper, cloth, other.  The following day, I went through the paper, recycling most, tossing some, saving the photographs, letters from dear people, greeting cards.  Textiles mostly went into the trash with a few items harvested.  I found water and soda bottles suitable for recycling, writing instruments, an obsolete disposable film camera, coins, two light bulbs, a plastic cup from a casino, and a CD Walkman that probably still works.  Some to trash, others put in a plastic bin for later sorting.

Now the vacuum.  The upright Shark worked fine, though it sucked up its share of coins hidden within the feathers.  This machine does not do edges well.  I could not find the vacuuming toools but my wife did, so I can finish the job shortly.  The bed frame now sits flush against a far wall and a side wall.  Replacing the slats, box spring, plywood, and mattress remains a two-person job.  Then install the new mattress cover, make the bed with one of several twin sets that I came across.  The feather blanket should be tossed.  I have extra pillows.  Then buy a new bedspread.  Finally, declare that surface off limits for piling stuff upon it.  I probably have twin blankets somewhere, but if not, I can buy one of fiberfill.  Better to just discard the feathers.

Some projects need an inflection point.  My son's bed, inherited from me, provides that key element of his room's restoration.  It is unlikely anyone will sleep there, as my daughter's old room has remained tidy.  It contains a much more functional mattress, though no headboard.  My son's bed in position and declared off limits for clutter, the remaining contents of the floor's surface, less that feather-shedding comforter, should organize more easily.  

That's Who We Are

Often I attend Shabbos morning services out of a sense of obligation.  It is not unusual for people of my era.  The Protestants and possibly the Catholics share this legacy.  Synagogue or Church is the place you go on your weekend morning.  Blue laws existed to my young adulthood.  Stores remained closed, though Kosher butchers and Jewish stores in the states where I lived could choose to remain closed on Saturday in lieu of Sunday.  There were places to get breakfast on Sunday, coffee shops, bakeries.  Some eating places, though, did not open until after noon when church let out.  Recreational facilities opened at noon.  Place of worship served as a default.  Sunday served as a communal time out, at least for the morning.  The NFL still played in the afternoon.

Fractures began in my university years of the 1970s.  Shabbos services were readily available wherever I lived.  Social pressure to attend in a population that had escaped parental mandates disappeared.  Still, regular student worshipers kept services adequately attended.  Thirty years later, in my children's student years, I had occasion to attend their Hillel.  People of their generation still filled two small sanctuaries, one Orthodox, the other Conservative, each time I visited, combining themselves to partake of Kiddush when both services had concluded.  Still, the attendance represents a small subset of the University's Jewish students.  

My own congregation, where I have maintained membership for 28 years, did fairly well, adding my generation to the one that preceded us.  Young families entered at early career, raising children, staying indefinitely.  The generation ahead of mine also had children, though few settled in the community.  Perhaps we had elements of a Jewish Ponzi scheme where new players from the outside had to replace those who cashed out for Florida or relocated to be near their own kids or became actuarial statistics.  Still, that system functioned.  It no longer does.

How can we restore ourselves to multi-generational, if not intergenerational?  For the last year, our Board and Membership Committee, with the Rabbi's professional and self-interest, embarked on a membership enhancement effort.  And newcomers have added themselves to our rolls.  You can only improve what you can measure, something that our people avoid doing in any depth.  Coming to services out of perceived obligation yesterday, I sat up front, first row, taking the required two books along with a plastic bin to stash them and my tallis bag under my seat.  The choreography of the Saturday morning services forces me to gaze from my seat at the very front to the back wall periodically.  I did this enough times to survey who came.  It seemed much like other Saturday mornings.  One person I did not recognize, another the son of the man being honored at the remote anniversary of his Bar Mitzvah.  Everyone else I could name.  Our two sets of fathers of young children, who each attend as half-couples with much less frequency than they once did, did not join us yesterday.

Total attendance, about thirty individuals, more men than women, but not our most lop-sided attendance.  Often, I count half-couples and full couples.  Yesterday I did not, but no unusual drift from our usual pattern.  How many under age 70?  I didn't know who among us had reached their threescore and ten.  How many under 60?  That I could make a reasonable estimate.  The Rabbi, son of man being honored, and likely the one person I did not know who drove into the parking lot at the same time as me, took a seat in the last row, and left before the service ended.  So three for sure.  And three other could be's.  A doctor who comes about half the time, a fellow who participates regularly, and a new person who comes with increasing frequency, whom I've met a few times.  So of thirty people, that leaves us at between 10 and 20%, with two of the for-sures being transient.  Our internet allows us to retrieve publicly available information quickly, including people's ages if you know a few other things about them.  The doctor and the regular participant go into the over 70 slot.  The other woman is likely a contemporary of mine, likely past 60.  So of the people in frequent attendance, the Rabbi is junior to the next youngest by at least ten years.  I checked some new members not present.  A couple in their 60s.  Another doctor in her 70s.  And another doctor in his early 70s with his wife in her 60's.  And one real young adult, the grand-daughter and daughter of members traceable to the World War II era.  I've not seen her at worship.

My own activities put me on a second tier.  Bimah skills get me invited to the sanctuary's center table with some frequency.  I attend Board Meetings as a member.  I attend the meetings of one committee.  I'm probably also their most inquisitive observer.  Wanting to keep our synagogue from actuarial collapse seems a laudable initiative.  Trying to do this without exploring how others succeeded, or failed, without tapping into those with expertise or experience on a project this important seems a form of folly.  And should this be our goal, especially one that has not explored a system to do it?  

A young woman I had a chance to interview suggested an answer.  To enhance membership, the Rabbi and High Holy Day Committee designed an experiment.  We would offer a sweetheart deal to attend our High Holy Day worship, one in which our synagogue invested heavily.  For a nominal sum, about 4% of dues, people not affiliated elsewhere could join us.  Only two takers.  One, a couple in their 60s, already contemplated joining and did soon after.  The third person came primarily wanting a place to worship without commitment, a woman who had her Bat Mitzvah with us when we had a more robust collection of families who still had children in their houses.  I interviewed her afterwards in my capacity of Membership Committee member.  This poised rising thirty-something, a product of our congregation, very familiar with us, assessed her experience at the Holy Days.  My position required me to discuss membership, knowing that her past experience had many downsides.  Rather than telling me she did not want to risk reliving any of that, she responded differently.  She told me her impression.  Our congregation was not a place that young adult Jews would seek out as a path to their growth.  It is not who we are.  We are a Medicare Club, seeking new people to protect our financial future and the Rabbi's professional future.  That is our goal.  Advancing a new generation to take the place of a declining one serves as a byproduct, if it happens at all, not our incentive for the membership enhancement that we seek.  We might do better by accepting what we are.

I do not know which is the better path.  For now, looking around, counting our successes, we've not done badly as a place where Jews in their later years come together.  Worship, governance, events, even the rhythms of congregational life.  What we are has emerged as our default.  The challenge may not be in recruiting a new generation but in giving those with us the most fulfilling experience we can offer until the generational reality expresses itself.