Social Media Gaps

As I create and review the twelve semi-annual projects to pursue for the remainder of the calendar year, there are a few themes.  Only two of the twelve require a partnership with anyone else, and a rather subordinate partnership at that.  They do require resources and they all have anticipated impediments.  Being retired and almost quarantined, time is no object.  Money for what I want to do is ample, except for one long-shot project where working on it seems more gratifying than accomplishing my most grandiose undertaking.  What I need to control are the distractions or amusements that divert my attention from priorities.  FB and Twitter need to be tamed.  FB can be a resource or a time sink.  Twitter is mainly a time sink, though it accesses me to some great minds and the need to limit the size of my responses has made me a more meticulous editor of the things I write. But once signed on, I could be signed on for a long time, surfing aimlessly, bantering with old friends, yet never using the talent, particularly on Twitter, to advance my own personal agenda.

I've tried rationing time I spend by setting a timer.  No access on shabbos, yom tov, or between 11PM-5:30AM restricts this time sink, but I also do not use this time for other items on my six month list.  What I needed to do was set blocks of time that I could use more productively and ban access to social media.  My solution, now working well in its third session, has been to just not open FB or Twitter on the days divisible by 4.  I've had prototypes of this which have succeeded. On days divisible by 3, I am off from my treadmill sessions to recover from the previous two days. As a result, I rarely miss the scheduled days, short of an injury that sidelines me.  Sermo had gotten out of hand, partly as a distraction, partly as an irritant as this physician service lost its intelligensia to the sloganeers and maybe even trolls.  I allowed myself access only on days that end in zero.  If coincident with shabbos, the usage gap would expand to three weeks.  Eventually I didn't miss it and haven't gone on it at all.

Twitter tends to be something like a subway service, always in motion for people to step into and out of the car at their convenience but never really controlling the format.  FB is more of a defined community and therefore more alluring.  I have noted the size of the community has depleted much as it did on Sermo.  Fewer people post regularly, or even sign on regularly, but those who designate this as their forum seem to have increased their entries per capita.

My self-experiment seems useful thus far. I don't miss not being there once replaced by activities from writing to functioning as my home's balaboosta engaged in enhancing my living space.  Recreation is more targeted, and FB and Twitter in the process of being redefined as something other than recreation. I seem to be on the right track.

Two Americas Reaches the Doctors

Democrats and Republicans Aren’t Just Divided. They Live in Different Worlds. wsj.com I avoid political opinions on my blog but sometimes they are a chance to think an issue through.   Usually the WSJ boots me as an inferior non-subscriber but they let me look at this one on FB where an assigned FB Friend must have either posted it or commented on it. There have been a couple of popular books on this. Charles Murray's Coming Apart analyzed a 50 year trajectory of separation having to do less with political identification but more with economic circumstances. He was rather condescending to the underachievers, as I might anticipate from other writings that suggest colleges are too often attended by students not academically qualified to be there, but noted that economic distress also clustered with divorce, housing instability, educational underperformance, and jeopardized health that filtered over generations. Most of the analyzed 1960-2010 span did not have political divide as part of the cluster. Robert Putnam's Our Kids looks at similar data in a more sympathetic way. The economically stressed were looked at as displaced rather than as underachievers, but with the same bimodal result as the WSW article, complete with political division and with isolation of each group from the other. It's really a megatrend. In his book Tailspin Steven Brill notes that historically public officials anticipated this possibility decades ago and even debated protections to those who would be predictably displaced but those got sidetracked in the name of expediency.  And as America divides with a political, social, and economic intersectionality, one group does not readily cross over to the other.  Economic data from the WSJ indicates that prosperity follows Democrats while those displaced from their traditional niche default as Republicans.  The divisions are not equal by any measure, nor is the hostility equal. Doctors puzzle me a little in this framework.  Sermo has largely devolved into a right wing echo chamber though the physicians I would suspect are more personable in person than on an unedited screen.  They don't seem to be at the top of the medical food chain, often bitter posting individuals who never were granted the Hebrew chayn, which is best English translation may be grace.  They all have university educations, mostly high income, public respect, and mostly secure lives.  Yet they come across as pounced upon by the forces they cannot control, be it the government, the insurers, bosses who are less accomplished than themselves.  The optimism seems absent as does the joy that taking care of patients once created for them.  The divide in general may be economic.  The divide among the doctors may be one of perceived trajectory as well as whether the daily work brings gratification in sufficient amounts to overcome the annoyances.  They do good work but it does not seem to them to be its own reward.  Since the divide involves prosperous professions, it should include the sense of loss of security or future prospects as part of the intersectionality.  I don't detect that same bitterness from the senior physicians, either at work or at professional meetings.  Just as we don't seem to cross categories based on prosperity or struggle, we don't cross them based on personal bitterness or satisfaction either.  Irrespective of professional or economic circumstances, if you perceive yourself as trampled, you probably are.  It may challenge the medical workplace for some time to come.

Places I Need to Be

Having been retired not quite a year, there emerges a tension between a totally open block of time and one that is accounted for.  Appointed times and flexible times seem to come in clusters, this week and last filled with some fixed obligation most days.  This week:

1. Sunday:  Funeral
2. Monday: Shiva visit, Meet with financial planner
3. Tuesday: Platelet Donation
4. Wednesday: Carpenter coming to repair backyard deck
5. Thursday: Trip to NYC to visit friend
6. Friday: No appointments
7. Saturday: Doing Shacharit at shul

For the most part, this seems a reasonable balance between structure and blocks of potentially productive time that get too easily depleted.

I have certain appointments with myself:  exercise on specified days, Sermo on specified days, Facebook on specified days, make dinner for shabbos each week, take my waist and weight measurements each Monday, review the week's parsha online with commentary from two specified sages.  For the most part I fulfill these fairly well.  

What I don't seem to do well is what the most successful among us seem to do without prompting just because they have a compulsion to devote themselves, be it writing, fishing, art, or even work.  Their day defaults to their prime activity.  Mine has no default so I have to compensate with a schedule, a to-do list, and often a timer.

Less Facebook

My previous attempt control time spent on Facebook lasted less than four months.  It was my intent to not access more than three half days a week, one post of mine each time and maybe some shares and comments.  There's just a lot of stuff that interests me and an entrance way to the world of ideas just seemed insatiable.  But it was really more like the lure of the Sirens which sucked the Greek mariners into their whirl.  Odysseus had two solutions, one for his crew who he instructed to make themselves temporarily deaf by putting beeswax in their external auditory canals and one for him where he could discover what was so alluring but not get there since his crew was instructed to tie him to the ship's mast.  I already know what FB does.  Beeswax, or at least a firm access schedule would likely be more effective. 

I am a little puzzled as to why my rationing of the medical SERMO went so well but rationing Facebook failed.  I think I am attached to the people of FB and a few of the groups, something I do not have with Sermo.  I also can pre-screen FB participants, snoozing or ignoring or unfriending.  Sermo does not allow that.  The best I can do is recognized the name of the poster or make a judgment on the title and move on. 

Here's the latest ration attempt.  Look at notifications every AM and PM.  Read posts on days that are divisible by 4, shutting down once done.  Can share on that day only.

See if this works any better.

SSRI Holiday

My daily pill container once had seven tablets.  Multivit not renewed after finally completing the contents of a one year supply of horse pills that took a lot more than a year to finish.  I've just never seen beriberi, scurvy or night blindness in all the years I took care of patients.  Some probably took a vitamin.  The majority did not.  The popularity of these escapes me, but also drew me in at one time.  Not expensive but not efficacious either.  Aspirin can be had at the Dollar Tree for $1 for a package of 60 tablets which is $6 a year, even less than the multivit.  The efficacy of this for people my age who do not have heart disease, which would be me if my stress test is accurate, does not seem to be there when studied in the manner of mainstream medical studies.  I've not had any adverse effects but people in the study groups have.  Just finished my weekly supply one week ago and never went back to reloading it into the weekly container on Sundays.  My need for an NSAID varies.  There are weeks when lumbago of some type makes this a scheduled medicine.  It has been my good fortune to go into remission, making this a prn medicine.  I keep a bottle between the front seats of my car but no longer put a daily dose in my case. And it delays my platelet donations which might be among the more useful things I do for people.  I could say the same about that prostate stuff the doctor prescribed a few years ago.  It alleviated symptoms which then stayed in remission after I stopped taking the medicine.  Usage has been minimal.  It is not a prn medicine so when I need it again, it will reappear in the weekly case, but hasn't for a while.  My PPI is still there.  The intent of these drugs is a two week course unsupervised medically for GERD.  And I have stopped it for brief periods only to have GERD symptoms come right back.  An EGD showed no Barrett's or other serious disorder, so the SSRI is for symptoms which have demonstrated themselves as either persistent or recurrent.  That one stays.  There is a statin.  My cholesterol level is well beyond dietary modification, as was my father's who developed symptomatic angina at an age slightly less than mine and a CABG at an age somewhat older than mine.   The medicine has been efficacious, at least by lab numbers if not by patent coronaries, when I am faithful about taking it.  The cost is not burdensome.  I had transient minor myalgia when my current high grade treatment was introduced but in recent years no adverse effects have been noted.  That one stays.  So does the ACE inhibitor.  My BP has been consistently above optimal when I have let it lapse.  There have been no side effects.  So my pill case in recent weeks has been depleted to three:  PPI, ACE, statin.

There remains one more variable, the SSRI.  I might have ADHD by childhood restlessness and inattention but I've never been treated or even tried a stimulant.  As a 60-something, I've succeeded pretty well and rarely if ever speculate to what loftier heights I might have soared had my attention span exceeded that of a Brussels sprout.  Or maybe I wouldn't have does as well.  What I seem to have, though, is compulsivity and hyperawareness.  I can be maniacal to detail, abrasive and impatient, particularly with people less astute than me.  INTJ's like me tend to be that way so it's not necessarily pathological but often not helpful either.  Maybe a dozen years ago I asked my doctor a therapeutic trial of an SSRI might improve this, remembering Peter Kramer's Listening to Prozac published a few years after the medicine became available but listened by me on audiobook quite a few years later.  While these drugs are antidepressants primarily, the have a role in tempering compulsivity.  Dr. Kramer described a patient whose personality, focus, and productivity soared on the drug with a setback on withdrawal and return of favorable results on retreatment.  That's a pretty fair prototype for me.  The pills had declared themselves safe, if not annoying at times. 

Starting with office samples of Prozac 10mg I avoided side effects.  It made me sleepy which is better than making me wired.  Paxil samples were easy to come by.  I lasted about three days.  It made me feel like I took something.  Then 20 mg Prozac by prescription for a while.  Eventually Celexa came out, better tolerated by office samples, then continued indefinitely by prescription with lapses.

This month, I thought it time to hit the reset button.  Avoided my shul on shabbos, withheld Facebook, withheld Celexa (citalopram), bringing the pill case to its current three.  Facebook hiatus a very good thing to do with return next month in a highly scheduled way, much like I did for Sermo six months back.   My shul in its current circumstances still annoys me but I will return in a scheduled way and maybe return to tossing blogbarbs at the Rabbi and Executive Committee.  Not having the SSRI, though, took a real toll and has been resumed.

I found myself mentally a little sharper without it, sometimes hyperaware, sometimes hyperfocused.  I also found myself unusually impatient, overreacting to minor glitches like losing something which may also hint that I didn't pay attention to detail as well, too eager to move on to the next activity.  I was not as nice a person, much as Dr. Kramer described his patient in his book when on and off Prozac.  I exercised less but tolerated the effort the same.  My appetite seemed unchanged but weight might be up about a pound.  Insomnia unaffected.

Before/After assessment shows that I like myself better when toned down a little, so the pill case for the evening doses has returned to four.

Tidying Adventure

Fads never attracted me much.  I never owned a betamax or an 8-track player.  My clothing, other than a few skinny ties along the way, never goes out of style.  My hashkafa of independence, honesty, accountability, and innovation, imported from Mayor Bloomberg's address at my son's college commencement, has a measure of eternity, one that is being challenged in current public discourse but I remain steadfast, as apparently does Hizzoner the Mayor.  It remains to be seen whether social media is also a fad, one that I latched onto, but I gave up Sermo with limited rationing and am in the process of ditto with Facebook.

Keeping neat and tidy is not a fad, one that has posed a chronic struggle.  It is unclear if my mind is organized but even if not, I can retrieve what I need from it easily.  Not quite so with the rooms of my house.  I designated one as my retreat, a six month project to create, one well under way.  Doing this requires the assistance of our bi-weekly recycling pickup and monthly state shredding service.  I am still committed to doing this, with real progress.  I can now sit at my desk, turn on lights, walk to the window and see space in the two closets.  Missing brackets to hold the variable position bookshelves have been replaced, allowing more books on the shelves and fewer in boxes on the floor.



I brought in an organizer who took one look, told me I am not ready for an organizer but could be a contestant on one of those Clean House TV reality shows.  The latest craze in organizing has been Marie Kondo, popularized by a Netflix TV series to which I do not have access and by books that I assume she wrote herself.  She takes a different hashkafa.  Instead of doing one room at a time, which invites relocation of clutter, she organizes by type of unneeded possessions.  It is her strong recommendation to do clothing first, all rooms that have clothing, which for me would be bedroom, daughter's room, study, kitchen, the two halls, living room, and if there is stuff in the washer/dryer then laundry room too.  Agree with her that I am not attached to most of my clothing.  However the barrier to my goal of having a retreat is paper and space in that room.  Relocating the paper fulfills the goal even if it adds clutter someplace else.

What to keep makes this a fad.  She advises keep stuff that speaks favorably to you.  Stuff does not have emotional content.  I have emotional content.  Stuff is utility and convenience.  Occasionally it is value, but unless you are important enough to warrant a museum in your honor, your high school term papers still in their cover with red marks from an equally obscure teacher just won't bring a lot at auction or estate sale.  The value if any is emotional, the work that went into creating that object, writing that paper, the memory of a special time which a tangible acquisition would be intended to preserve.  I find it much harder to let go of that.  A lot of memories and work accrue by the time you reach your 60's.  However, if I really want My Space, the number of surfaces and cubic feet of the room is finite.  It needs to be a place that I will seek out. 

Marie Kondo method, no.  Biweekly recycling bin, big time.

Rationing Social Media

In retirement, I have minimal must do now impositions on each day.  In one respect, it is freedom, control over my time, in another work has been replaced by other things that control my time, mostly by allure.  There are days when I can never get enough Facebook, even though most of my Friends, who are really more contacts, have either become less present, gotten snoozed for annoying me, or haven't yet gotten snoozed because my fondness for them overrides the endless political postings.  And no doubt I've done the same to others, which may be in part why their participation has waned.  Is it an addiction?  A Psychology Today essay by an addiction specialists suggests not.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-excess/201805/addicted-social-media

But the allure is such that I become a clock watcher in its absence.  No electronics on shabbos, but I have become more aware of Havdalah time and what I plan to do shortly thereafter.  No screens from 11PM to 5:30AM, more to promote sleep, but from about 4:30AM onward, the red digits on the behind bed clock may as well count down instead of up.  Dr. Griffiths, author of the article, recognizes the sense of deprivation, what might be happening to the world when I am not part of it?

Rationing as in shabbos and overnight has helped, but I gave myself a two day more comprehensive trial this week.  So far so good, but I still have the urge.  It may be like choosing Kosher.  People give up pork, then lobster, then cheeseburgers.  Eventually they look for hechshers and one day they no longer miss the clam chowder or even think about it.  I suppose FB can go that route, Sermo largely has, but access to cyberspace is a lot more beneficial than access to shrimp scampi so it may not be all that realistic to promote electronic celibacy.  Time constraints and participatory limitations may have to suffice.  I'll have a better sense of this tomorrow when I am looking forward to posting again after 48 hours avoidance.  Enrolling in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy seems premature.

Learning Twitter

Took Twitter for Dummies out of the library.  In 2015 I had created an account but never used it, and as I search as a new user, there are a lot of other accounts that appear blank as well.  Our President uses it to create discord and call attention to himself or develop his cult, which may be what the service is ultimately about.  While the intent of Facebook has been to connect to people you already know, apparently Twitter is more of a broadcast service to people you don't know, much like SERMO among physicians.  It open an opportunity for self-promotion.  In any case, I set my profile, misrepresenting it to make it look more interesting than it really is, but I assume that is part of the service.  Looked up a few people and organizations to follow.  Haven't yet exercised my option of blocking @potus.  Sent one tweet to an old friend.  Mostly see how it evolves.  It's popularity still mystifies me but maybe I'll understand better as I get farther into the book.

A Work Day

Big task list.  There has always been a little tension on major projects like decluttering my study.  Is it better to do a half hour at a time over an extended time or allocate an entire day to just do that.  My inclination has always been to eat the elephant one bite at a time but there are reasons to question that.  My monthly writing assignment, for which I am paid, takes a few hours to research and write. I pick the topic in advance when I find something that looks interesting but the writing is done in one or two large blocks when it has my undivided attention.  On the flip side I keep up with dishwashing pretty much every day.  Grand fleishig dinners, like I had for Thanksgiving and my wife's birthday, generate a few racks worth of dishes.  I do one rack at a time, but multiple racks in one day and generally do not stop for a partial rack.  And there are the hybrids.  In school I kept up with my classwork each day but had marathon reviews the night or two before each exam.

So after maybe a week of mostly recreation from my trip to NYC, a day at the library, a day ill, and a weekend recovering, then birthday and Hanukkah and a return to SERMO, it's time to redirect to the work tasks.  Cleaning the house, writing an article I've been neglecting, making my two desks usable, dealing with a large dental bill that may be erroneous, major shopping with money saving coupons.  All do better with concentrated effort and defined completion points.  Unsure if I am up to the task.

TOR-CH, of Blessed Memory

In the previous decade, my mornings in the hospital seeing consults, would be interspersed with use of the hospital computers for other than its intended purpose, though never challenged.  While now my marketplace for ideas has become SERMO, a comments site devoted to physicians for which medical licensure is required for participation, in that decade the diversion from work though not quite the time sink that SERMO can be, went to a list-serv operated by the Jewish Theological Seminary known as TOR-CH.  I never learned what the acronym stood for, but not only was I a regular contributor but its founder graced AKSE with a guest presentation on establishing the relatively nascient internet as a forum for exchanging Jewish opinions.  The forum was intended to be a source of moderated though relatively unrestricted commentary on Conservative Judaism as Conservative Jews lived it.  Subscribers filled a polyglot of the self-declared Conservative Jewish adult population, nearly all of us in our professional prime.  There were a few Rabbis who seemed to be taking the pulse of their constituents but were pretty careful not to use their professional status to leverage other posters, a few who had agendas to float by, but they were few.  There were the usual organization loyalists and defenders, some defectors like me who had never really altered their ideology but got fed up enough with their local experience to deep six it in favor of a more observant milleau than the local USCJ affiliate could provide.  There were those like me who had adverse experience and defensible contempt for a large fraction of the leadership.  And there were trolls, not the Arab disruptive sloganeers who invite a click of the IGNORE option on more open sites, but a few mainstream Modern Orthodox men trying to tell the audience why they offer more than the Conservatives do, much like a return to the Debate Nights of the 1950-60's era when Orthodox and Conservative Synagogue representatives would meet to convince newcomers to the growing suburban communities that their synagogue was the best affiliation option.  Those few people were highly moderated as some of the comments could come across as insulting, while I could pretty much post what I wanted, as critical as I wanted of the Rabbinical Assembly, which deserved it as a deterrent to learned lay participation in the movement.  I did have to be polite, if sometimes not fully respectful, and I was.



You get to know some of the people and their special skills, both Jewish and professional.  While private messages were discouraged, a few contacts asked me how to get the most out of their doctors and I quizzed some organization mavens about how to get some synagogue issue properly considered.  There were a few people proficient with the computer, a few Federation types.  Since I never was really a part of the Conservative Movement during my participation though very much a person who transplanted a Conservative mindset upward, if not just elsewhere, I did not get to meet any of the participants panim el panim except for two, on by invitation, the other by chance, yet became a Facebook friend to another.  While the intent of the project had a business purpose and perhaps one of the best opportunities for people in charge to gauge what the semi-loyal base of Conservative Jews might find meaningful, its reality became more the type of Kehillah that the Movement now seeks, though without the dues payment that it expects its kehillot to provide.  There weren't a lot of young people posting, mostly folks my age in the prime of their careers with tuition payments and mortgages to meet, people who liked to grapple with a question that had no real answer, whether of Talmud origin or synagogue branch point origin.  Every day I could expect to find something from somebody else that I would very much like to think about and respond.

Yet for all intents and purposes, it is no more.  The environmentalist Rabbi still sends an occasional insight.  Every winter the Hilchos Christmas spoof gets recycled.  But the candor about the Conservative Jewish experience, the type of comments and proposed interventions needed to stem its more widespread decline, these are no more.  My last post a couple of years ago got zero response.  If I might hazard a guess at its turning point, it would be the effective disinviting the three Orthodox missionaries to their cause.  They are the conversation makers, the disruptive innovators in a movement that too often shields itself from critique, even internal critique.  It allows those who remain to tell each other how wonderful they all are as mediocrity infuses inward.  I've not found a replacement peer forum anywhere else in Judaism of comparable quality and ongoing potential.  I miss the electronic conversation, something so readily available and vibrant medically through SERMO which in many ways has become the next destination, that TOR-CH like analog where all minds are welcome, restrained only by Derech Eretz. 

Being Interactive

Went to Chabad again for second day Pesach.  The Rabbi greeted me in the corridor as I was entering.  He asked me about my Seder the night before, a small family gathering that took effort on my part.  I returned the question, learning that their community Seder was attended by seventy.  The number surprised me, since it did not include college students who have their own center on the University of Delaware campus and were off that week for spring break.  So the conversation moved to how he identified 70 people who might be in need of a Seder, mostly people who lived alone that he knew about and invited.  Now for a long time, I've wanted AKSE data organized to enable that sort of thing, looking at individuals to invite to participate, but there seems no incentive beyond calculating membership by household billing statements.  He assured me that in the computer age, what he did successfully to enable people to attend a traditional Seder was not that difficult but you have to want to think about people who you can serve for their benefit rather than yours, another lesson not quite grasped by medical organization either.

Worship proceeded.  After Torah reading, the Rabbi cited a misheberach for the sick.  Two of my electronic friends, both women, had undergone intricate surgery for potentially life threatening diseases.  They had provided me their names so I went to give it to the rabbi.  He stopped me, indicating that the prayer was for men, then signalled me back for their names when he gave the healing prayer for women.  After the service I asked him if when he visits the hospital he sees all the men on his list first, then backtracks to the women.  Of course not, he told me.  The separation of men and women in the prayer, which is done in all congregations but I had never seen divided before, was done out of respect for the women in his tradition.  It had to do with the grammar inherent in the prayer.  The prayer is recited in a generic masculine grammatical format.  Chabad believes the women are entitled to their prayer modified grammatically in a feminine format so it is repeated with a separate list but the prayer itself having wording targeted to the people on the list.  When he visits the sick, it is done geographically by hospital floor with backtracking if somebody is not available for the visit when he first stops by.  Not men first, then women.

If there is anything at AKSE that I think has disappeared, it is those discussions, the random moments of inquiry and exploration, those teaching moments that crop up every day in hospital rounds when you encounter something that engages your mind and use that opportunity to connect with somebody else's mind.  It keeps SERMO vibrant, a forum where a physician can post a comment, clinical, political, or some other element as life as a doctor, and dozens of others will pick up on the presentation and write back.  The AKSE kiddush experience of Nice Shirt, Nice Tie, Nice Kippah out of Dale Carnegie to neglect of what was said in the sermon and its implications or more substantive discussions of what is really a diminishing experience that is losing the diversity needed to keep it attractive poses a real future problem, not just an overlooked opportunity.

Creating Synagogue Value

Somebody sent me a nicely written essay, one that apparently deleted the comment I had intended for it on www.kveller.com so I editorialize in my own forum.

Black= original text, Blue=comments

Michael Paulson reported in The New York Times on the “Pay What You Want” model that some synagogues are implementing to reduce the financial barrier to membership. Paulson estimated that about 30 synagogues across the United States are trying voluntary dues.

These changes, Paulson wrote Monday, have come from “an acknowledgement that many Jewish communal organizations are suffering the effects of growing secularization, declining affection for institutions, a dispersal of Jewish philanthropy and an end to the era in which membership in a congregation was seen as a social obligation.”

 

It has increasingly been seen as a consumer purchase. Need to send tykes to Hebrew School for Bar Mitzvah.  There are competing purchases, of course.  Day school, summer camp, psychiatrist to talk about Mom, trip to Israel, all Jewish in their own way with different assessments of economic value.   As a consumer purchase, the shul often seems overpriced with marginal return on expense.

With those realities, a massive change in the dues structure is necessary, but is it sufficient? Changing the financial requirement for membership without addressing the widespread lack of interest in attending synagogue or engaging in a Jewish life is going to yield more of the same long term: low participation and apathy.

 

I do not agree that the dues structure needs to be revised as much as the product being sold needs to be improved, if synagogue expenditure is to be a viable consumer purchase.  A more productive path, though, would be to have it something other than a product to be traded for cash.

 

Full disclosure: My husband and I are members of three synagogues. We’re members of my husband’s childhood Conservative synagogue in St. Louis Park, Minn., where our kids went to preschool, and we’re active at a newly revived Orthodox synagogue. We also consistently go to Chabad (where voluntary dues has been in place for decades). I was raised Reform, and we are not Orthodox. Are we an anomaly? Perhaps. Do we have to be? No.

We stay at all three synagogues because of the relationships we have with the rabbis, their families and with the other congregants. We have also studied with Reform and Conservative rabbis, Aish Hatorah teachers and with our local kollel leaders. Like many modern Jews, we’re not tied to one denomination.

 

Or becoming 21st century Hellenists.  In reality, not all Rabbi’s have engendered great loyalty, nor have a lot of the baalebatim.

 

“I’m hyper-affiliated,” I say whenever someone wants to know where I stand. Though I prefer, “I’m Jewish.”

After reading Paulson’s article, I asked friends on Facebook what keeps them from wanting to be more Jewishly involved in and out of synagogues. I admit that I already suspected money had little to do with their hesitation. The discussion went on for 12 hours, yielding more than 100 comments from Jews across the country. One friend summed up the issue succinctly: “Many [Jewish leaders] are asking, ‘How can we get people more involved in our synagogue?’ as opposed to asking ‘How can we get people more involved with Jewish life?’”

 

Be nicer to them.  Value them. 

 

Only a small fraction of the answers focused on the expense. I received numerous versions of “Services are at bad times for little kids,” “It’s too cliquey,” “Everything is geared to young families” and “I feel out of place as a single person.” The grievances mostly focused on Shabbat services.

 

those aliyah sound bites drive me nuts.  As one of the Baalebatim told me, no place is better than our shul on Shabbos morning.  Scientist that I am, I went to shul a few times and stayed home a few times.  He was right.  I could upgrade my Shabbos experience by going no place.

 

 

Adina Frydman, the executive director of  UJA-Federation of New York’s Synergy program, which recently published a study on congregations with voluntary dues, said, “Changes to the synagogue dues system are just part of a much bigger picture, namely the ways synagogues can continue to evolve to be places that create a deeper, more authentic sense of community.”

 

That's the role of the Rabbi and the baalebatim.  It is very much a community though a much smaller one than the baalebatim would like.  Unfortunately, I have attended many a board meeting both as a board member and as a board observer in which the purpose of expanding membership as a primary initiative is to provide financial stability to do more of the same programming.  If we like what we do, somebody else will like what we do just as much, and other delusions.  Not everybody there is on the A-list.  Invitations to participate for me have been few and far between, nearly all bimah activity, while for my wife they have been plentiful.  They just do not think of new people as sources of energy or creativity.  It is often a fine line that separates a resource from a threat to stability.

 

 

My experience with a wide variety of synagogues and Jewish organizations tells me that the pressing challenge now for non-Orthodox synagogues is creating communities where congregants care about Judaism and therefore see their synagogues as valuable. 

 

Important for Orthodox synagogues as well. They just don't have to pay their Rabbi's as much or hire as much staff or run Hebrew schools.  And they cater to a community that regards Shabbos as central, one that will put up with other indignities if Shabbos is a meaningful experience.  Once Shabbos is no longer a focus, those leadership generated indignities and expense begin to matter more.

 

That is not to deny a real need for dollars, but the financial insecurity is a symptom of a Jewish population that does not see how the Judaism offered by the synagogue has anything to do with their lives. If the perception of the product or the way it’s delivered (low rabbi-to-congregant ratio) does not change, how will a lower cost or even a free membership make people want to spend time, their other highly protected currency, at synagogues or in any aspect of Jewish life?

 

At the risk of going off on a tangent, but an important one, revision of the dues structure assumes financial neutrality with revenue provided by either voluntary offerings as many Protestant churches do, or by tithing or income based fees as the Mormons do and Jews did at one time.  The expenses continue but the means of meeting those expenses is redistributed.

 

 

Provide value and people will pay. Show members the joy of Judaism and empower them to bring that joy home. Engage members with discussions on how to be a better person, a better parent, sibling, spouse, friend, and a more ethical businessperson, and they will come back for more. If congregants do not see how Judaism can be relevant in their homes and everyday lives, then they will go somewhere else in search of meaning and take their dollars with them.

 

However, I am hard pressed to think of any synagogue officer or Rabbi who thinks their congregation’s mission now is anything other than imparting meaning to people’s lives through Judaism.  They may be misjudging how well they think they are performing and serving the Jewish public, often rationalizing any negative feedback on this, right down to people voting with their feet.  It is much too common for leaders or mature Jewish institutions for the last fifty years to regard people who do not take a liking to their institution as being inferior in some way.

 

 

I’m not implying that synagogues have it all wrong. Organizations don’t die because they provide no value; they die because they fail to provide enough value to enough people.

 

It depends on your perspective.  The synagogues have an inherent life cycle of birth, growth, maturity and senescence.  Demographic matter a lot. Social and economic shifts cannot simply be dismissed as inconvenient.

 

As Rabbi Avi Olitzky, co-author with his father, Rabbi Kerry Olitzky, of the forthcoming book “New Membership & Financial Alternatives for the American Synagogue” (Jewish Lights Publishing), told me, “There has to be harmony between the synagogue’s mission and its agenda. A synagogue cannot just be in the business of being in business.” When I told him that so many of us want community but don’t always know how to define it, he described community as a circle to which you feel you belong that will miss your presence.

 

I’ve not attended Shabbos services at my shul for six weeks.  Thus far nobody has asked what I did on Shabbos morning instead.

 

 

The reality for synagogues is that members – and those not even considering joining – can find  community in any number of places from yoga studios to the racquetball court to their careers, or their kids’ schools and sports teams. If we can’t give people a reason to infuse that circle with Judaism (not just with Jews, but with Judaism), then sadly I don’t see a future for synagogues whether they cost money to belong or not.

 

My communities right now are the pageant of work and Sermo.  I’m part of both, technically expendable at both, but when I make a statement of some type to upgrade the operation or impart knowledge, people respond.  My last three inquiries to the baalebatim at my shul on the Shabbos experience did not even merit a response by email.  Sometimes no response is the most telling of all.