Their Streak Ended

My mother's yahrtzeit approaches.  A notice came from my current congregation, as it always has.  When synagogue software first became available in the 1980s, automating special day notifications took priority.  People want a reminder of when they need to recite Kaddish.  Flag the date, assemble a packet for the office to mail, including a donation request with a return envelope, and both congregant and congregational treasury benefits.  Mass mailings were one of the first procedures to get successfully automated before personal internet access became the norm.  Snafus and uncertainties abound.  My synagogue keeps the deceased on its memorial list forever, irrespective of whether any survivors maintain their formal affiliation.  I do not know if they mail reminder notices to people who have moved away or otherwise left the congregation.  My former local synagogue stopped sending me an annual notice shortly after I stopped paying dues.

My childhood congregation took a very different path.  A quick chronology:

• 1964: Bar Mitzvah
• 1966: Breakaway group with Sugar Daddy forms a competing congregation.
• 1969: College in another city
• 1971: My mother's passing
• 1973: Relocation for medical school
• 1977: Marriage and relocation for residency
• 1980: Permanent settling in new city
• 2006: Closure of my childhood synagogue

Notices of my mother's yahrtzeit began to appear in my mail each winter starting in 1974.  I do not recall if I responded with a check before I started earning my own paycheck, but once established, they could count on a small gift in the return envelope each year.  As I moved to different apartments in the same city, or to different towns, the US Postal Service forwarded the requests.  As I responded with a check, the recipient in the congregational office had the presence of mind to record the new address, sending subsequent reminders there.  

Closure of the congregation created a branch point.  My congregation closed, it did not merge.  Assets were distributed under state laws regulating places of worship that ceased functioning.  Despite no formal merger, my congregation still had longstanding members, by then largely aging but still observant.  Nearly all defaulted to that breakaway shul, given no chance of long-term longevity at its inception, disadvantaged, or so people thought, by lack of our umbrella organization affiliation.  Whether by a preferable location or that Sugar Daddy, they not only endured, but now inherited pillars of my dying congregation.  They took the high road.  Memorial plaques relocated from the sold building to the active building.  The yahrtzeit list, including my name and address, merged with their database.  My notices kept coming.  

I had occasion to worship at the new place one time following my congregation's closure.  Familiar building sitting on prime real estate between my old elementary school and what was once modern luxury garden apartments that made that Sugar Daddy rich 

While I transitioned from place to place in my younger adulthood followed by extended stability, the institutions transitioned later in their life cycles.  The building where my Bar Mitzvah occurred lost its value as a suitable place for a United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism congregation but served as a desirable location for Hasidic institutions that had become dominant in that neighborhood.  At the successor congregation, nominally unaffiliated but with the form of worship characteristic of 1960s Conservative Jews, the neighborhood also changed.  My old elementary school had become an Orthodox Day School.  The houses where the people who attended that school, and that synagogue,  once lived, now had Orthodox owners.  While both my synagogue and the breakaway had always functioned as commuter congregations where carpools brought kids to Hebrew School and people drove to worship, that drive had become too long.  The building stood on valuable real estate.  Their leadership sold it, directing the proceeds to construct an opulent structure closer to where secular Jews now lived.  I worshiped there a single Shabbos morning, tied to a high school reunion later that night.  

Heavy entrance doors.  Posh sanctuary.  Those clunky bronze memorial plaques had given way to smaller uniform brass ones, my mother's name still among them, despite having never had a formal membership stature with them.  As secular congregations struggled, so did others in the region.  Two additional ones merged, pooling resources to maintain an elegant building and populate the sanctuary.  On my visit, a remnant of people from my Bar Mitzvah congregation, nearly all men, appeared for worship.  I greeted them but sat at a kiddush table with local contemporaries.

My final time there, likely 2009.  Still, each year that notice of my mother's yahrtzeit would continue to arrive each winter.  I returned a check promptly.  Later I learned that a high school friend, a fellow violinist in the orchestra, had remained with that congregation. Her parents had become charter members of the breakaway.  She ran a special project for the needy.  I wrote a second check for her to use, along with a brief note of admiration for her effort.  She sent a brief note of thanks to me.  And I added a third contribution to a semi-affiliated agency that dedicated a project in memory of one of my mother's close friends from my Bar Mitzvah shul, that one by credit card.

This year, that chain of fifty annual notifications stopped.  They had survived my relocations and their relocations.  People at one time devoted effort to keeping me, a minor donor, in the loop.  I do not know the fate of that congregation, though modern electronics offers a few hints.  They have a Facebook page to which I subscribe.  Every Shabbos, they post a greeting, at least until recently.  They have not had a Rabbi, but engage a Cantor, one with adult children. Within the last year, they posted that rather than maintaining their tradition of mixed seating/ male honors, their format since founding, they would try to make themselves more acceptable to the nearby residents by adding a mechitza.  This may also facilitate recruiting a Rabbi.  

The congregation offers a website, though a neglected one by modern standards.  It has not been maintained, with their newsletter postings ceasing in 2021 as Covid became less threatening.  

Why hasn't my reminder come?  In the pre-insulin era, Dr. Elliot Joslin, the recognized master of diabetes, used to ask his patients who descended to his Boston Clinic from far and wide, to send him a greeting card each Christmas.  When the cards stopped, he would have his staff try to contact that diabetic or family to confirm the expected mortality.  In our modern age, I could call the congregation or send a note to the office through their website.  I think I will send my usual checks, then inquire if they are returned.

Never Got My Say

Covid-19 changed a number of relationships.  I do not see friends personally so FB may be my best forum for keeping contact with people that I know or once knew.  OLLI disbanded and will be going remote.  I like the classes but I like the interaction with other people between classes more.  I will still register for the next online session.  The Holy Days are approaching, but I've also had Pesach, Shavuot, and Tisha B'Av to say nothing of every shabbat without synagogue gathering.  And I don't miss it.  There is some divided opinion on how congregations will fare once communal worship and synagogue social activities resume.  Online worship seems to have attracted people who either had nothing else to do, were curious voyeurs, or didn't like the bother of dressing and travel so never went to synagogue.  They attend now.  I haven't.  It remains to be seen how many of those sampling will remain interested to become in-person participants later or how many are more like me who not having gone wonder why I ever attended regularly.

For me, my congregation has become very uninviting, in part because my observations strike me as an underperformer, and in part because they have not invited me to do any planning or anything else requiring thinking or analysis, effectively disengaging me.  They've become more of a limited clique, with me not in it, assembling a trough, then inviting snouts to immerse in it.  There are online options, including a Rabbi class that's been among one of his best.  I get the sermons but when I commented and challenged one I got a polite thank you rather than a more erudite discussion in return.  I no longer read them.  When I agreed to pre-record the Yom Kippur Torah reading for them, they would not take out a scroll for me to read from while they ran the video camera.  My response is really one of not liking the trappings amid inferior substance, much like I abhorred those Model Seders from Hebrew School decades ago.  Disappointment and irritation circles that intersect.

I suspect the folks in charge are aware that non-engagement has some very negative consequences, especially when you need to ask people for large amounts of money.  They may have an in-crowd but they don't have a well-heeled in-crowd.  So the honchos embarked on a project that's been done successfully at least once before.  Their Board of Governors divided up the congregational member list and assigned a member to call each household.  I do not know if they were given a script or if the intent was to get feedback or to shake members down for donations or just to remind them of what the congregation offered.  My shul still insists on looking at their membership as households rather than people within households, much to their detriment I think, so if somebody answers the phone, the task completion box gets a checkmark.

Our call, which never became my call, was assigned to the person I would have chosen to do it, a fellow of immense Jewish capacity and nimble mind.  My wife answered the phone, conveyed the fulfillment of the call to me later, even though I was working in My Space at the time.  I guess if I was blackballed from being a meaningful contributor over time I did not need to offer a momentary statement now either.

Congregational Senescence

All synagogues have life cycles.  While in Venice last summer, there was a Jewish quarter with vestigial congregations that assembled minyanim but were once more than part of Venice's Jewish History.  My daughter spent the Holy Days in Albania.  She could walk to a 6th century synagogue ruins but would have to take transit to an active congregation on Corfu to experience worship.  Shuls just come and go.  All were once nascent.  Some are now at their peak, others are historical sites that were once thriving.

Our shul has gone through its life cycle, senescent but not ended.  We started more than 100 years ago, had a merger, had a move to a building designed for its needs, engaged a transforming Rabbi who shaped its identity, had a school that molded a fine legacy for us in many places, and for a variety of reasons has swooned in a way that will resist reversal.  Our white elephant of a building has been converted to cash to offset declining membership  revenue.  Participatory invitations are currently largely limited to a small subset of people.  I think our current state would be one of assisted living, tenants of a more active congregation that has a better result of absorbing its members into ongoing activities and creating new ones.  We are approaching what for people would be called end of life planning.

In many ways I have been the observer and historian.  Invitations to be a participant are few and largely based on technical skill rather than my inquisitive mind, which has been helpful there in other ways but not very contributory now, or at least not very desired now.  When I started there, defecting from elsewhere, I found myself attracted to the Rabbi's knowledge and intellect.  We had many great discussions about Judaism and beyond.  A Cantor arrived, partly with my committee assistance, who also impressed me with his breadth of skill and not quite polymath mind.  I could overlook the flaws, maybe even resist the attempt to rationalize them.  A certain amount of discord developed that would create factions and competition, though never vindictive.

A change in leadership, both officer and religious, made a good demarcation point.  Talent moved on, but it also became less a source of our identity.  Hopes for a new young Rabbi making an impact on young membership never materialized.  We retain pockets of excellence but that has long since become subordinate to more perfunctory things.  Could the Rabbi have written his vision for the progress of his congregation on a yellow pad within a year of his arrival?  I don't know if he ever tried. Can he do it now?  Doubt it, but maybe.   Did he ever nurture talent or chat with defectors?  Maybe, though my best guess would be no.

We find ourselves now at a branch point.  The congregation in its current trajectory cannot sustain the career of our Rabbi to normal retirement age.  It is time to bail out.  And provisions to do that have begun.  Unfortunately, the provisions to reverse this seem a committee of the same people who misjudged the situation ten years back.  What was once a grass roots community has increasingly resembled that USY clique of remote memory.  You now have a few people invited to do a lot of things and a fair number of people with dormant talent that is not valued enough to seek out.  Reversal or renewal cannot happen with that mode of thinking.  I don't think it will.