Lost & Found Tables

Yesterday afternoon I decided to attend afternoon minyan, which has largely depleted to a non-minyan, whoever shows up. only the Rabbi and me yesterday.  Our space sharing arrangement with the USCJ congregation may be contributing to it, as parking was s hard to come by even with a nearly empty building due to building maintenance that halved the already tiny parking lot and sadly, the need for protection from anti-semitic attack that limits access to the building.  For the most part, this isn't worth the trouble of going so people vote with their attendance.  Their Rabbi heard the buzzer, graciously interrupted what he was doing to let me in, and I agreed to stand near the door until services to let anyone else who came by inside if they did not appear dangerous. 

To the corner was the Lost & Found table for the Hebrew School, and in the rack a brochure for enrollment in their Hebrew School, which seems well attended.  The tuition of $1600 staggered me, as it meets only two days a week, but if you want a Bar Mitzvah you gotta pay.  Along the way, you also have to wear a tallit, as that either inside a velvet bag or alone was by far the most common item on the table.  There were gloves, mostly unmatched, something that looked like the cover you would put on your golf driver with a U of Maryland logo, some water bottles, only one rather attractive knit kippah that I think looked feminine but wasn't sure.  I would think that most kids only have one tallit and one carrying bag, they would only have limited places to leave it:  home, car in transport, or at the synagogue, and would notice that it was missing.  The cost would also prompt people to look for them.  But they were the most common unclaimed items.  Gloves are easily replaced and could be dropped anywhere as could water bottles.  And you really don't need to cover golf club heads.

Osher  Lifelong Learning Institute also keeps a Lost & Found table.  The enrollment there far exceeds the enrollment in Hebrew School, the tuition a small fraction of what the Hebrew School charges, though people go there only for the enrichment so it is harder to extort a high attendance fee.  Despite the large enrollment, the Found Table is much smaller.  Water bottles or insulated coffee tumblers seem most common.  People lose gloves, misplace their reading glasses, a pierced earring will fall off, they remove their wristwatch during a class and leave it on a desk.  I did not see any dentures or contact lenses.  Items of this type could be lost anywhere and, unlike dentures or contact lenses, none seemed seriously expensive to replace.  A few of the seniors who attend probably go to few other places but most visit restaurants, libraries, movies, and malls so the lost items could be anywhere.  It's easier to replace them than to pray to St. Anthony of Padua, the patron Saint for Lost Objects, for their return.

I wonder how much of our own archaeological conclusions are distorted by lost things that people never recover that are discovered on dig sites centuries later.  When we find these artifacts, we assume they were important reflections of how people lived.  They could be just as transient and expendable as our water bottles or even our talesim.  A risk of Type 1 error, no doubt.

PM Minyan

Our shul has been the full service congregation for most of its existence.  Two minyanim daily except Sunday night, control of the Vaad HaKashrut for the state, full kryat HaTorah at each scheduled time.  We need people to do these things.  For the Vaad the Conservative congregation now has some representation but Chabad does not.  Our minyanim, though have become insecure.  On Wednesday and Friday shacharit we have a combined service with the USCJ affiliate with a hybrid liturgy that is mostly from the Conservative siddur.  As people retire, the 7AM starting time gets less realistic but I am told the quorum usually materializes. 

PM has been more problematic.  I went yesterday, just the Rabbi and me and two men observing shiva.  Attending three a month had been one of the twelve initiatives for this half year.  Since I do not want to go to the Rabbi's classes that follow on Wednesday and Thursday, I selected Monday and Tuesday.  Rabbi has Monday off so for all practical purposes there is no service.  Tuesday never gets more than half a minyan when I am there.  I asked the Rabbi if there is ever a PM minyan.  Sometimes if enough men attend the evening classes and sometimes for Shabbos afternoon.  That would mean kabbalat Shabbat is no more, which is why I observe Kaddish at the Reform congregation that starts later of Friday nights and secures ten Jewish men, or at least within my system of counting ten men wearing kippot in a sanctuary where they are optional.  And I get some wonderful music and a thoughtful sermon thrown in.

We are running out of people. 

Wrong Haftarah

Intereting shabbos, a special event with a landmark birthday for one of our congregants, which attracted many of her friends from the USCJ congregation, which provided us a real Kohen and Levi for our Torah reading, something we often do not have among our own members in attendance.  They had to sit through a whole Torah reading, 126 pesukim, but only two Aliyah Sound Bites, both brief.  And somewhat expanded Kiddush to make the attendance worthwhile. 

The Haftarot that bridge Tisha B'Av and Rosh Hashana, seven Haftarot of Consolation from Isaiah, all need to be read, though there has been some divided opinion as to whether a special Haftarah as the new month changes from Av to Elul, as it did last shabbat, changes the sequence.  Our custom has been to read Haftarah Rosh Hodesh, then double Re-eh and Ki Tatzay as they are ordinarily read together as the Haftarah for Noach.  That has been our custom, or so it was announced by the Rabbi with the right page number for Rosh Hodesh.  The reader, however just started Re-eh, leaving those of us who could read Hebrew wondering for a moment why he was reading from a different page than was announced.  Most of us figured it out quickly, found the right text and followed along, at least from our congregation.  Don't know if the visitors from elsewhere could tell the difference, or even cared.  That may be our principle form of product differentiation.

As congregational snafu's go, there are many more serious ones like entrenching all the VP's in the Executive Board in perpetuity to the neglect of talent progression or sermons that are too identifiable as AIPAC faxes to their designated Rabbis.  Perfection is often the enemy of the good and we botched this one.

Departures

Our congregational rolls have been having a net loss pretty much each year since my arrival twenty years back.  It is unlikely that I had anything to do with any of the megatrends of American Judaism, though I did move from the Conservative shul for cause and have not been as valuable to the larger Jewish community as my resources my have been were I treated better when I was there.  Those are trends that reflect on success and failure of the leadership class, which I am not.  Some are external forces that nobody really controls, deaths or nursing home transfers, retirements to Florida, new jobs in new locations.  We've had five these past few months, each with their own story and their own legacy while among us.

The first is a tragic relocation, a couple who dedicated themselves to our congregation as long-time officers, and more importantly, as parents whose children benefited from our shul to transfer their legacy to their next destination.  A protracted illness took its toll on the gentleman, leaving his widow with some decisions.  Her ties to the community were many but she also has observant children and now grandchildren about five hours away in a somewhat larger Jewish center.  Her decision to relocate near them seems most understandable.  While we are lesser for her absence, it seems more like a deserved retirement after an adult lifetime of effort.

The next two take a different track.  About once a quarter, I make an effort to attend shabbos morning at Beth Tfiloh in Baltimore, the yardstick of modern Orthodoxy that I would like my congregation to strive towards.  There are two Wilmington families that I see there. One is an elderly man who attended shabbos morning regularly.  I never knew his children.  His wife passed away.  Being less than fully independent, he move in with his son in Baltimore.  They attend Beth Tfiloh and I make a point of greeting them each shabbos.  We chat momentarily about our congregation and its progress or setbacks.  I'm not sure the senior fellow understands but his son has an appreciation of what his time there, many years ago, enabled for him today.  He attends shul.

The other Beth Tfiloh members are also AKSE alumni, among the most accomplished of the Hebrew school, modern Orthodox in their own right.  I ran into him at Kiddush recently, noting that I've not seen his folks in a while.  I assumed they retired and relocated, as they are my contemporaries and the big employer of the area divested itself of a lot of their scientists.  It turns out that after an adult lifetime at our shul, they defected to the USCJ affiliate.  Did not pursue why but asked him to give his parents our best wishes. 

The next two deplete our desperately scarce young people.  The member with most future promise worked as an Assistant Professor at the state university.  During his time with us he married and started a family.  He had dropped off the radar a while.  I knew he was up for tenure and trying to produce scholarly output which diverted him from other things, to say nothing of being the best dad he could to his infant son.  After not having seen him in a while, I asked about his family, underestimating the age of his son by about half.  Tenure did not come through and he would be departing to a major state university in the midwest, a household name during football season and a very respectable academic center.  It is not near a major city but as a mega university, there are enough Jewish faculty to maintain a congregation, one not that much smaller than ours.  They have acquired one of the Jewish gems, though at our expense.

Our final one took me by surprise, largely by its suddenness and mystery.  We have virtually no 40-somethings other than the Rabbi, and even he relocated his family to a more heavily Jewish area where there are functioning day schools.  But one fellow became ubiquitous.  He never missed a minyan or a shabbos.  When we served cholent at kiddush he made it.  When there was a gathering worthy of barbecue, he made the hot dogs and hamburgers.  After several years I never grasped what work he did or what brought him to our town.  He got his medical care at the VA so he was in the military, but he did not seem disabled.  He just seemed eager to do what he can for the congregation, driving our visiting cantor to catch his train after shabbos and parking his own Harley next to the Rabbi's space.  He would occasionally give the shabbos dvar Torah, always homespun with an Arkansas speech pattern, but always tied appropriately to the portion and enjoyable to listen to.  It came as a surprise yesterday when the Rabbi requested one of the men who would be coming for Havdalah take the Hazzan back to AMTRAK as his usual source of transportation relocated back to one of the Dixie states on short notice.  No advance notice, as he would have merited some type of recognition kiddush, just no longer here.  Our minyanim get less secure.  Other people can grill the food at the Annual meeting and the Hazzan will get home.

Some turnover is expected, some a puzzle, all a loss of varying degrees.  Unfortunately, the entering class has not materialized in a meaningful way for some time.

Or Might Not Be the Best Options

The 2 Options Left for Conservative Judaism

Roberta Rosenthal KwallDecember 22, 2015Image: JTS

(JTA) — The Conservative movement was once the very embodiment of what it meant to be an “American Jew.”

As the 130th anniversary of the founding of its flagship Jewish Theological Seminary approaches in 2016, the centrist movement that historically straddled the polarities of Reform and Orthodox is struggling to maintain its identity and attract new followers. The movement’s congregational arm recently hired branding consultants to provide it with a clearer identity.

They might do better with a branding iron.

As one who was raised as a Conservative Jew, I believe there are only two realistic choices for the movement. One option is to acknowledge that it has become virtually indistinguishable from Reform Judaism and the two denominations could merge their institutional structures. The other option is to carve out a much narrower middle ground catering to the smaller group of Conservative Jews seriously committed to observing Jewish law but in an egalitarian worship framework.

There are many more than two realistic options.  While I greatly admire the thought that went into the Reform Movement's current siddur, Mishkan T'fillah, which opens many options for their Rabbis in conducting worship, it is a long way from Siddur Sim Shalom which carries a very traditional mode of worship in its pages.  This would not be a merger as much as a takeover.

The ideological roots of Conservative Judaism date back to Europe in the mid-19th century, but the denomination was defined by Solomon Schechter, who served as president of the Jewish Theological Seminary from 1902 to 1915. The Conservative movement clung to rituals far more tightly than did the Reform movement, which was characterized in those days by a pronounced rejection of Jewish law and tradition. But compared to Orthodoxy, Conservative Judaism was more liberal in practice and ideology.

For many years, Conservative Judaism’s middle-of-the-road message was a very good fit for the majority of American Jews. By the 1940s the movement boasted the largest number of affiliated families.

What changed?

What seems to have changed in many respects is maturity of the movement with its adaptation to American reality, some of which went well and some of which did not.  Mixed seating and driving on shabbos have acquired prompt, widespread and permanent acceptance with little negative consequence other than perhaps dispersal of participants over a wider geographic area than if driving were restricted and maybe some ridicule in the manner in which the driving decision was reasoned and conveyed.  Egalitarianism is more mixed, widely accepted and expanding the talent pool but with a little baggage as it becomes one more litmus test for a movement that has too often created absolute You're In or You're Out choices among its participants.  I think that is one of the things that distinguishes mature organizations from those that are more entrepreneurial and fluid.

Sociologist Samuel Heilman has documented the growth and strength of Orthodox Judaism beginning in the later decades of the 20th century. Meanwhile, many Reform synagogues have manifested a return to tradition, embracing once-discarded practices such as Hebrew prayer, the celebration of life cycle events, and the wearing of kippahs and prayer shawls. In contrast, many of the Jewish law opinions of the Conservative movement have become more liberal on certain issues, further blurring some lines between Conservative and Reform Judaism. Natural attrition and an increasing number of unaffiliated Jews also have taken a toll. All of these factors have resulted in a one-third drop in Conservative movement affiliation over the past 25 years.

During my year of Kaddish about six years back, I worshiped at the Reform congregation which had a late Friday night service that would assure 10 Jewish men who I estimated by counting kippot at the start of services.  While tradition is back, it is a very superficial return.  Kippot are optional, not mandatory, the content of the liturgy varies from week to week based the many options the Mishkan T'fillah prayer book offers the Rabbi, Oneg shabbat is milchig though for occasional communal Federation shabbatot labelled pareve is offered, there is an organ, candles are kindled on the Bimah after sunset.  This is a long way from Conservative Light, distinguishable enough to make the worship experiences unique between the two.

The more compelling question is whether the particpants care one way or the other.  For me, I just wanted 10 Jewish men present for Kaddish and then took advantage of things like the best sermons and musical experience in town.  My own observance and Jewish knowledge remains Conservadox.

Visit most Conservative synagogues on a Saturday morning when there is not a bar or bat mitzvah and likely you will find mostly an older crowd. Where are the children of Conservative Jewish baby boomers? According to sociologists of American Judaism as well as anecdotal evidence, the really serious ones often migrate to modern Orthodoxy or attend independent prayer groups (minyans) that lack an official denomination. Many of the others put their Judaism “on hold” until they have a family, at which point many find Reform a better option for a variety of reasons — not the least of which is intermarriage. Since Conservative rabbis still are prohibited from performing such marriages, Reform becomes an easy choice for these couples. The 2013 Pew Report on the American Jewish community found that 30 percent of Jews raised Conservative have become Reform.

What your affiliate with and what you really are do not always coincide.  Many of the previously Conservative Jews who move in a different direction are more consumers of congregational affiliation than ideological affiliantion.  My own congregation while nominally Orthodox in most of its practices depends heavily of men raised and educated Conservative who found our local USCJ affiliate lacking in some way.  Many of those going Reform really have no ideological center.  They are purchasing with their congregational membership a cadre of friends, acceptance if they have intermarried, patrilineal descent if they need it for Bar Mitzvah, a Hebrew school large enough to give the kids social contacts, or the personality and intellect of the Rabbi.  It makes no difference to the consumer purchase if Torah is read from a scroll on shabbos.

A merger between the Conservative and Reform movements is more than a theoretical possibility. Surveys over the past 15 years show that although Conservative Jews still exhibit higher degrees of traditional observance than their Reform counterparts, a growing number of Conservative and Reform Jews agree on hot-button social issues such as interfaith and same-sex marriage, as well as the determination of Jewish status based on either parent rather than only the mother. A formal union between the movements could afford a majority of the American Jewish community a greater sense of unity as a result of one governing institutional structure rather than two.

This comes at a very high price, including a next generation without the education to decode Hebrew, the loss of very stable and valuable Conservative institutions such as Ramah and USY, the option for those who succeed to migrate towards Orthodox if that is appropriate.  Not a good deal for Conservatives.  In his outstanding book, Getting Our Groove Back, Scott Shay devoted a chapter to the evolving implosion of institutional Conservative Judaism, regarding it as one of America's great Jewish disasters.  While there is much reason to criticize those institutions and how they operate, the loss of transmission of tradition and knowledge which an institutional absorption of Conservative into current Reform would cause some very irreplaceable damage.

The alternative is for the Conservative movement to narrow its audience by refining its mission. A tribute to Conservative Judaism is that it has produced a core group of Jews whose daily lives revolve around Jewish law in a way closer to modern Orthodox Jews but who insist on an egalitarian worship community. By contrast, the Rabbinical Council of America, the largest organization of Orthodox rabbis, last month issued a resolution banning its members from hiring a growing number of Orthodox women who are being groomed as clergy.

These exist now, mostly as transdenominational assemblies of worshipers without engaging in the non-worship activities of a synagogue or subsets of people within an active Conservative synagogue who ditch Shabbat Service Lite to conduct full Torah reading et al in a smaller room while the usual service goes on in the main sanctuary with the hired clergy.  While it may be a form of salvage of Conservative Judaism, in another way it illustrates it failure to insist that what the central leadership aspires to remain the norm.

One of the distressing elements of how Conservative institutions present themselves in recent years has been the pitching of ideology over substance.  A congregation seeking members will advertise as egalitarian as their main draw when perhaps it should be the quality of the Jewish experience or its educational opportunities that forms their product differentiation.  Too many divrei Torah and Conservative sponsored podcasts promote the egalitarian ideology when they might be better promoting the insights of Torah without those strings attached.  

There was a time in my formative years when new suburban communities experiencing a growth in Jewish population would sponsor a form of Debate Night, inviting usually the Orthodox and Conservative Rabbi's of the community to tell the newcomers why they ought to consider their congregation.  The Conservatives sort of had an advantage.  We're just like them in worship but your family can sit together, you can live where you want and drive here, and the youngsters can go to the outstanding public schools and still learn enough for Bar Mitzvah with us.  It was a form of parity and then some.  When you promote egalitarianism as your distinguishing feature instead of the quality of the Jewish experience as your distinguishing feature you have irreversibly lost the parity that made you succeed in the past.

Given that the center of Orthodoxy has moved further to the right over the years, it is highly unlikely that these views concerning female participation will change anytime soon. This reality opens the door for a slimmer but more cohesive Conservative movement that potentially could draw members from pockets of modern Orthodoxy as well the proliferating independent minyans sharing these practices. According to a national survey conducted in 2007, nearly half of those who attend independent minyans grew up in Conservative synagogues and another 20 percent in Orthodox synagogues. This group alone provides a solid target audience for a refined Conservative movement.

There was an interesting podcast by one of my favorite speakers Rabbi Jeremy Wieder on www.yutorah.org where he addressed the role of Modern Orthodoxy in current times.  While halachah as the Orthodox poskim interpret it cannot accept gender equality of worship, the more general Jewish theme of treating people in as dignified way as possible makes the role of women a moral imperative that cannot be ignored, and in fact wasn't ignored in Biblical and Talmudic times either.  The end point may not be equality but the need to be respectful and offer opportunities persists.  In any community, it is the Orthodox women who are prevented from equal opportunity who still become the most Jewishly knowledgeable and Jewishly identifiable women in their communities.  Some people will of course set equal participation as their sine qua non but if that were really the case an observant core within the Conservative movement would be a good deal larger than it is now.  More likely though, the outcome will be like what my shul has, learned people who owe their knowledge and skills to their Conservative educations of fifty years ago who are not willing to sacrifice the educational and worship advantage that we have to defect across town to get gender equality.  That option has now been there for thirty years, long enough to have a result far different than exists now.

This second alternative will face obstacles. It probably will further shrink the movement; this will have financial consequences. It will depend on rabbis who are willing to set and demand higher religious norms with respect to all areas of Jewish observance. But the payoff is that it would provide a viable and distinct identity for the denomination.

When you become dependent on institutions over people, volume matters a lot if you want those institutions to have the resources they need to conduct their usual business.  A smaller tent may indeed make the Movement more vibrant but they need the support of the big tent of low utilizers.  In that sense it is a little like insurance where you need a lot of people putting in and deriving nothing from what they put in to protect the subset that smash up their cars each year.  The Conservative Movement has already had shrinkage.  While they could say good riddance to the Inferior Conservative Jews who went elsewhere, thus declaring themselves as something other than Real Conservative Jews, it is that shrinkage which jeopardizes the defining institutions.

The easiest route for the Conservative movement is to make cosmetic changes to its big tent brand and hope that better marketing will bring in more numbers, but this goal does not seem realistic. Neither does a merger with Reform just yet.

As Candidate Obama reminded us, "A pig with lipstick is still a pig."  They are going to have to make some really difficult decisions, not so much on how to promote from without but to give some very clear direction to advancing Jewishly the people who remain.  They really are not Reform as most of us understand and experience Reform.

I would urge the movement to reclaim Solomon Schechter’s mission of “conserving” the Jewish tradition by focusing on its strongly observant but egalitarian constituents. This path will allow the movement to preserve a unique legacy.

This is what they have been doing for about thirty years.  The results are contraction and aging.  They may need to content the Movement with being a niche product, though an important niche in the American Jewish mosaic.

Much thanks for a terrific essay.

Roberta Rosenthal Kwall is the Raymond P. Niro Professor at the DePaul University College of Law. She is the author of “The Myth of the Cultural Jew: Culture and Law in Jewish Tradition” from Oxford University Press, 2015.

Read more: http://forward.com/opinion/327774/the-2-options-left-for-conservative-judaism/#ixzz3vcG3ImaB

Making the Minyan

Our Rabbi has decided that the security of our two daily minyanim, which makes us unique in town, should be the litmus test of our viability.  We may be in the process of depleting shabbos morning, but Monday morning must go on.  At least there are priorities, if not necessarily the best ones.  The minyanim, of which only men count, assemble at 7AM and 5:30 PM most days but on Wednesday and Friday, we combine with the USCJ congregation nearby unless Torah is read to avoid conflicts over policies on women.  Similarly, on combined services at their shul, their Hazzan being female, their Rabbi conducts services.  I do not know how successful the minyanim have been, as I've only gone to one combined service for Tziyum Bechorim last spring, finding the hybrid liturgy a lot more Conservative adaptation than our traditional fully Hebrew proceedings.

As a service to our congregants, and perhaps a form of Meaningful Use from the computer, people can request a broadcast of when they need to observe yahrtzeit and an email will go out requesting men to make a special effort to attend.  Such a notice went out yesterday for a person who really should get my best effort, so being on vacation this week, I'll help out this evening.

No More Friday Nights

 

When I was observing Kaddish for my father about five years ago I started attending the local reform service on Friday nights with some regularity.  Much like my childhood USCJ congregation, they held services at 8PM, which conflicted with That Was the Week That Was z"l and later Wall Street Week z"l in an era where if you missed it there was not a second chance from rerun or VCR.  Even so, people came each week.  There was a traditional service and a little bit of pageant with a choir and an organ some of the evenings, a sermon and pleasant Oneg, often with a semi-formal discussion.  People of that era in that neighborhood at the fringes of suburban New York would commute by car all week, get home finally, have supper and unwind, either with their favorite shows or by welcoming shabbat in a well meaning frame of mind, if not exactly halachic.   Even so, shabbat morning was still  the centerpiece of the JCC of Spring Valley and most other USCJ affiliates where a very traditional experience would occur the following morning.

It seems over time, the Conservative Rabbi's acknowledged the secondary status of Friday evening and its competition with other respites from the long work week.  Many, including mine, did away with the late Friday night gathering, conducting a brief Kabbalat Shabbat at the seasonal time, sometimes with less than a minyan, with people ostensibly heading home to observe shabbat's entrance as family time though I suspect Washington Week and CNN really won out.  In my town, the Reform congregation was the last bastion of the 8PM shabbat welcome, ideal for Kaddish since it was the only place in town that could guarantee ten Jewish men for that service.

It turned out to be a pleasant place to be at the conclusion of my work week.  They had a liturgy that varies somewhat from week to week, musically excellent Hazzan and organist and the most insightful sermons in town which I still read when posted on the Web.  My year of Kaddish ended but a few times a year I would reserve an evening to be at the Reform congregation, even sometimes affording myself fish for shabbos dinner to enable more comprehensive sampling of the mostly milchig Oneg.

But this summer, the time moved from 8PM to 6:45PM.  While they can now have candle lighting from the Bimah prior to sundown instead of after shabbos has already commenced, the new time creates more of a burden for attendance.  A concluding time of about 8PM seems late for supper and those in attendance are less likely to schmooze at an Oneg if they have not yet had supper.  People who work nearby can probably eat and get there by the starting time.  From the appearance of those who come regularly, a large percentage are probably retired so may adapt to the earlier time easily, even prefer it, or maybe even lobby for it.  Yet that one uniqueness of that congregation, its later starting time for the people who benefit from it, may have disappeared from the community.

Discussing Women

The Forward ran a feature on 36 American rabbis from around the USA recommended as outstanding clergymen by testimonials submitted by their congregants.  Among the lamed-vav was a gentleman I knew in college who worked the cash register at the Hillel Dining Room.  He was a year ahead of me in school and I never thought about him again until about ten years ago when Moment Magazine published a landmark article that he had written in response to a critique of Conservative Judaism.  My crystal ball from college days never would have presented him as a Rabbi, let alone a prominent one from the Chicago area.  He faded into the background again until appearing as one of The Forward's 36.  One can find out a little about most anybody in cyberspace these days so I did a quick search of his congregation's web site where the Rabbi usually has a short bio and a more substantial paper trail reflecting ideology.  His congregation, while Conservative, announced itself as Traditional, as does mine.  That has become shorthand for mixed seating at worship, open parking lot on shabbos but Y-chromosome for most ritual performance.  Shuffling though their web site, egalitarian did not appear but neither did non-egalitarian, which has less membership recruiting baggage than its euphemism Traditional.

Exploring further, it seems that my acquaintance of old appears again at the peak of his public prominence in 2001.  Another Conservative Rabbi in the region, this person the son of a man who I got to know well and admire when he lived near me, decided that his congregation really ought to make the transition to egalitarianism. Much to this Rabbi's credit, he did not impose the new policy as he could as mara d'atra.  Instead, he set aside a year of status quo to explore the options and ramifications.  Among the guests invited to discuss positions was my old college acquaintance who presented the case for restricting bimah participation to men, something which had become a minority view in the Conservative movement by then and remains even more of a fringe now.  The discussion by that congregation in Wisconsin centered around the religious propriety of the change and its implications for bringing new opportunities to women already in place who could expand their capabilities.

My congregation has also started to explore some measure of this change.  Propriety and religious opportunity for women has a much smaller place in the discussion than prospects for reversing membership attrition and acquiring a better market position for attracting new dues paying members.  What actually becomes of those women seems subordinate to what becomes of the congregation's checking account.  Advance the role of women not because it is consistent with communal values in 21st century America but because it is expedient.  Women are not really being served in that type of analysis as much as they are being made pawns for a goal that has little to do with the core mission of the synagogue.

In reality, women thrive Jewishly in many types of synagogues.  Conversely the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism experienced its talent depletion in the very years they were advocating an expanded role for women as baalebatim and as rabbis.  Stable membership participation and communal growth are really byproducts of what is offered to any member of any gender or age to enhance their Jewish experience and reinforce their Jewish identity, irrespective of mode of worship.  At a forum of a Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox rabbi in San Francisco a couple of years back, podcast on www.yutorah.org an audience member asked the Orthodox representative whether the policies of his congregation diminished the importance of the women members.  He responded very insightfully that his women were more knowledgeable by far and more committed to transmitting Judaism to subsequent generations than the women of any place else in the city.  Worship takes about 1.5 hours each day, a little more on shabbos.  But the synagogue building and its resources are open from dawn until dark pretty much every day.  It is his women that take best advantage of what is available to them and have the most available to them.

My congregation's leadership likes to categorize things with labels.  Membership is who came and who went.  Education is what classes are on the schedule when it should be what benefit did people derive from the classes.  There is a Women's Tefilah Group that puts a priority on attendance when they should put the priority on parity with what the men perform.  That is how you distinguish our congregation from Brand X around the corner which lets women chant Aliyot but at a level of skill too paltry to even get an invitation at our congregation.  Discuss women, for sure, but discuss them in the manner of servicing them, not as a vehicle to strengthen a precarious financial situation.

Facades of Purim

Purim can be an enigmatic time.  There is certainly a measure of revelry.  We wear costumes.  I thought about coming as Zaitar the Eunuch with  a necklace of my Prader Orchidometer and a packet of Androgel but our home was observing shiva for my mother-in-law so a more somber approach prevailed for me this year.  While we wear masks, we get drunk which can unmask thoughts, as many of us in the Jewish community learned from Hollywood icon Mel Gibson a few years back.

It's a holiday for kids.  At some shuls, including one I once attended, there was a program for children with a highly abridged Megillah and a small group of retirees who met in another room to hear the story of Purim in its entirety.  At my congregation we are mixed together which is as I think it should be.  It can be too easy to set aside some of the essence of the festival if it allowed to compete with other seasonal hedonism of Mardi Gras and St. Patrick's Day.  But since we wear costume, sometimes the serious elements stay hidden.

This year, my congregation and another sponsored a Carnival for the children of each shul.  The kids would march, sing Purim songs, hear a story and play games while the parents spend money.  After all, Matanos L'Evyonim or giving gifts to the poor is part of the holiday.  From our congregation's financial reports as presented at Board Meetings, nobody could be needier.  Moreover, little unmasks thoughts as effectively as asking people for money, another of the ironies of Purim.

Finally our mind emerges from the clothing facade when we feel outrage.  Our politicians capitalize on this routinely with the curtain on the voting booth shielding what we really think but the election returns revealing it.  And we have anger on Purim, most of it figurative with our groggers obliterating the name of Haman.  We also have a certain amount of real irritation.  At the Purim carnival where the kids sing their songs, the words they were to sing were transliterated.  The principals of the the two schools divided on this issue, probably unmasking what the principles of the two schools really are.  While one is a formal USCJ Framework for Excellence school, their educational director assessed that their children had not acquired sufficient Hebrew skills to learn a few words of Hebrew lettering.  Our principal takes great pride in the ability of our students to do that.  The Framework for Excellence in congregational recruiting literature may turn out to be one more mask, creating a surface illusion but misrepresenting what lies beneath.

So those are the Purim costumes.  The great sage Reb Geraldine noted that "what you see is what you get."  But maybe not, at least on Purim.

Congregational Achilles Heels

After a couple of years focused on the financial stability of the congregation, which is important, the poobah's decided it may be time to poll the congregants for their thoughts on arresting declining membership and participation.  It may sound grass roots but it's one more top-down transformation where people of an opinionated nature submit thoughts to a central authority without the invitation to comment themselves on the diversity of thoughts presented.  That will be done by AKSE's politbureau.  A giant trough will then be created to be filled with some form of slop into which members and I assume the non-paying public as well can immerse their snouts when they are hungry for Judaism, or at least need to be Embraced/Engaged/Enriched.  To be fair, much of the governance has been devoted to technique:  Bingo, branding, dinner dances.  Too little has been invested in the things that count more: the experience of sitting in the sanctuary, college level Jewish advancement, establishing a unique communal presence.  Maybe now it its time to recapture what has been neglected and pay real attention to the sources of attrition.  My comments unedited.  Submitted ones in orange, Kept to myself in green.

Irene brought home an announcement of a Congregational Meeting which will be taking place as we leave for vacation.  While the format that I read in the notice may not be the best one to accomplish what is intended, at least there is sensitivity to what a diverse constituency might think, something that has not often been conveyed well during my recent years at AKSE though was probably always there conceptually.  This being a forum for the opinionated analytical minds, I’ll take a rather large bite.

Being socialized into the world of medicine for a very long time, I tend to think in this context.  History and examination matter, then you choose solutions.  It always starts with background knowledge.  Yes, there is a background literature and publicly available resources on congregational growth, some very specific to orthodox synagogues, others more general to other synagogues and generic worship institutions.  While I am a long way from an expert on this, I’ve certainly encountered some of these assessments and real case success stories in The Forward and www.yutorah.org and even the Wall Street Journal.  The URJ and USCJ web sites have extensive offerings on congregational development and the USCJ even has its public announcements of Schechter Awards that go to member congregations for implementing these types of activities.  Given the importance of this, it would be my expectation that the Membership officials of AKSE not run their activities as an accounting exercise of who came and who went, but function in more professional way of exploring modes of membership enhancement, both in attracting people and keeping a better pulse on those already here to enhance satisfaction and retention.  And that means some effort to read, study and understand, ironically, the real underpinning of most things Jewish.

The indispensible theme of these, or at least those which I am familiar, is that the basic Orthodox congregational growth comes from attracting people who are not themselves Orthodox but appreciate things done well.  These are generally parents of young families, people who despised Hebrew school and got little out of it but took a liking to the Judaism of college.  They are indifferent to modes of worship but function at the upper tier of their professions and appreciate Judaism being presented to them at a level that stimulates thought and interactive study.  Aliyah Sound Bites don’t stand a chance in this population.  The development of loyalty amongst this population, which has an income capable of dues and a need to educate children either in day or congregational schools, seems to be entirely driven by the scholarly capacity and personable nature of the Rabbi.  And the growth can be quite dramatic, the place in Columbus being thoroughly revived and Rabbi Brander, who I often listen to onwww.yutorah.org expanding his Boca Congregation several fold over fourteen years before retuning to NY to become director of the Center for the Jewish Future.  Much of the effort requires meeting these people where they are, which is someplace other than the synagogue.  All these efforts and outcomes are publicly available for review with some basic computer and research skills.

With the recent election setting a new perspective, I am beginning to wonder if AKSE finds itself where it is for parallel reasons that Republicans find themselves where they are.  Republicans and AKSE have to divest a certain amount of baggage before a constituency not already in place will find the affiliation attractive.  AKSE has elephants in the room that either nobody talks about or that insiders rationalize while outsiders cast their votes elsewhere.  My last Board Term seemed like an endless array of A-List Beautiful people who were asked to do things and B-list people who were marginalized. The concept of the President thinking and expressing at a Board Meeting that the purpose of the Nominating Committee was to telephone the people the president appoints is a) offensive, b) not what my reading of the By-Laws infers, and c) creates the type of organizational incest that eventually expresses recessive genes.  It also perpetuates A-lists.  I have divested myself of all my committees because a recycle leadership caste checks boxes on agendas as a surrogate for innovation.  AKSE has created a recycling center for VP’s and Haftarah readers, much as the Republicans recycle their own platforms, incapable of understanding why a broader constituency rejects it.  Lying dormant is the ill-fated report of the original consultant whose comments and solutions were replete with suggestions for making governance and committees more responsive to a general public.  IMHO, AKSE did this to itself a while ago when it undid a bylaws provision that set term limits on officers.

The other obvious elephants are the female ones.  As I go to orthodox and observant conservative congregations in my periodic escapes and correspond with others of my mindset, it is obvious that female participation in classic orthodox Judaism is thriving nationally, but the places in which it is thriving have a clergy and lay leadership that understand that the red line of what women, converts, and non-Jews can do in their congregations within the bounds of Halacha is changing, as it always has.  The bias has been to expand participation and then see to it that the permitted expansion is in fact implemented.  Next year marks the Centennial of the Bais Yaacov movement around the world.  Sarah Schenirer who conceived of this in Cracow had a mixture of support and opposition, but once the Gerer rebbe gave his approval, he also used his resources to drive its success.  In my own time, in my native Monsey, the Gaon Reb Yaakov ruled that his women could teach at the afternoon non-Orthodox congregational schools that were growing around Rockland County at the time.  He set some limits but made sure that what he found acceptable was in fact implemented as best he could.  Josh Strulowitz, an orthodox Rav from a congregation in the San Francisco area made a very telling observation on this.  He was participating in a multiRabbi forum sponsored by the local JCC or Federation which was recorded.  In the Q&A session at the end, he was challenged about the role of women in his congregation.  He responded that Halacha indeed limits what his women are permitted to do ritually.  It limits virtually nothing else.  Worship in his congregation comprises about an hour a day, a little more on shabbos.  The rest of the time there is equality.  The women of his congregation are the best educated in the SF Community.  There is no squaw work in his shul where women who function professionally at the upper tier most of their lives have to settle for setting up Kiddush.  They teach, they govern, they command respect when they represent his congregation to the greater community.  None of this is the case at AKSE, where even women’s participation that the Rabbi permits languishes in the second tier.  If you want a Women’s Tefilah Group that brings Kavod to the congregation, you have to insist that it have parity to other services in its quality and you have to divest of contrivances like banning talesim on men and having men seated as spectators while women stand and worship.  That is the changing Red Line.  If having women read the prayer for the Government or do Kiddush is acceptable to the Rabbi, which he already indicated it is, then you need to have a mixture of men and women doing those things.  To do less leaves you with squaw work which any outsider will judge to be inferior, as would a fair number of insiders, myself among them.  And then there are people for whom even this is not good enough.  Rabbi Brander had an interesting comment about how he handled this.  He acknowledged the validity of what those women or their families wanted, helped them move along to their next destination if that was the right thing to do, but delivered them there with the best Jewish background that he could provide for them so that some of the light of the Boca Raton congregation was exported to the other place.  To do less leaves AKSE with the same baggage that the Republicans have, not only unacceptable policies but the justifiable image of insensitivity to what is most important to the other people.

While there is no shortage of what to address, and I’m confident that if enough people respond, many more significant opportunities to address the current situation will emerge, I remark on one more that I will call Dropped Balls.  To the Leadership’s credit, Bingo was thoroughly researched, risks assessed, an implementation champion identified and the project brought to successful fruition.  Cantor Search had a little bit more of an A-list participant feel to it, but candidates were identified and pursued in a diligent and successful way.  All sorts of other projects languish.  The ideas of the first consultant are as valid today as when they were submitted.  There was an Implementation Committee.  A decision was made to mentor younger members.  Despite its importance and good intent, it never happened.  Our gabbaim have their own A-list that they neither expand nor provide novices the time they need to grow into bimah participants.  Despite the congregation’s attempt to expand committee participation, it is always the more visible of a couple that gets invited, never the spouse.  I try to put teens on the Education Committee and I am dismissed out of hand by chairman and VP’s with some kind of lame rationalization that their homework will deteriorate as the excuse for why not.  While there is a sincere desire to have a broadly participatory congregation, the kind that not only succeeds from within but surreptitiously carries the enthusiasm to others, there is no means of accountability.  Over time your talent that could read Haftarah or design a great evening program, make a morning with Women’s Tefilah sparkle or even connect to other families LinkedIn style remains on the sidelines for either never having been asked or feeling like a member of the B-list when they are.  There are a lot of those dropped balls bouncing around AKSE’s hardwood.  You could upgrade the individual AKSE experience immensely without changing a single internal policy just by recognizing this form of systemic error and putting somebody in charge to create the checklists that fix it.

That concludes the comments about AKSE.  Not for formal presentation but some suggestions on gathering information in a better way.  When we teach medical students physical diagnosis, we start by bringing them to the bedside where they are instructed to look, observe but not touch or talk.  The observation of AKSE, looking only, is that attendance is down from where it was in many respects.  I only come about half the Shabbat mornings and not at all any other times.  I’ve not been to a Mens Club program or a class in ages.  At 10:00 AM on a Shabbat morning, there are virtually no women in the sanctuary and many less men than there used to be.  The Board has a fixed population but committees do not.  I am part of committee attrition as are others, mostly driven by some type of adverse experience, or the tacit message that the purpose of a committee is not to create but to process through.  There are people who have changed their allegiance.  There are people who have begun to look at synagogue membership as a consumer purchase that is overvalued.  The issue of the meeting, as I read the proposal brought home from the Board Meeting really has to do more with attrition than with individual policies passed along from the governance.  It is the financial consequence that catches attention of the Executive Board, though I assume participatory attrition would catch the attention of the clergy.  A much better way of assessing the problem would be to target comments from people who have reduced their activity in some significant way, which is generally for cause.  There is no shortage of people who used to be a more significant presence in the congregation than they are now.  It is unlikely that the Leadership has forgotten who they are.  Those are the people whose private candor is needed most and whose perspectives offer a much better prospect for change in direction than a random broadcast with feedback from those most energetic or articulate to provide it.

Wishing you well with this difficult but vital congregational analysis.

Richard M. Plotzker, MD

Endocrinology

Mercy Philadelphia Hospital

Machers

The Forward presented an intriguing post-election opinion piece:  http://blogs.forward.com/forward-thinking/165594/bad-night-for-the-jewish-echo-chamber/

Its author contends, correctly I think, that Jewish voters largely disregarded their leaders' position on which candidate best serves Israel's interests and instead voted for the other candidate who better reflected a position that American participation is not the exclusive province of Committees of Rich People.  Jewish exit polling in the election certainly reflects this reality politically but I think religiously and organizationally this has been a work in progress for some time.

For most of the 1980's and 1990's I read Torah at the USCJ affiliate one of the High Holy Days.  Without editorializing more than necessary, this place had its macher swoops and king makers and ad hoc self-appointed Committees of Rich people.  To get an aliyah those days you had to have enough funds and be generous in dispersing them to purchase an annual Hazakah.  What struck me as I completed the reading of each aliyah was that the Olim greeted each other warmly but if they shook my hand or the Gabbai's hand at all it was much more perfunctory.  There was no serious recognition of the effort that a competent reading entailed or the planning that the people running the make it or break it annual event that portends the congregation's fortunes each year put into it.  Rather this was an entitlement,a perk of philanthropy and the leadership it brings.  Everyone else is hired help.  There was nothing evil about those people, just that entitlement and less than ideal sensitivity to what others might think.  My wife headed a Rabbi Search Committee.  After inviting a candidate to speak to the congregation in an open forum, one of the kingmakers polled her friends, then came of over to my wife to inform her that "the money people don't like him."

We are obligated to have a President so people vote at the polls.  We are not mandated to have a shul or a Federation so people vote with their feet and checkbooks.  And thus over a generation we encounter a form of leader generated attrition.  The coin of the Jewish realm has been re-minted from talent and energy to money and loyalty.  The voters of America demonstrated that there are limits to what machers can do to impose their will.  In many elements of the Jewish world they have imposed their will for some time and continue to congratulate each other while they preside over a much less vibrant empires than they could have had.

Sanctuary Ennui

My retired friend spends much of his unscheduled time in the library, sitting at publicly funded screen while searching cyberspace for items of interest to send along to friends who are not retired.  Sidestepping the issue of electronic clutter that this sometimes creates, he hit a home run this week with an op-ed piece from The Forward, America's principal Jewish weekly, regarding the experience of attending services in different locales.   In some ways I may be a modern day Hellenist willing to sacrifice some elements of tradition and letter of the law to enhance beauty or justice, and like most Americans have been acculturated to pluralism by the tenets of our basically irreligious Founding Fathers.  I think Judaism would be better if the law promoted gender equality.  I am less convinced that it is better by adapting the law to reflect that, as most Conservative synagogues have done, though they seem to have paid a very high price for the practice.  Perhaps parity would have been a better goal.  Yes, I am for gender equality and my activities outside AKSE reflect that.  I am also for having Kohanim and Levi'im precede me in Torah honors even if there is a measure of lunacy to having some shoeless Am-Ha-aretz mumbling a bracha that had to be transliterated for him so that he might function as a divine conduit to bless a congregation of lesser yichus but greater accomplishment.

To make the proceedings of the sanctuary less intimidating to the novice we introduce contrivances like responsive readings of inanely translated liturgy.  I think the sermons at AKSE rarely contain content that require anybody to be particularly literate to understand.  Whether the Rabbi intentionally dumbs it down or actually functions at that level of erudition himself can be debated in both directions, I suppose.  Berel Wein in his Tending the Vineyard, his memoirs on life as a congregational Rabbi, noted that each week he only has one real chance of about ten minutes to convey a real message of Judaism to the listeners that will have to sustain then to the next Shabbat morning.  It our effort to be inclusive and not leave people behind, we sometimes forget that the mission of Judaism is to elevate people to a higher standard than from the starting point.  Instead, we have changed the destination without really changing the people.  In the USCJ world, egalitarianism, for all its social merits, ran in parallel with congregational decisions to popularize attendance via expanding comfort zones when they should have been upgrading educational standards.  We elevate people to the mitzvah.  We do not diminish the mitzvah to facilitate compliance.