Respect

My hospital got its docs a new device called a Dragon Dictation System where I can speak into a microphone and mostly correct text appears.  It is modified for the reality of having learned spoken English in the Bronx.  It has two options for text, one general English and the default of an Endocrinology vocabulary as nearly all its use has been to dictate patient consultations.  I tried dictating a more general article once, ended up typing it myself, but this week took another shot at something I've been meaning to prepare into an article called "The Places I Like to Daven".  It's mostly past tense, but for all my Beth Sodom and Aliyah Sound Bite quips of my contemporary shabbat morning options, there were and to a lesser extent are places that serve as prime destinations on a shabbos morning.  Eventually as a youngster I got to like our shul's Junior Congregation, despised the teen experience, and would inconvenience myself to leave home early to get to that shul now 100+ miles away if possible when passing through the area.  WashU and Penn Hillel could expect my presence most shabbos mornings.  Beth El Quincy, z"l, for my final year of residency.  Beth Tfiloh in Baltimore once a quarter, again at a little personal inconvenience and needing some advance planning.

I tried to tease out common themes.  Like the Rabbi?  For sure at the adult synagogues but the Hillel experiences had no Rabbi.  Friendly congregants?  After multiple visits to Beth Tfiloh the total number of people who have come over to me sitting by myself and chatting with me is ONE, their assistant Rabbi who serves as Torah reader.   Personal participation?  I've been a very active Bimah participant by default at my current shul and the one before it, neither of which makes my must be there list while often serving as the destination of my many verbal harpoons.

After pondering the Why as I dictate the Where, the common thread seems to be the level of respect that I have for the composite experience and the people that I am with.  The JCC of Spring Valley, my Bar Mitzvah congregation, seemed bimodal.  It distilled to how I was treated.  Contemptuously by the teen director who played favorites, inconsistently by the Rabbi who presided over my  Bar Mitzvah, to be followed by a Rabbi of my later high school years who endeared himself, not only to me, but forty years later when high school classmates post photos of their wedding, his picture appears with a note of his kindness and sometimes his professional competence.  Services were done expertly.  Those in attendance were were more my mother's friends than mine, but as a an adult visitor who made time to stop there while in transit from the Delaware Valley to New England these people gained my respect for their ongoing dedication even as their congregation was aging and eventually failing.

Hillel I was more a part of.  People were happy to have me there whether they needed another tuchis for a minyan or not.  There were interactions about exams.  My first Kaddish obligation was fulfilled there.  It was the custom that mourners should not stand alone, a custom exported by me to subsequent places.  Not having a Rabbi, the Hillels brought out the best in what Jewishly committed students could do.  There were no fights over Mechitza, just a recognition that the Orthodox needed one and we would set our own druthers aside to enable their worship.  Somebody had to prepare Torah reading, even if an Organic Chemistry test loomed in the near future.  People rose to the occasions.  I'm very respectful of that to this day.

I only lived in Quincy for one year, my final year of residency.  The town at the time had a kosher butcher which folded a few months after we arrived.  My first experience at Beth El occurred for the Holy Days which might have been my last as the Rabbi rambled and the crowded sanctuary could have used better climate control.  But while I spent the summer at an arduous hospital assignment, my wife attended shul, assuring me that the spectacle of Rosh Hashana did not occur on shabbat.  As my medical assignments got a little more tame, I started going with her.  The experience was the closest I've ever had to a Hillel duplication in a Conservative synagogue.  Personable, knowledgeablle, interactive Rabbi.  Cantor davened and read Torah expertly without the flourishes of a Cantorial institute alumnus, having acquired his skill in Europe.  Not a lot of congregants but enough, ranging from Harvard professors to younger people who had just escaped the Iranian Revolution but still had family left behind.  The role of women was in transition then but both my wife and I got invitations to be among the haftarah readers.  Kiddush was mingling and chat time, something never duplicated for me since.  Then mostly home and rest afterwards.  If they had macher swoops I was unaware of them.  I know they had a benefactor, an owner of a small regional home improvement chain.  I never met him and never sensed I was being manipulated in any way.

So those are the basic models, diverse but with a common theme of being among people who I basically admire.  Sounds like something fairly easy to duplicate or at least aspire to, though strangely elusive.

Hillel Locked

Few Jewish organizations have commanded my loyalty as the St. Louis Hillel, where as a med student I would worship on Shabbos morning, sometimes walking three miles in each direction through Forest Park, study on Sunday afternoon, call schedule permitting, to be followed by a generous sandwich at their weekly Kosher deli night, which attracted the local community as well.  Their director, Rabbi James Diamond, z"l, became my Rav and we kept in touch after he relocated to Princeton.  My first donation with money given to me by the Boston Court system for testifying as an intern went there, as did many subsequent to that.

Trips to St. Louis have been few since returning east after graduation.  In 2007 I attended my alma mater's reunion which left me with a free Saturday.  I bought a day pass for the Metrolink Transit with the intent of starting with shabbos morning where I once attended regularly.  The train took me to the Skinker stop and I walked through the relatively uninhabited Washington University main campus to 6300 Forsyth only to find the building closed as the university had some sort of hiatus that October week.  With my son graduating from Washington University, I returned to the campus for Commencement.  After the proceedings concluded I elected to walk back to the Hillel building just a few blocks from the university Quadrangle, only to find it locked again, though this time with a few cars in the back lot.  I could have rung the bell to be let in, and may have had I been alone but with family less eager to relive my old time, we moved on.

Just a few days later I had visited the Mizzou campus where they also had a Hillel, a much smaller enterprise, part of a multipurpose building.  We just walked in, looked around, asked directions to the Six Columns and resumed our exploration of the campus.

As a college and medical student, the Hillels were open, welcoming places.  My college Hillel even voted to become a Miklat or refuge for draft dodgers where people could just come in during usual business hours.  In St. Louis, would just wander in, sometimes go to the living room to watch TV which I did not have in my apartment, sometimes take a text book into the library, eventually renamed in honor of my Rav, dividing my time between my medical studies and whatever was on the Hillel library shelf.  Barriers to entering the building just weren't there and maybe they aren't on shabbos when people are expected to stroll in at various times for services.

Security needs have changed and Jewish organizations in particular can be targets of violent attack.  Even in my college years, kids from the neighborhood would enter the sukkah and help themselves to the hanging produce as a snack.  Yet the balance of keeping threats out while not impeding those who derive benefit from partaking of what is offered inside remains a challenge to the organizations' boards.  How much of a barrier is too much.  Despite my enduring fondness for St. Louis Hillel, even ringing the door bell to explain why I wanted to be let in with no guarantee that I would be let in exceeded what I was willing to do to relive what had been an essential element of my past.

Aseh L'Cha Rav

From my blog 5-25-11:  My hero Rabbi Jim Diamond took a steadfast position that all students at Wash U and Princeton had a stake in Jewish life around the campuses and he will provide the resources to fulfill it.  

Rabbi Diamond passed away unexpectedly and tragically this past week, killed while trying to get into the passenger side of a car,  returning home from a Talmud class. He more typically rode his bicycle from his home to the WashU Hillel building. One Sunday morning about ten years ago when as Executive Director of the Center for Jewish Life at Princeton University, he afforded me the great honor of speaking to my congregation at my invitation, he took the train from Princeton to Wilmington.  The half hour in my car gave me a little more private time with him than I deserved.  To his final day I never knew him as the driver.   I knew he was married and had kids.  I also knew that he was raised in Canada, though I always thought Montreal rather than the more accurate Winnipeg which had a very vibrant Jewish Community at the time.  I knew very little about him personally over the four years of direct contact and many more of indirect contact.

Yet I had the great privilege of getting to know him professionally, keeping in touch long after I departed St. Louis.  When I first arrived in St. Louis as a medical student in 1973 I needed Kosher meat.  I called Hillel and Rabbi Diamond provided me the address of where he shopped, a place called Diaments, which only closed very recently, the penultimate Kosher butcher remaining in St. Louis at the time.  He must have not realized that I lacked wheels, since the schlep there and back on a Sunday morning using the Bi-State Bus from South St. Louis took three hours.  Yet he got me there and back, noting some pleasure that the reach of Hillel might extend beyond the Washington University main campus to the Jesuit university four miles away.  Over the years there were classes, a weekly Kosher deli run from their kitchen that attracted the community and many conversations about Jewish life and where the future might be heading.  The Rabbi had started like most Conservative Rabbis as an assistant at a growing suburban United Synagogue affiliate in White Plains, NY.  He observed that the GI's who were growing their families at the time, probably mid 1960's, and acquiring a stable measure of prosperity as well, were not investing in their children's Jewish future.  The congregants were generous with maintaining buildings and paying clergy, they sent their kids to Hebrew school, but generally did not have let alone transmit a sense of what Jewish excellence is really about.  When it came time to decide if he really wanted to be a pulpit rabbi, he opted instead to pursue a college ministry instead, a place where he could direct impressionable young Jews of all types, choosing their own Jewish journeys for the first time.  He went to Indiana University first where he obtained his PhD in literature while running their Hillel.  Then he moved on to St. Louis, arriving about a year before I did, staying until 1995.  I received a notice that year, that they were naming the library in the Hillel building after him, the place where I divided my Sunday afternoons my final two years of medical school between my medical texts and whatever captured my Jewish interests on the shelves.  With the Rabbi's guidance, I had become Jewishly inquisitive, an imprint that follows me to this day.  I will teach a class of any size, from one person on elective to a Grand Rounds, another part of the Rabbi's legacy.  And while there is still considerable laytzanos in my mode of thinking, the Rabbi got me to temper it, or at least direct the cynicism for a beneficial purpose, which I hope is what I do here, though with varied success.  I sent off a donation, as was requested along with a note suggesting a retirement might be premature.  He responded promptly on Hillel stationery that we would soon be figurative neighbors, as he was taking a position with Princeton University.  I framed the letter where it hung in my office until my practice closed.

I got to visit the Center for Jewish Life one time, taking my son on a Saturday morning to visit Princeton University as a place that might be suitable for him to consider attending.  The campus seemed largely abandoned that morning.  We parked nearby the exquisite building, financed by dedicated and prosperous alumni, nearly all of recent vintage as Princeton was not a Jewish friendly university until the 1960's.  I wandered through the many rooms, finding a fully attended orthodox service in progress and a few doors away, a couple dozen people, most too old to be undergrads, including Rabbi Diamond, sitting living room style either holding a discussion or conducting an egalitarian service.  Except for my son's impatience, I'd have gone in to join them and offer a personal long overdue greeting to my teacher turned friend.  That would have to wait another year for his Wilmington visit.

Rabbi Diamond retired about ten years go, passing the baton to a young female Rabbi.  He kept active and engaged with young students of high school age as well as Jewish adult education.  Just like the airline tells you to put on your own mask before assisting others, the Rabbi kept his own mind engaged in Jewish learning right to his final day.

From a Hillel presentation, there could be no more fitting tribute than to the person I sought out as my Rabbi:

http://www.hillel.org/jewish/textstudies/pirkei_avot/pa_c1_m6.htm

Prosperity

Each day I trudge off to Mercy Philadelphia Hospital to take care of whoever somebody asks me to see.  Insurance companies pay them for what I do.  In exchange a deposit of a larger sum than I've ever earned before finds its way to my account at PNC Bank biweekly which then accumulates until the Washington University tuition payment becomes due.  When I take $60-100 from the cash machine every couple of weeks for my own expenses, the balance on the receipt seems to grow most of the time.

Yet I do not live differently or even have these proceeds earmarked for anything in particular other than those relatively finite tuition payments.  Prosperity has both a reality and a mindset.  "Who is rich?  One who finds pleasure in his portion." [Pirke Avot 4:1]  There is a challenge to earn that income, a satisfaction inherent in acquiring skill and applying it for a purpose that has value.  Accumulating money, though, should never be an end in its own right.  There are funds for personal maintenance, investments in the future, protection for the might happen, some for generosity to others, and some for indulgences that bring their own pleasure but are of low priority.

Earning this comes at the expense of time and energy.  The day usually starts while still dark outside and ends while darkness has reappeared.  Much of the time is spend with patients and junior colleagues, which may be a form of indulgence in itself, considering what most other people do for their livelihood.  For all the strains and periodic pressures, I am hard pressed to think of anything else I would rather be doing from one day to the next.  Maybe having a little more protected time to write or to do a research project without patients coming at me randomly in some form.  But for the most part the means of earning income has its own personal satisfaction so spending those proceeds on my own hedonism is probably less of a goal for me than for others who accumulate their extra funds in a more onerous way from which they have a greater need of escape.

As I approach a year and a half of salaried employment, I find myself less generous rather than more in my tzedakah.  I still give the same amount, allocated each month with a note of appreciation to every recipient.  But the donations no longer occur on time, instead getting clustered into a few at a time.  I've not given to United Way or my alma mater or even the WashU Hillel, not because of any reduction in fondness for them but because of competing strains on more limited discretionary time.  I've made an effort to schedule some time with myself, usually to go out for breakfast on either a Saturday or Sunday morning.  This may be a concession to more money, since in the past I would go to Sweeney's Bakery around the corner on Saturday morning for a $1 coffee and on Sunday to Einstein Bagels with my 99 cent refill mug and my Franklin Planner to look over the week.  Now the breakfast is only one day but more ample.  It has been my custom for a couple of years to go to a place I've not been before once a month.  Usually it is someplace local like a new store but now I travel a little farther on a day trip once a month with a budget of about $100, maybe a little more if I start doing overnight excursions this coming spring. And if I get a performance bonus I would like to replace the ordinary tub in the main bathroom with a jacuzzi.  My concession to creature comfort that I would not have otherwise afforded myself.


Yes, prosperity is a mind-set.  Frugality a beneficial habit that has served me well and is unlikely to undergo drastic revision by a larger savings account.

Purchasing Judaism

Went to the AKSE Board Meeting, the one where they discuss budget.  It is actually a rather thoughtfully constructed, particularly on the income side where predictability is usually not a whole lot better than my trying to predict glucose outcomes from the insulin decisions that I make.  They looked at what they actually took in and for the most part avoided the annual grandiose projections of what they might like to take in but probably won't.  The expense side is much more predictable and the opportunity of a part-time salary has mitigated the reality of spending more than we receive.  

Along with the budget came a dues increase of about 5%.  That would bring my obligation to a whopping $2625 annually, which is enough to make me wonder not only what I get for what is by far my largest tax-deduction not counting my upcoming professional liability tail.  I would also analyze the purpose of this expenditure and alternatives that give a similar or better return for a comparable sum.

One of the people at the Board Meeting asked rhetorically why the congregation exists and what its future might be.  I incurred the irritation of the President, something starting to get a little beyond the energizing mini-conflict from my perspective, by pursing that thought not in a rhetorical way but in its implementation to decisions, whether to make the unpopular choices that eliminate debt or to charge young members a nominal fee to give them a measure of ownership in the synagogue and avoid a major deterrent of a $2625 bill just as they reach age 30 and have to start spending on their kids.  Sometimes you give money away entirely for somebody else's benefit with no expectation of receiving any return, sometimes in gratitude for what you have already received, but most often to make a purchase for something you will get in return.  Usually when I write a check the category is clear.  My support of WashU Hillel is mostly one of gratitude, my monthly Jewish contributions are designed to be for somebody else's benefit with no strings attached and my credit card statement goes mostly to purchases for which I am the beneficiary.  Things like taxes merge all three categories, supporting schools that benefited me greatly at one time, snow removal that benefits me now, and research grants on esoterica that probably benefit nobody but the person receiving the grant.  But taxes define membership in America, Delaware, or municipalities and state sales or hotel taxes paid where I am not really a member perhaps gouge me unnecessarily or enable me to derive benefit in the places I visit which are reciprocated when others visit my places of citizenship.  The synagogue dues fall into a similar realm, providing a forum of Jewish advancement for me, a payback for all the friendliness that has come my way, and a daily minyan for those who hold that experience in higher value than I do.  The women of AKSE, who I think get much less from their membership than would be their just entitlement, get the same bill as me.  The young members do not, yet they also have a mixture of personal benefit, gratitude, obligations to others whose needs differ from theirs, and expectation of citizenship that should accompany membership.  I think the leadership is wrong to bypass some monetary contribution, however nominal, in exchange for what they receive, much as Medicaid and insurance companies have come to realize that co-pays of a minor nature reflect on ownership and responsibility for medical care that does not happen when people receive something without any requirement to contribute to outcome.

So is $2625 a justifiable purchase?  I certainly get less for myself than I once did.  My attendance on Shabbat morning has not only waned but there are times when my avoidance of being there is purposeful rather than a random consequence of the on-call schedule.  While the messages from the Rabbi have clearly reflected his professional growth since his arrival, moving from recycling of Hebrew school dalet class to looking up something in book about Ramban that I do not have and imparting Ramban's insight to me, it is still not quite the same as having facility with 3000 years of our mesorah to explore a topic of Torah from its seventy faces.  At least I am no longer bored but have learned not to engage him in conversation about his sermons.  However, in medicine and in Judaism it has been the ability to engage my teachers and extract knowledge and insight that they have but I don't that has allowed me to advance professionally and Jewishly in a fairly consistent way most of my lifetime.  If I purchase something for me with my dues, that is invariably the item of highest personal value but it has not been forthcoming.  My personal creativity is tolerated but not valued.  I see my inquisitiveness and my intellect as my most enduring Divine gift, the thing that drives me at work, in the exam rooms, teaching people and advancing myself Jewishly whether through Artscroll, yutorah.org, conversation with peers.  It is that give and take, that floating of ideas into the marketplace of possibilities that drives medical progress and advances Jewish mesorah.  I increasingly see that being consciously cut off at AKSE, to the point of no longer being a place where Judaism is advanced by exploring the wisdom and misadventures of what came before.  To the extent that I am purchasing citizenship, the last couple of years have been a sufficient disappointment to make me think that a competing purchase of another type might be better.  And then there are the other two elements, gratitude and need to support the benefit that others accrue though are of no particular value to me personally.  These are hard to get away from, though perhaps easy to replace.  My attachment to Wash U Hillel is permanent even though I was only there two years.  Penn's is permanent.  I owe the current group of students at least what the alumni afforded me.  I don't have that devotion to AKSE.  My sense is more that I paid dues for years, contributed skill for much of that time and received less than I put in, unlike Hillel where I put in bupkis and created an experience that carried forward forever.  Hakaras HaTov is a core value, and AKSE is entitled to some of that irrespective of the irritations that have come my way.  Same with services to others.  The people there need Kiddush, benefit from the Rabbi's mind more than I do, need minyanim, need education.  Even if I do not personally advance from these things others do.  Then again, people need these things everywhere and the advantage of a monetary economy is its portability so I can take part of that $2625 and enable a different cadre of individuals to have these things that benefit them without benefiting me personally.

As I approach Shabbos, Memorial Day, the increasing Days of the Omer that I did not count this year for the first time in a while largely out of a sense of hypocrisy for towards the people who do yet fail to advance their character for their effort, and the end of AKSE's fiscal year, it is hard to dispel my impression that $2625 to AKSE is not a good investment in Judaism for me for sure and probably not for the Jewish public.  The more I analyze this the more convinced I am both intellectually and emotionally that it would be better to simply disaffiliate from any synagogue as my father did at my age, also spurred by an assessment of financial value.  He needed the money for other things.  I am fortunate enough to still be earning a significant salary with the vigor at age 60 to do the things that justify it.  Redirecting that sum in a more purposeful way needs to be considered and probably implemented.  I would like to take 40% of this, about $1K and dedicate it to Jewish advancement for Irene and me, then take the other 60% as three $500 donations for the advancement of others.  There are no shortage of destinations for this money to places that fulfill this mission far better that what I have seen come out of AKSE in recent years.  It is a disappointment in some ways, as there are still friendships and gratitude there but it is not a prudent investment in optimal Judaism.

Board Meeting

My attendance at AKSE Board Meetings has been largely a complete one, as has my attendance at its committee meetings and at Beth Shalom activities before that.  I am hard pressed to think of any I skipped primarily because I didn't want to be there, finding them irritating or an undue depletion of time.  At many of them I've been something of a space occupying lesion but I've always shown up, sometimes at some inconvenience to myself.

I find myself undecided on whether to attend tonight's session.  It may be decided for me by a plethora of consults that keep me late at the hospital but looking at the agenda, mostly budgetary planning.  I've been there before, or to some extent this comes up in a minor form with the financial report each month.  Most of the big budgetary items are set.  There are staff payroll costs which dominate the numbers, maintenance of the building comprises the second category of expense, and most other stuff is relatively diddle.  There is not of discussion as to how well the big ticket items enable the mission of the synagogue as an institution but a lot of discussion on whether to save $500 on postage costs.

The income side may be more complex.  It is harder to predict than the expense side, the retrospective review invariably being wrong and too optimistic.  Yet the people who create the income side, primarily the members, are the very ones who need to be served on the expense side where the discussion never quite includes how well you serve them.  It is hard to think of budgeting as a fundamentally abstract concept, much like basic science, which then gets translated to reality.

From my own perspective, there are spheres of concern and spheres of influence.  On this I have little of either.  The cynical me realizes that for the most part a herd mentality prevails, which may be good since you don't want to be doing radical things with the money of congregants who are change and risk averse but who are at least astute enough to realize that uninterupted progression of current trends will have its day of reckoning.

So what would I, as a sage lurking under the rocks, recommend.  Just like I have a tendency to take patients at their word, I would take the task force at its word and proceed down the path of single clergy.  Without getting into a discussion of the attributes that single Rabbi ought to have, the best way to economize is to do the work yourself and hire expertise that you do not have.  Some of us can fix our own cars, some need an experienced person to change the oil.  Some paint our own rooms or mop the floors, others hire painters and cleaning crews.  Some of us who did not know how to paint or scrub even rise to the occasion and learn how.  The opportunity to make that transition plopped into the congregation's lap without even having to contend with contentious contract renewal or denial discussion next year and the leadership failed to take advantage it.  I think we need a certain amount of reliability on having a ba-al tfiilah and the expertise of a Torah reader.  The price of a hired prayer leader, both an economic one and a lost opportunity one to engage the congregants and have them advance skill and rise to a need, seems inordinantly high for what we get in return.  A school of AKSE's size should be a one or two room schoolhouse with a payroll to match.  The progress of its alumni in parlaying what they learned there into more sustained adult Judaism should be tracked as part of the duties of the school staff for the purpose of upgrading the program over time and if the results are superior to anyplace else, which they are likely to be, then to using that as a source of product differentiation that allows us to recruit members.  That would be a form of budgeting with a purpose.

Do we need a building that big?  It is part opportunity, part albatross.  On one hand, the proceeds from sale could provide enough interest to enable the congregation to live within its means.  On the other there is a clear attachment of the membership to the physical structure and a willingness to support it so that element of expense seems purposeful.  Rental of space with the building has gone nowhere.  The options would be to either set aside the project or hire a seriously professional consultant who knows how to market space.  And now we are out of big ticket items.

On the income side, the word on Bingo remains a work in progress.  While I do not think this is the optimal business for a synagogue, the majority does and it could be a source of revenue.  When all is said and done, the income side depends on membership, how well the current members are served and how well policies and experience attract or deter potential members.  The task forces were too inbred to think beyond themselves and their own needs with a result that reflects this.  They had an opportunity to capture other perspectives through the focus group but this had roughly the same impact as the paid consultant whose guidance never got implemented.  There aren't too many ways to enhance membership.  One would be to deal with the Women Thing.  There are ways that can bring women closer to parity and there are folks like me who thrived on Hillel environments which must accommodate diversity, often by enabling parallel offerings.  My hero Rabbi Jim Diamond took a steadfast position that all students at Wash U and Princeton had a stake in Jewish life around the campuses and he will provide the resources to fulfill it.  AKSE had one minor foray into this with its monthly Mechitza minyan and a second foray with the Women's Tefilah Group.  Neither fulfilled its potential and if I have any seriously negative clergy evaluation comments, it would be not prioritizing these two opportunities to advance the Jewish experience irrespective of whether the people are eager to be advanced.  Not doing this for the Mechitza minyan enabled Ritual Talibans to undermine more mainstream progress on the Women Thing.  Not doing this for the Women's Tefilah Group gave tacit or maybe even overt confirmation to the community that the Rabbi does not care about the engagement of women in his congregation to the extent that other opportunities are available for them elsewhere and that women who are really committed to their own advancement need to take their families to those places instead of AKSE.  The other opportunity for advancing membership in places where mechitza or other forms of gender policy place women in a disadvantageous position involves providing a valued service ranked higher in importance than mode of worship.  This can be community involvement open to women, but most congregations of all creeds offer this.  Orthodox Judaism has a uniqueness of high level analysis of Judaism and opportunity for engaging in tradition.  Most successful Orthodox congregations that have attracted substantial non-Orthodox membership have done this through the educational route.  That means capturing college experiences which created a fondness with most people and not recycling Hebrew school which is usually the source of Jewish disdain and youngsters emerge from parents making their Jewish decisions to the college years where people make their own way.  AKSE is still recycling Hebrew school as its standard. 

Again, that is how budgeting becomes purposeful, looking at what is not yet provided that could be to make the offerings more attractive on the income side and investing on the big ticket items to accomplish this purpose on the expense side.  Unfortunately there is not a lot of incentive to think of money as the means to the congregation's purpose.