Showing Up

Woody Allen once observed that 80% of life is showing up.  Probably true up to a point.  In some aspects a couple of folks whose main attribute is their Y-chromosome keep our daily minyan in the double digits most of the time while impeding the more critical decisions that keep the other elements of our congregation attractive looking forward.  A shabbos morning has about 2/3 the attendance it once did but showing up is sufficient to keep from exploring what happened to that other 1/3.  Nominating committees select officers and a board that will show up.

It is that other 20% of life that makes it sparkle or fail.  But you have to get to step 1 and assure that it is attractive to move beyond that.

Reversing Decline

One of my favorite analytical Jewish mavens submitted an Op-Ed to The Forward with an optimistic view on stemming Jewish participatory attrition, if not the population decline itself.  While I am less optimistic than Prof. Cohen, Judaism has always benefited more from the discussion than any pundit's conclusions.  I get little enough chance to be part of the discussion so I' ll treat myself to this one.s

Blog      Prof. Cohen's analysis

'In 2013, the Pew Research Center completed a landmark national study of American Jews. “Portrait of Jewish Americans” found evidence that the number of Orthodox Jews in America is rapidly increasing, and the number of active, Conservative, Reform and other engaged Jews is rapidly declining, with far fewer age 30-49 than among those age 50-69. Underlying this shrinkage and aging of active non-Orthodox Jews are several factors, most prominently:

• high intermarriage rates – 40% among Conservative Jews & 80% among Reform Jews-with non-Jews
• low birthrates: about 1.7 children per household
• high rates of non-marriage and late marriage
• only 7% of the grandchildren of the intermarried are being raised as Jewish-by-religion

Accept the data as presented

American Jewry can be divided into three segments

1) Orthodox

2) Jews who are episodically or partially Jewish, and not active in Jewish life

3) The “American Jewish Middle” who are not Orthodox, but participate and care about Jewish life. Many of them belong to synagogues, celebrate Jewish holidays, raise their children as educated Jews, feel attached to Israel, have Jewish friends, and donate to Jewish cases.

There are probably a lot of subclasses to #3

<snip>

Three basic principles to engage American Jews

1) Build social relationships and connections between Jews.

2) Convey meaningful Jewish content.

3) Target programs that appeal to certain stages of life — preschool kids, school kids and their parents, school children, adolescents, young adults, newly married couples, parents, older people, and other groups sharing demographic and psychographic features.

People knew this for centuries and made some effort to fulfill these needs.  Attrition in some form has also been present for centuries, well described in parts of Tanach, more recently historically in people moving toward the Hasidim or Bolsheviks from their more traditional communities or migrating to America.  All these disruptions led to reassembly of community and institutions.  In my own time we had synagogues built as people settled in new towns away from the core city, Hebrew schools leading to Bar Mitzvah, summer camps, Federations, Nursing Homes, teen programs.  Our current departure from participation has developed with the institutions already in place.  Presumably they did not create the ongoing connection that was desired of them.  That part of the analysis has been largely absent from much of the discussion of current demographics.  While there was certainly failure to engage people, in order to get the decline over about 40 years there also has to be disconnection of people who were once engaged.

Adolescence is the critical age

The most critical age for developing an identity and attachment to your religion, culture, and roots is during adolescent time, the period of 13 to 17.

The ball have been dropped before that through Hebrew School, both the kids' experience with it and the parents being inconvenienced by it at ready for an exit after bar mitzvah of the last child.  That still leaves some teen opportunity for continuation of the older siblings.

Jewish day schools are highly valuable, but only a minority of American Jewish parents will enroll their children in such schools, even if the costs were reduced. For the majority, seven or more years of congregational schooling yields measurable effects.

I found ours to be something of a disappointment, a little snot factory perhaps, breeding children of entitlement who were already engaged and easy to manage.  As a parent of a child who was more volatile I found the experience to be one of fair weather friends at a time when I could have used some real friends.  We departed.  I disconnected my Federation solicitor the next Super Sunday.  The Jewish institutions that I've entered are overflowing with these types of experiences from my childhood Rabbi who would speak well of you when you attended Ramah and turn on you when you told him the experience did not merit a return the following summer.

Most critical and effective are Jewish summer camps. Unfortunately, not every family can afford to send all their children to such camps. We need to make them by expanding subsidies, building more of them, and build a good number of low-cost Jewish overnight summer camps.

One of the challenges has been getting a critical mass of Jewish kids together in a setting where there are a lot of them in one place and they are there for the purpose of having a good time.  There are a number of experiments on this with places like Ramah and Habonim in operation for generations.  Alumni are plentiful.  Unfortunately my suspicion is that it may be those alumni of my era who get to the synagogues at age 30 having been programmed to rank Jews based on their observance who then disconnect the people they have been scripted to view as less worthy or less capable.

Youth groups are also effective when properly funded and run. Unfortunately, only two major national youth groups are currently well-funded.

The USY cliques are legendary.  As my Rav, the late Rabbi James Diamond z"l the Executive Director of the Center for Jewish Life at Princeton University observed, the best recruiter for seeking out Hillel in college was the USY experience but it was also the greatest deterrent.  There is a certain amount of manipulation that occurs there.  A person who has always gone to shul on shabbat and continues that way can be an officer but a more talented kid who joins an athletic team or musical ensemble that practices on shabbat cannot.  Once you convey a message that loyalty trumps talent, something utterly pervasive through the Conservative institutions as I have experienced them for many decades, you will eventually be left with less loyalty than you could have had and will have culled out the best talent.  If there is a message to how the Pew Report outcome got that way as the institutions function as it was getting to those results, that's it.  I think a real study on the Jewish lives and participation of Ramah alumni, if somebody of Prof. Cohen's stature might like to do it accurately would transform how Jewish leadership should set their programming to achieve their best result.

Lastly, just as Birthright Israel has proven effective for those 18-26, teen trips to Israel have the potential to transform Jewish lives, and to do so before teens reach campus.

If we can have more such trips and make them more affordable, this will have an effect on Jewish in-marriage, and help people form lifelong relationships within the community.

Again, the data might be open to question, though retrievable.  Sponsored trips to Israel for teenagers have been around for a long time and well subscribed.  Birthright excluded those alumni from its trips until recently.  The success of keeping those teenagers who visited Israel engaged in the Jewish future may have been the motivation for funding Birthright.  Those teenagers were already part of Jewish organizations through their families and the sponsoring organizations.  Whether they stayed that way as adults or became part of the Pew mainstream can probably be assessed if not already done.  It is much more difficult to assess those teens whose only connection was that Young Judea trip to Israel.

The College Years and Beyond

In college, Hillel and Chabad have a very positive effect on engaging college students. While there are many Orthodox rabbis on college campuses, not all students identify with them. We need more non-Orthodox rabbis serving on college campuses.

The large Hillel directors are a mixture of non-orthodox Rabbis and non-clergy Jewish professionals.  As graduates from the emerging seminaries and even the denominational ones find it more difficult to get appointed pulpit Rabbi, organizations such as Hillel have been acquiring their talent.  A generation ago, when the foundation for the current Pew results was being set, there were Hillels in the major universities with large Jewish populations.  They tended to attract the Orthodox, at least at the three I attended, though only one had an Orthodox Rabbi.  Effective programming for the non-Orthodox was very difficult with other competing venues for college students around the campus.  Kosher dining was the foundation for one of them as people had to eat, but maintaining Kashrut pretty much meant you were already engaged in day to day Jewish living.  Herding people from outside was a more difficult and less effective enterprise.  That is no doubt true today.

We are only beginning to systematically engage vast numbers of largely unmarried Jews during their young adult years. Among the most promising are programs to invite them to Shabbat tables, participate in Moishe Houses, attend Limmud and other Jewish learning festivals, and establish relationships with Chabad and other engagement-oriented rabbis. Any involvement of young adults in Jewish life increases the chances of their finding and eventually choosing Jewish marriage partners.

The number of people who find their marriage partners that way is probably minuscule compared to the number of people who latch onto each other in their college classes or their work places.

Non-Marriage Is a Major Challenge

<snip>

Engaging non-Jewish spouses

We can be better about inviting and inspiring non-Jews who marry us to convert to the faith. It can make a significant difference if the newly married are welcomed into the faith and the community, and are treated as one a fully equal member of the community.

Unfortunately, very few such husbands and wives ever do so. Obviously, conversion of non-Jewish spouses means that their children will be raised Jewish.

But even without conversion, we can do a much better job of making our non-Jewish family members feel fully part of the family and community.

It is important to note than an official conversion is not necessary. What is necessary is to make people part of the family and a part of the community. This can be very meaningful, and many people have been inspired by such warm invitations, and explore the religion further on their own.

This part has been in evolution, and not entirely voluntary evolution, for a considerable time.  I think all congregations now treat their intermarrieds courteously, but as recently as the 1980's that was not the case and various litmus tests still remain as part of organizational official policy.  As a teenager in the 1960's the Conservative Rabbis started responding to the first widely publicized exposee on intermarriage, Look Magazine's "The Vanishing American Jew" with a concerted effort at getting their congregants to support a form of what we would now call shunning.  You could not actually excommunicate Jews but you could keep them from becoming officers of Jewish agencies, restrict employment by Jewish agencies, deny aliyot and not acknowledge a donation celebrating the birth of a grandchild to a devoted synagogue member who's child intermarried.  Some of these policies remain nominally active today.  But for the most part the non-orthodox have become increasingly inclusive and some almost perfunctory in granting conversion.  It brings people into the fold but there is also a price to playing too loose with the Halacha that has sustained Judaism indefinitely.  These couples are part of the Jewish organizations and leave their imprint in many ways.  Whether they are able to challenge what they inherit as the status quo in a way that expands the organizations that welcome them has not been adequately tested.

I will close with an anecdote from about a year ago.  I attended a concert in which my wife was participating near the University just after shabbos one winter.  She had to arrive early so I wandered on the main street checking out a few pubs to see if I could get a craft beer before the concert.  I had a beard, knit kippah and appeared old enough to be a professor emeritus.  As I walked on the sidewalk and into a couple of pubs to check the crowd and selection, a few kids spotted me, wished me a goot shabbos which had already ended, expressed how I reminded them of the Jews of their home town, and made a remark or two about Hebrew school.   Being on a time budget, I exchanged greetings but did not engage in conversation.  These kids are not likely to be serious participants in the Jewish world now but they could be.  Somebody needs to pursue their interest personally with conversation and invitation.  Then once there, treat them as the important people they really should be.  

Derech Eretz Kadmah l'Torah

Open House

Like many synagogues around America, AKSE has grappled with declining membership as a chronic financial leak for about a generation.  It has become a very expensive consumer purchase when viewed that way.  Creating other ways to view the expenditure have been largely dysingenuous and not very successful.  People have other ways to purchase a Bar Mitzvah if they want to purchase a Bar Mitzvah.  Different schemes have been tried.  No fee High Holiday entry the Rabbi's first year on the false hope that his presence would be an attraction.  It wasn't and the data of the ensuing seven years suggest that it isn't.  Our Hebrew School has given the best education around for the few who want it but you can really have your kids processed through Bar Mitzvah without learning much of enduring value.  Other congregations have replicated that experiment many times.

So the latest brainstorm is to bring them into the building on a Sunday morning, give them a bagel, let them chat with the Rabbi and President and see if they might want to spend 2% of their family's gross income to continue.

Wonder how much planning and analysis went into preparation for this.  There are places that captivate you when you walk in the door.  The welcome center at Temple Square did form me.  So did the reception room for the Washington University Medical School graduation.  When you walk into these rooms you see Mishpacha, big screen TV's of people who have been enjoying their affiliation.  There is no ulterior motive.  WashU has already gotten our tuition and their students moving forward to carry on the University's good name there and elsewhere.  The Mormons celebrate their success amid adverse historical challenges without caring one way or another whether any visitor joins and later tithes.  Both organizations have joy to convey to those who enter.  AKSE's poobahs probably need to take the hint and create something a little more worthy of celebration than what I've encountered, then ask guests to the party.

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.

Projects for the Half Year

Six Months ago I changed my traditional planning categories to give a longer perspective, some things I'd like to complete, others open-ended projects that benefit from effort.  I completed three of twelve for the current half year and move onward.

1. Friends:  Contact an old friend each month
2. Family:  Dedicate special time each month for my wife
3. Financial:  Finally computerize my assets
4. Self:  Go on three day trips
5. Home: Declutter once and for all each room
6. Purchase: Cosmetic upgrades to the kitchen
7. New Frontiers: First draft of the book I'd like to write on Jewish institutional attrition
8. Travel: Drive to Florida
9. Long Term:  Engage in my post-retirement activities
10. Community:  Participate in two Jewish organization
11. Health:  Get my weight under 155 pounds
12. Mental:  Make my blog interactive

Will I actually do these?  As usual, some to completion, some not but worth the effort.

Keeping People Immersed

From time to time a published essay captured my attention along with my imagination of what might be but generally isn't.  This essay from Rabbi Alex Greenberg of Pittsburgh found its way to the USCJ site, interestingly in a section on developing congregational finances.  His remarks, My commentary.

Everyone wants to have a welcoming shul. Everyone thinks they have a welcoming shul. But, it's time for Beth El to no longer be a welcoming shul. It means nothing to be welcoming, if we are not engaging. Our goal, from now on, is to be more than welcoming. I want us to be known as an engaging shul.

Can't say I've ever been chased out.  I have sat through many a service wondering if my shabbos morning could have been utilized better.

    To “engage”: To attract and hold, to cause to participate, and to connect with. More members are not enough. Having a bunch of names on a piece of paper does not make a synagogue. We could have the largest synagogue in the nation; but, if we don't engage our members, then that's all they are - some letters on a piece of paper.

Our Executive Board doesn't even know who our members are.  They count how many credit cards they debit for dues.  While each household usually has only one checking account, they typically have multiple individuals with different needs.  One need only to scan the sanctuary of shabbos morning and count the half couples in attendance to figure that out.  Some things are a little harder to figure out, particularly one household member extended invitations for multiple elements of participation while another with the same checking account never gets invited personally for any activity.

    What is the ideal Conservative synagogue? Not the largest one, but rather the Conservative synagogue in which its members are willing, learning, and striving Jews. The perfect Conservative Jew is not perfect. The ideal Conservative Jew is always a work in progress. The ideal Conservative synagogue is filled with not Jews who are perfect, but rather filled with Jews who are willing, learning, and striving. It is not about the numbers, but rather about the people and how we engage them. Joining Beth El is not success, success is what happens next.

That probably applies to any organizational effort from workplace to political campaign to school to place of worship.

    We do not have an apathetic synagogue. We have a passionate synagogue, filled with passionate people. We are filled with willing, learning, and striving Jews. And that is our goal - not more members, but more passionate members. We have greeters at the doors, but do we have engagers in the seats? Every single member of Beth El must be an engager. Part of engaging in a Conservative shul is about outreach to our own membership. About 1/4 of our congregation has been members five years or less, 25% of our congregation is new. We have a responsibility to fulfill the needs of all congregants within the Conservative movement. The Conservative movement is not a special, secret club where you need a secret handshake to get in. It is a movement that respects all, the traditional, the observant, the liberal, the intermarried, and so on. Judaism is not a democracy, it is about pluralism, always has been, always will be. And, the Conservative movement is the place where pluralism is cultivated.

We do not seem to have a passionate membership at AKSE.  The Board's behavior to say the least has been more members.  Disciples of that medical cult book, The House of God whose motto was "We're Not the Best but the Most."  I think our baalebatim would give one of their relatively marginally functioning gonads to have a situation where a quarter of the people are new entrants but I doubt if they would look at that as a source of new talent.  More likely it would be a subsidy for those entrenched longer.

I would challenge the comments about the essence of the Conservative movement.  It only recently became pluralistic and to this day creates various litmus tests that stratify people based on Kashrut observance and intermarriage.

    We are a lay led congregation. We are engaged. But, how can we teach engagement to others? How can we instill it? Motivate? Invigorate? Engagement is accomplished through participation over performance. Engagement is having a congregation where everyone has a say, where we recognize that being a good Jew has nothing to do with how kosher you are or how well you keep Shabbat, but rather how well you treat your fellow human being.

The restrictions on office holding at USY differ from that suggestion that Conservative Judaism is a meritocracy.  And I must say, machers who swoop to override more general consensus within many a Conservative kehillah and at the intercongregational level do not seem to have their honored and disproportionate place at the table challenged because of what many would regard as misdeeds, many of them prime contributors to their movement's loss of adherents over a generation.  But as Speaker O'Neill observed, all politics is local and within a large collection of kehillot there will be some places like Rabbi Greenbaum describes of his and some Beth Sodom's in the mix as well.

Our shul, being independent of a formal movement, does not have that banner.  How well you treat people seems to matter less than how often you attend morning minyan, as a few key individuals can and do leverage that important but precarious niche to impede a more overriding need of the congregation to offer more to women, the one visible element of AKSE that has inhibited any realistic attraction to the younger families.  And they do it with the consent of the last two Rabbis.

If you look at the Nominating Committee slate, it has been recycled officers for the last three slates.  Who else may have been invited but turned the invitation down.  Doubt if anyone was.  And you cannot ignore performance.  Probably a mistake to regard Mediocrity as the Promised Land.

    Judaism is a religion of action over belief, of deed over creed. Words are cheap. We engage by being engaged. We walk the walk. We lead by example. We are one congregation, one community. We are a team. The question is not how do we get more members, but rather how do we get more members who care. How? By embracing our synagogue. If every single person in our shul is proud of being a member of our shul, then we will attract more caring members. All we need is a bunch of Jewish people who are happy where they are. (sounds easy) We must believe in ourselves. A synagogue only exists for its members, not the other way around. A synagogue cannot be engaging, only its membership can be. Beth El is no longer a welcoming synagogue. We are now an engaging synagogue. Watch out, because we're coming for you.

This is where the Rabbi needs to be at the forefront.  Beth El may be putting forth the effort to draw its passive members into its pageant.  AKSE does not seem to have a parallel initiative at the top of its agenda, at least in observable evidence.  They probably should and it can only happen if the Rabbi insists upon it as part of his tenure and pushes the structure among the baalebatim that enable its success.

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.