Six Faces of Synagogue Success

Dr. Rob Weinberg 0 Comments

Today’s most successful synagogues share six faces: Successful synagogues link people to what matters in life.Engagement goes to the heart of what successful congregations strive to achieve, not as an end in itself but as a means to creating the relationships that build communities in which Judaism confers meaning to life and opens the door to making a difference in the world. When a congregation creates sacred relationships, fosters Jewish meaning, and helps people make a real impact, people become and remain engaged. When they are so engaged, a self-reinforcing “virtuous cycle” is created in which each investment of mind and heart feels so worthwhile that people seek to engage more often and more deeply. Successful congregations are intentional. Having a vision statement and/or list […]

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Rev. John Steinbruck: Spiritual Role Model

Rabbi Sid Schwarz 0 Comments

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a life counts for a million or more. Last week I attended a memorial service for Reverend John Steinbruck who died on March 1st at the age of 85. When I moved to Washington D.C. in 1984 to take the post as the executive director of the Jewish Community (Relations) Council of Greater Washington, John was already a legend in a city that is somewhat jaded by all of the personages of importance (or perceived self-importance). John came to Washington in 1970 to be the senior pastor of Luther Place Church. His church was at the corner of 14th and N Streets, an area that a couple of years earlier had burned in the riots following the […]

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Synagogues Reimagined

Rabbi Sharon Brous 0 Comments

Once there was a beloved king, teaches Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev, whose court musicians played beautiful music before him.  The king loved the music and the musicians felt honored to be able to use their talent to bring him joy.  Every day for many years the musicians played enthusiastically, and the king and the musicians developed a deep love for one another.  But eventually, after years of dedicated service, all of the musicians died.  Their children were called into the king’s court to take their parents’ place. Out of loyalty to their parents, they began to appear every morning to perform.  But unlike their parents, the children did not love the music.  While they could play basic tunes, they did not understand the hidden power […]

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From Synagogue Centers to Intentional Spiritual Communities

Rabbi Sid Schwarz 0 Comments

In my book, Finding a Spiritual Home, I profiled four congregations, one from each of the major American Jewish denominations. Each had a track record attracting serious Jewish seekers who tended to avoid conventional synagogues. What emerged from the study were four principles that these congregations seemed to share and which suggested an exciting new paradigm for American synagogues. I’ve come to call this paradigm “intentional spiritual community” and I have worked with dozens of congregations helping them move from the older, synagogue-center paradigm, whose appeal is fading, to this newer paradigm. This work in the field has allowed me to fine-tune the four principles which I believe can help American synagogues become better suited to the contemporary realities of American society. Mission Driven and […]

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The Tent Peg Business, Revisited

Rabbis Noa and Lawrence Kushner 0 Comments

A. Almost thirty years ago (1984), when I wrote “The Tent Peg Business” for the first issue of New Traditions (it went belly-up after the third), we were pretty clear about who was a Jew (Jewish mother, conversion); we knew who was a rabbi (HUC, JTS, yeshivah—Recon was just an infant); and we knew what a congregation was (building, dues, rabbi). Now we’re unsure about how to define any of those categories. Indeed, even a print media journal like this may be on the way out. But, if you think that’s challenging, try living in San Francisco. Here, nine out of every ten Jews are unaffiliated. At The Bagelry near my home, the young woman flips the bacon with chopsticks. We ain’t in Kansas anymore.—LK […]

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People of Faith Standing with the Suffering

Rabbi Michael Latz 0 Comments

Last month, rabbis, pastors, priests and imams gathered together in Ferguson, Mo., a city rife with racial violence and pain. Along with my rabbinic colleagues from Truah: The Rabbinic Call for Justice, I decided to join together with the people of Ferguson in their struggle for justice.  I went with the intention of teaching protesters and police alike how to forge a new path for justice. I realized that I had the wrong idea: This wasn’t about clergy teaching anyone anything but about our bearing witness to a movement. After 18-year-old Michael Brown’s death at the hands of a police officer, the youth of Ferguson are demanding that he, and they, not be forgotten. Rabbis went to Ferguson to hold ourselves accountable. We participated in […]

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Want to Build a Healthier Jewish Community? – Nourish Informal Social Networks

Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum 0 Comments

Eight years ago, a group of individuals in Seattle began asking the question: If we were to create a new kind of Jewish community, specifically designed to meet the needs of 21st century Jews, what would it look like and how would it be organized? How would it meet the increasing gap between the needs and mindset of today’s generation of Jews, and the structure of traditional Jewish communal organizations? The answer this group came up with was the Kavana Cooperative: a pluralistic, non-denominational, and cooperative Jewish community. Influenced by Seattle’s start-up culture, co-founders Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum and technology executive Suzi LeVine aimed to create an organization that was simultaneously open and experimental as well as thoughtful and strategic. Most of all, Kavana would be […]

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From Sea to Sacred Sea

Rabbi Michael Lezak 0 Comments

Sixty 15 year-old Jewish campers from L.A. are on a three-day hike through the Santa Monica Mountains.  No mattresses.  No stereos.  No showers.  No hair dryers.   Not an easy task for these pampered kids from the Valley and West L.A.    It’s their last summer as campers.  The summer before they become Counselors-in-Training.  They stay up late.  Telling silly stories around the campfire.  Singing their favorite camp songs.  Eyeing that summer’s crush.  On the last night, these campers and their beloved counselors sleep on a beach in Malibu as the sounds of the waves crashing help them to feel profoundly alive.  They wake up, dip their feet in the ocean and walk en masse along Pacific Coast Highway back to camp.  As they amble into the […]

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Changing Communal Culture in Synagogues

Rabbi Amy Wallk Katz 0 Comments

When I became the rabbi of Temple Beth El (TBE) in Springfield, Massachusetts, in the summer of 2008, two congregations were merging: Temple Beth El and B’nai Jacob. Temple Beth El was a large Conservative congregation showing signs of a growing malaise. Membership had declined from about 900 to 600 member units, the physical facility felt neglected, and the classes and programs that had once been quite successful were no longer particularly well-attended. Many congregants seemed disengaged, the congregation relied heavily on its professional staff, and it was challenging to recruit and sustain committed volunteers. Still, when interviewing with the members and the leadership I sensed a deep love for the Temple and a powerful desire to rebuild. B’nai Jacob was a very different congregation. […]

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Re-Thinking Synagogue Dues

Rabbi Dan Goldblatt 1 Comment

In the summer of 2007, we carried our Czech Memorial Trust Torahs from the Congregational church that had hosted us for ten years and celebrated a glorious shehechiyanu moment in our beautiful synagogue home perched on a hill overlooking the lush San Ramon Valley.  We added a lovely pre-school wing and expected to grow and flourish.  Little did we know that the subprime mortgage crisis was about to hit the country like an economic tsunami and many people in our community would lose their jobs and some could no longer afford living in our upscale suburb. We lost scores of members who could no longer pay synagogue dues and watched as the percentage of remaining members on “dues subsidy” skyrocketed from a little over ten […]

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