Moses went and sat in Rabbi Akiva’s study hall and did not understand what they were saying. His students said to him: My teacher, from where do you derive this? Rabbi Akiva said to them: It is a halakha transmitted to Moses from Sinai. When Moses heard this, his mind was put at ease, as this too was part of the Torah that he was to receive. (Babylonian Talmud, Menakhot 29b)
Synagogue staff and volunteers are busy preparing to welcome hundreds, sometimes thousands, of congregants over the course of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The most attended synagogue days of the year, the High Holidays are a time when congregants who are otherwise infrequent participants make a special effort to show up. Cultivating a deeper sense of belonging will help these congregants connect more with our synagogue communities while they are with us.
It’s a strange question, isn’t it? Why would anyone want to hospice a synagogue? The rabbi’s sermons can’t be that bad, right? Yet at this moment in American Jewish life, it is a question that needs to be asked. Across the country, synagogue communities are facing similar realities of lower affiliation rates and economic concerns about the cost of Jewish living. Many congregations have an aging membership, and the synagogue facilities they built decades ago when membership was younger and growing are in desperate need of repair and maintenance.
When I tell you that our fast-growing 11-year old Jewish spiritual community in Chicago already has 11 small group gatherings planned with 11 different members hosting (and no staff presence) with over 90 participants thus far, all in the first quarter of the year, I promise that it’s not too good to be true. Oh, and these events cost us $0 in supplies and only several hours a week of one staff person’s time.
Congregational rabbis walk through the life cycle with families, know generational joys and sorrows and help people, with whom they celebrate and mourn, sanctify the everyday. Congregational rabbis nourish souls and accompany us through the seasons of life. Congregations, unlike associations of like-minded individuals, are heterogeneous communities that connect to the larger community in which they reside. Rabbis who lead them do more than create powerful moments — they create enduring relationships.
