1. Create a Mission Statement
2. Bring Sing-able Music into the Worship Service
3. Create Havurot--Small Prayer Groups
4. Create Systems for Personal Support
5. Create a Social Justice Agenda
6. Experiment with the Prayer Experience
7. Create a Lay-Led Service
8. Get the Actors at Life-Cycle Events to Speak to the Moment
9. Share Personal Stories
10. Reach Out to New Constituencies
1. Create a Mission Statement
See if a group of members would be interested in thinking through the
primary purpose of the synagogue. Remember, a list of programs is not a statement of objectives. First try to articulate the why: Why does our synagogue exist? What are its objectives? What is the purpose of Judaism?
As you try to commit your ideas to writing, circulate it to ever-wider circles of members, and invite their input. See if what begins to take
shape makes you proud. If it does, you are on the right track. Only then begin to examine the program of the synagogue to see if it is successfully
advancing the objectives set forth in the mission statement.
Return to top
2. Bring Sing-able Music into the Worship Service
As you sit in a service, take note of how many people are singing how many songs. If most people are sitting passively, listening to a cantor or a choir, you need some serious music therapy.
Talk to your cantor about whether he or she is willing to introduce new melodies that lend themselves to congregational singing. Track down tapes of Jewish music to find suitable melodies. The simpler the song, in terms of words and melody, the better. A niggun requires no words at all and is generally repeated often enough so that even the most musically challenged can join in. Even easier is to encourage the cantor to take a few of the peppier melodies and to sing them with "la la la" a couple of times after the words have been sung. Especially if some people find the Hebrew intimidating, this is an excellent way to draw worshipers into some singing.
See if you can identify one or more members who are musically talented, and see if they can introduce a melody on occasion. If the religious standards permit it, introduce instruments or drums. If not, clapping serves a similar purpose.
Return to top
3. Create Havurot--Small Prayer Groups
Any way that you can break down the congregation into smaller, more intimate unites will strengthen the bonds of community. The havurot might be organized around study, shabbat, social action, holidays, or any other topic. They may be based on geography (who lives near whom) or life stage (singles, young couples, families with small children, and so on). The more Jewish content the better.
What is most important is that members get into each other's homes and get to know one another. If your objective is to strengthen your synagogue, make sure that the havurah is committed to attendance at synagogue-wide events on a regular basis; otherwise, it will become an impetus for pulling energy out of the congregation instead of putting energy into it. Ideally, the havurah should, on occasion, sponsor a program for the rest of the congregation.
Return to top
4. Create Systems for Personal Support
Nothing invalidates the synagogue enterprise more than if a member
experiences a life trauma and there is no congregational response. This is the Jewish mitzvah of gemilut chasadim, acts of loving-kindness. A visit or call from the rabbi is nice, but it is not enough. Havurot are natural response teams during such times because of the familiarity of the members with one another.
Often the biggest barrier to congregations functioning as support networks for each other is the reticence of members to share their pain, sickness, or personal crisis with a wider group of people. The synagogue-community is challenged to come up with ways to overcome this American predilection for privacy. Healing services are one vehicle that gives sickness or death in the congregation are very important, but the response must go beyond a small group of people.
Return to top
5. Create a Social Justice Agenda
A minister friend of mine once made a quintessentially Jewish observation when he said, "Sometimes the heaviest burden is having no one to carry." It is easy to get wrapped up in one's own world of professional and personal concerns. A true synagogue-community provides motivation to look around, see the pain and suffering in the world, and begin the work of repair, known in Hebrew as tikkun olam.
Many congregations sponsor occasional social action projects. Yet if a
congregation were to undertake the mission statement initiative, it is
likely that it would find that one of the main purposes of Judaism is to
bring aid and comfort to those less fortunate than oneself. A justice
agenda will move a community to the high ground of noble purpose. It will strengthen relationships between people doing important mitzvah work with each other. It will also result in attracting Jews to the congregation with deep commitments to working for peace and justice in the world.
Return to top
6. Experiment with the Prayer Experience
All of the greatest rabbinic teachers who addressed the issue of prayer insisted that it must be a service of the heart and not a rote recitation of the lips. And yet the latter is the form of prayer that is offered in most American synagogues. Since officiation at worship is one of the duties assigned to rabbis, you will need a cooperative rabbinic figure who is open to experimentation with prayer. Explore whether there is an openness to trying different forms of prayer at the main service in your synagogue. If not, see if you can create another setting for this.
Among the ways that Jews are experimenting with prayer today are the writing and sharing of personal prayers; use of alternative liturgies such as Marcia Falk's "Book of Blessings"; use of movement, dance, and yoga as part of a prayer experience; extended periods of silent meditation; breathing exercises; spontaneous prayer elicited from those gathered for worship; and sharing of poetry from other traditions and cultures that parallel themes in the Jewish liturgy. Even if these experiments happen outside of the main service, there will likely be some constituency drawn to them whenever they are scheduled. There is always the possibility that some of the experiments might recommend themselves for integration into the main service on occasion.
Return to top
7. Create a Lay-Led Service
Even if you love your rabbi and enjoy the service, good things will happen at a lay-led service that will never happen at the main service. Members will become more proficient at leading the prayers. Members will learn how to read Torah and Haftarah. Members will study the Torah reading of the week to give a talk or lead a discussion. The service does not have to happen weekly. Start modestly. Be consistent in terms of when and where it meets. You will draw a constituency.
Most important, participants will get a feeling of owning their own Judaism in a way that can never happen in a service when professional clergy run the show.
Return to top
8. Get the Actors at Life-Cycle Events to Speak to the Moment
Part of what contributes to the rote nature of Jewish prayer in American synagogues is that much of the service is so highly scripted. Creating moments when people can give expression to their emotions is one way to heighten the sense of spirituality in a service.
Most synagogues have a heavy schedule of life-cycle functions at their primary services. Most often these are bar and bat mitzvah celebrations, but they might also include baby namings, and aufrufs (a wedding couple's honor on the Shabbat before their marriage). All too often these occasions are so highly tailored to the celebrants and their guests that regular worshipers might as well leave the sanctuary for a walk around the block. But these are moments pregnant with tremendous emotional power.
Consider the possibilities. A parent shares a short, personal message to a son or daughter who is to become bar or bat mitzvah. A new father or mother says a few words about a deceased relative as their baby is given that relative's name. These give everyone in attendance palpable sense of the passing of the generations and the timeless emotions related to the creation of legacies for ourselves and our families.
Return to top
9. Share Personal Stories
Without question, the most spiritual moments that I have ever experienced in a synagogue setting have been when someone shares something about his or her own life journey and connects it to Judaism. I have created a service where there is ample opportunity for such sharing--during Torah dialogue, in talks by members about a given prayer, in a d'var torah given by a member. But
such opportunities can be created in other settings as well.
Congregations committed to orienting new members to their organizational culture and their programs might host new member coffees that begin with people talking about their spiritual journeys. This exercise shouldn't be restricted to new members. New American Jews must know that their journeys, however far they may have taken them from the Jewish community, are important and are valued. The attitude should not be "wherever you have been, we don't care, as long as you are now with us in this synagogue." Rather it should be, "your journey represents a struggle that many of us have had around our faith. What can we learn from your journey that will make our synagogue a better community and that will make us better Jew?"
Return to top
10. Reach Out to New Constituencies
Never let your synagogue be satisfied with its existing constituency. For every person who is a member, at least two are not. And of the actual members on the roster, think of those who never come around. Look around the room the next time you are in the synagogue and ask who is not there. Singles? Older people? Poor Jews? Disabled? Gays? Teenagers? Seekers? For each of these constituencies, there is a strategy for outreach and inclusion. As, "How can we reach these people? How might they be made to feel more comfortable here?"
How will you know when you have succeeded? When any Jew, anywhere in the community, can walk into your synagogue and call it home.
This book is available at all bookstores, online booksellers, www.jbp.com, www.wiley.com, or call 1-800-956-7739.
