Reflecting on Community: Then, Now, and Tomorrow

It's time to focus on community, within and beyond the context of congregations. 

Israel in the Gardens event, The Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties

Views From Outside the Box launched a year ago.  The maiden post was focused on the topic of community.  Significant issues within Jewish community have been in the headlines over the past 51 weeks.  It seems appropriate to return to that topic to mark the conclusion of this blog’s first year in the blogosphere. 

A dozen years ago a thoughtful, active congregant shared with me her thoughts about belonging to the synagogue.  She said that she really wanted it to be a place through which her family could engage the world in a meaningful way with acts that made a difference.  The family time at the synagogue with its rituals, the learning, prayer time, all helped them create that specific, particular vantage point through which the universal became accessible.  At the time I was struck by how beautifully profound her sentiment was. It could not have been more different from the nature of “congregation” that defined the synagogue (or shul in honor of its predominantly Polish, orthodox origins) of my youth.

The Jacksonville Jewish Center was founded as a reorganization of B’nai Israel. My great grandfather and great-great uncle were early, if not founding board members and officers.  It was jokingly called “the shul with the pool.”  Truth be told, it was that and more.  “The Center” was a textbook study for the Jewish Center model as envisioned by the concept’s designer, Professor Mordechai Kaplan.  Scouting for boys and girls, various sports including a basketball league, activities like karate and ceramics, social clubs, youth groups, daily minyan, day and supplemental schools, summer camp; The Center had it all.  To this day The Center has a beautiful campus that includes an Olympic pool with dressing rooms.  It also proudly operates a thriving Solomon Schechter Day School, and is a flagship congregation for the Conservative Movement.  It is dynamic and stable at the same time, vibrant with activity, strategically focused, and by all accounts a rare example of a successful, large, contemporary, congregation.  The very factors that made the model compelling and successful for its era by and large now work against it.

The fact is, the Jewish community is more than willing to admit that congregations in general are increasingly becoming a lower priority for the allegiance of many American Jews. This conversation has been ongoing for thirty years.   From the trends defined in Bowling Alone and Habits of the Heart applied more recently by The Jew Within up to Relational Judaism the concern has been to make synagogues “successful.”   Yet even more critical is the other question.  What will it take to keep synagogues viable and move beyond inapplicable models of yesteryear?  

 This model requires that synagogues—and JCC’s for that matter—need to maintain brick and mortar buildings and big staffing rosters. The funding it requires is increasingly questioned by its membership, and the presumed potential member “out there.” Less and less are people willing to prioritize synagogue membership, along with its generally increasing operation expenses.  Weaker congregations are feeling seriously challenged, and even the largest and ostensibly wealthiest congregations are concerned for the implications of the demographic shift around the next bend.  Mergers, shared space arrangements between congregations and/or JCCs, and closures are increasingly common.  The landscape is changing rapidly as brick and mortar institutions find themselves fiscally unsustainable, with dwindling and generally aging membership rosters and a decreasing pool of potential new members.  Independent of what the individual synagogue might do in order to be increasingly vital, meaningful, and compelling there are external factors that can be neither ignored, nor changed.  Some of those factors challenge the very needs that synagogue membership presumes to fill.

 Having spent so much effort on building congregations and the rest of the brick and mortar infrastructure of the Jewish community, what is the nature of that community today?

In many of the communities that are the map of American Judaism, there are resources beyond congregational life that can meet one’s Jewish needs literally cradle to grave.  Need a mohel or a mohelet for a bris?  You likely have several options locally.  Looking for a hospital or nursing home visit? Many communities provide Jewish chaplains for patients in healthcare settings that do not have them on staff.  Looking for a bar mitzvah tutor who will meet on your schedule?  Skype opens up a whole world of possibilities.  It is easy to find rabbis, cantors, and non-clergy specialists to officiate at lifecycle events from baby namings to b’nai mitzvahto burials and everything in between.  The DIY Jew of the 21^st century who is unconcerned for synagogue membership has to love this rich array of resources.  There is no fuss with committees, no muss with policies, and the convenience couldn’t be better.  You can get your Jewish need met with exactly what you want, when you want it, how you want it and at your budget.  Call it boutique Judaism, or fee-for-services, or ala carte or whatever you like:  it is the reality, and it is marketplace driven.

The Jewish Center “pool with the shul” model worked in its era because it addressed the real-time needs of its members and larger community.  It was a destination that gave an address for frequent social interaction.  That frequency of social interaction is still the key to creating and sustaining community.  Some congregations are already embracing new approaches.  Smaller, intimate, store-front congregations that operate out of retail space are a growing phenomenon.  Different spaces are leased as necessary for larger events.  The main rental agreement handles much of the maintenance burden so money is spent on essential staff, and creating the opportunities for the congregants to connect with each other. These congregations can be flexible and nimble responding to its logistics needs each and every time.  The emotional, human and financial energy of the people is spent on building community and not the superstructure of congregation. 

Even so, some people want community even as they don’t want a traditional congregation.  From New York to Los Angeles to Jerusalem there have been new types of communities emerge.  Each reflects its own local, organic needs.  Even so, they offer suggestions for seeding other communities.  Can Machon Hadar’s emphasis on serious learning become a model for a community beyond New York?  Can the Jewish social consciousness of Ikkar in Los Angeles inspire something similar elsewhere?  What about Shira Chadasha’s idea of being a “davvening community” in Jerusalem.  Might it work somewhere else an ocean or two away?  The possibilities are certainly intriguing. 

How will Jewish community be organized in the future?   There is no one, static and absolute answer.  The various synagogue models currently in place will still be around for a while. The successful ones will be places where community is experienced in meaningful ways within and beyond its walls.  But my sense is that people who look to hold family friendly Costume Purim Pizza parties at the local Moon Bounce will likely draw a lot more of those families than the efforts to bring them into synagogues.   If you ask me, it sounds like a lot of fun.