As the immediate past president of the Wisconsin Council of Rabbis and the spiritual leader of one of our community’s Conservative synagogues I read with great interest Elana Kahn-Oren’s May opinion article, “Rethinking synagogues: Let crisis lead to cooperation.”
Collaboration and cooperation between synagogues and among other Jewish communal institutions is always a commendable endeavor. Jewish organizations have much to gain by sharing and pooling resources. Over the course of the last several years, the Wisconsin Council of Rabbis has exemplified this approach.
But anyone who regularly participates in synagogue life understands and recognizes that congregational communities, like families, have their own particular personality, character and spirit.
Individuals join synagogues and become a part of their congregation’s fabric because they are drawn to that synagogue’s particular approach to Judaism.
This is the important ingredient that makes Jewish religious life so vibrant and dynamic. And that is what can be tragically destroyed by mergers for the sake of financial expediency.
I share a case in point. The “cooperative Conservative Beth Torah religious school” that Kahn-Oren cites was a collaborative effort between my synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, and Beth El Ner Tamid Synagogue.
The Beth Torah religious school was governed by a joint school board, administered by a shared educational director and taught by a shared faculty. Classes were held at both synagogue campuses. This cooperative school model functioned for several years until Beth El decided to end the project.
While my congregation favored continuing Beth Torah, we came to recognize that we had an opportunity to establish our own religious school built on a curriculum that reflected our congregation’s own approach to Conservative Judaism.
As a result, our religious school grew by leaps and bounds and now has the distinction of being one of the few Conservative religious schools in the country — and the only one in Wisconsin — designated by The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism as a “Framework of Excellence School.”
Our congregation would never have attained this achievement nor benefited in so many intangible ways from it had we remained in the former model.
In the end, synagogues survive and thrive when they remain true to their ideals, principles, values and unique character.
Rabbi Jacob Herber is the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Israel.
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