In anticipation of the eight-day festival of lights, which begins Friday night, Dec. 11, The Chronicle asked local rabbis and educators about contemporary Jews’ dedication to Judaism and the community.
We asked them:
As synagogue membership is declining and younger people are increasingly not affiliating with the organized Jewish community, what is your synagogue doing to reach the younger and/or unaffiliated? What should the community be doing?
We are in the unique situation of seeing a steady increase in membership in Waukesha and the western communities. There have not been enough demographic studies to determine whether our potential is even greater, but we are dealing with challenges of growth rather than decline.
Engaging the younger families is indeed a challenge everywhere due to their time commitments and economics. Nevertheless, using the religious school (and some new plans for pre-school activities) we are reaching out to those groups.
Our first step has been to keep the parents onsite when the children are in class. We have made wireless Internet access available, as well as free coffee or tea. As the parents get to know each other they are creating other social opportunities and specialized worship experiences geared to their needs.
We hope that will create a commitment that goes beyond the “Sunday morning drop off the kids for religious school” type of commitment made by many parents today.
Schools directors and other synagogue professional staff have to work together and work with lay leadership to make this a reality.
Spiritual leader of Congregation Emanu-El of Waukesha
Social action can provide an ‘immediate payoff’
Like Jews of all ages, younger Jews have busy lives that take them in many directions. To warrant an individual’s investment of time and energy, synagogue life needs to offer opportunities through which people can find a sense of meaning and purpose through community.
For some this can come through Torah study; for others through prayer. Particularly attractive for our younger members are social action activities that focus our efforts in the wider community.
For example, Congregation Sinai has a relationship with the Social Development Corporation (SDC) and several times a year we hold workdays at a homeless shelter where we work inside and out to improve the facilities. It’s a multi-generational experience and one that younger congregants make time for. (They are also often better with the power tools.)
Cantor Rebecca Robins reflects, “As a newly-minted ‘thirtysomething,’” the challenge of synagogue affiliation for my generation is a regular conversation in my life.
I hear from my friends often about how challenging it is to find a home at the synagogue, especially without preschool and children as a gateway to the “in crowd.” We are genuinely looking for Jewish community — one that welcomes and embraces us, our perspective, our Facebook and our busy schedules.
One of the many reasons I came to Sinai is because I felt so comfortable in the diverse family of membership at the congregation. I think our commitments to social action and social justice, learning and social connections are an amazing part of what makes Sinai an excellent place for Jews of all generations — including my own — to call home.
We can connect as a congregation via two blogs, our Facebook page and in the building for a range of varied, interesting and creative synagogue programs. We can come together to pray and sing melodies that are familiar from our summers at Jewish camp, and accessible via iTunes and YouTube at home.”
At Sinai, we’ve tried to lower the barriers to congregational affiliation by offering congregational membership to younger community members for a token amount, which has met with some success.
Even so, the more important step is what happens once they come through the doors. All of us want to feel our efforts are needed and our absence noted.
Some find a place in congregational life through study, prayer and/or social action. In our experience, however, the last category offers the best immediate payoff — a sense of meaning and purpose for those who participate in the act of repairing a small section of this broken world — and the most long lasting sense of commitment and involvement.
Make our synagogues vital places
A straightforward question deserves a straightforward answer. The answer I will give also has an additional advantage: It will draw in not only young people, but older people too.
The only obstacle, and I realize this is important, is that this answer is difficult to make happen. But if we want to fill our synagogues with anybody, young, old, or in between, there is really only one way.
We have to make our synagogues spiritual, intellectually challenging, emotionally uplifting and socially connecting.
If upon leaving the sanctuary worshippers feel stimulated with new ideas from the liturgy, Torah reading or sermon, then they will likely return. If they feel that coming to services has drawn them closer into a network of people with whom they share values, who care enough to want to get to know them and will miss them if they don’t come back, they are likely to become regulars.
Most importantly, if people sense that attending synagogue enables them to reach out to God and feel God in their lives in a way that would not happen if they tried to pray on their own I am certain they will join.
Young people are no different than anyone else, just a little more honest and a lot less patient. If we make our synagogues more like the above, then we will not need advertisements or programs to attract them. People young and old will find their way and come.
If we don’t, no amount of gimmickry will make much of a difference. People will shun synagogue life as irrelevant, and whoever is willing to face the truth will realize why.
Congregation Shalom has been delighted to maintain steady membership in recent years and has had the honor of welcoming many new young families and individuals to our Shalom family.
Holding fast to the belief that the youth are our future, in the past few years, we have placed a strong emphasis on enhancing our work with our young families and created our Early Childhood Education department serving infants, toddlers, kindergarten children and their families.
We offer Bagels, Books, and Babies (for infant-2 1/2 year olds), Temple for Toddlers (for 2 1/2- to 4-year olds), “Kid”dush Club (a Kabbalat Shabbat service for infants through 5-year-olds), social activities for these age groups, and now are introducing our Early Readers Shabbat service.
We are overwhelmed with the response to these programs and worship services and have been rewarded with a tremendous community of young families, not to mention 25 children in our 4-year-old kindergarten religious school classes.
With the diversity of our congregation in mind, our new “Shalom Connections” offers a variety of social, educational, and spiritual programs for members of the congregation at all ages and stages of life.
Recognizing our needs as a community of individuals with different interests, we seek to provide opportunities for our members and prospective members to meet others with similar interests.
At Congregation Shalom, we seek to share the wealth of programming connections with the unaffiliated, whom we invite to participate in our programs and worship services.
It is our hope, that by experiencing all that we have to offer, those who have not yet found a connection will find themselves welcomed to our community and desire to become more involved.
Don’t let college students slip away
Working with college students means working with people who are fiercely idealistic. It means working with people who truly believe in the possibility that the world should be fair, that equality can exist and that hope and that love are eternally possible.
These are people who are intensely critical of old people like us. They sense that we have lost some of that passion and optimism and oh, are they frustrated with us when we come up with realistic problems and “what ifs” when they want to talk of what the world should be.
It is quite simply humbling to work with college students. I have spent hundreds of hours listening to students and their visions of what is needed in this world.
These days, students are world travelers to Africa, India, Israel, and Europe. Persecution of Jews is ancient history to them. Our students are powerful and perceive that they can make change in the world.
Working with college students awakens that possibility in me that might otherwise lay dormant. A part of me identifies with each of these students. A part of me remembers myself at age 20. At that moment in my life, I simply knew I could do anything. Whenever I talk with a 20-year-old, I remember that part of me well, and oh, how I miss it.
We Jews often wonder what is the necessary ingredient that we must give our kids to ensure their Jewish identity. Survey results have told us that day school education, Jewish summer camping and trips to Israel are three important ways to help teach a child about their Jewish identity.
Nearly 85 percent of our Jewish children are going to college, surely a higher number than the percentage of our Jewish children doing any of the other three aforementioned activities.
It is necessary, therefore, to provide excellent Jewish resources on the college campuses to which our children go. Only then will we provide them with the tools they need for Jewish living as they enter into adulthood.
During the college years, our children develop their adult identities. They choose a field of study, make friends that may last a lifetime, and some meet their spouse during the college years. These years are so precious and important in forming the adult life of our children.
Teaching these emerging adults about Jewish living must be our priority. At the Hillel at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and indeed at Hillels around the country, we are struggling with your children, engaging in deep conversations about Jewish identity, universalism, and the particularity of the Jewish person in the modern world.
We are struggling with students as they engage with Muslim students, Christian students, and other Jews and wonder what values we share and what rituals make us distinct.
It is imperative that, as Jews, we put great thought, energy and financial resources into this group of young Jewish students ages 18-24.
Oh, do they need our attention and our conversations. They are watching our behavior. They are listening to us. Let us not overlook them. Let us not pass them by, waiting until they resurface 10 or 20 years later, married, with children and looking for a synagogue after a long hiatus.
Let us not lose these precious years. Our young adult Jewish children are looking for our involvement in their lives. Let us not pass them by.
Rabbi at Hillel Foundation University of Wisconsin in Madison
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