Nostalgia might not be what it used to be, but back in the early 1970s, our Reform synagogue on the South Shore of Long Island was the center of my family’s life. Our youth group was the largest on Long Island. Kids came from as far away as Great Neck and Kew Gardens to participate. There were many nights that I didn’t get home until midnight because we were driving those kids home. My parents didn’t mind. They knew that if I woke up bleary-eyed the next morning it was all a part of my Jewish education. Some 30 years later, my old synagogue is contemplating A merger with a neighboring synagogue. This is true of many synagogues on the South Shore, as well
as other areas of Long Island. As recently reported in The Jewish Week, some communities are even offering cash incentives for young Jews to move in, with mixed success. In the late 1980s, I came home to become a rabbi at a synagogue on the South Shore of Long Island. Even then, I noted the challenges of the Three Bs: people moving either to Boca or to Bedford in Westchester County, meaning the search for warmer or greener pastures, or to Beth Moses, meaning the cemetery out in Farmingdale. During those years, two neighboring synagogues in Freeport and West Hempstead closed their doors. In other areas of Long Island, synagogues withered to half and then to one-third of their 1960s and 1970s sizes. In retrospect, we would have to add three more Bs to the horsemen of the demographic apocalypse. Housing on Long Island cost big bucks, pricing many young Jewish home seekers out of the market. Some communities became black (or Hispanic or Asian), and some neighborhoods would become black hat. Philip Roth got it right in “Eli the Fanatic”: When communities are perceived as becoming Orthodox, they become less attractive to non-Orthodox Jews. If the problem were only about real estate and demography, then any Jewish historian would shrug. The morning service begins with Ma Tovu: “How good are your tents, O Jacob…” Our praying places have always been tents — pitched today, taken down tomorrow. Thirty years ago there was a functioning Reform synagogue on West 79th Street. Fifty years ago, there was a Reform synagogue on Riverside Drive in the low 90s. A sad irony: those synagogues folded some years before the Upper West Side became the new Vilna. The god of real estate is a capricious god and as inscrutable in His or Her ways as, well, God at the end of the book of Job. But the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our demography. It is in us. Synagogues on Long Island are shrinking not only because people are moving or dying. Many Jews who used to belong to Long Island synagogues haven’t gone anywhere — except out of the synagogues. When the last child graduates from high school, when the nest is truly empty, many Jews are looking at that synagogue bill and are saying to themselves: “Who needs this anymore?” Appeals to ethnic loyalty have not worked. Appeals to probable future need — “What rabbi is going to do your funeral if you don’t have a rabbi?” — have not worked. Consumerism, the real religion of Long Island and suburbia, has triumphed. This problem is not limited to Long Island. It is a national Jewish problem. Despite the existence of local success stories, I know of no national trend indicating that non-Orthodox synagogue membership is growing. Here’s another sad irony. While synagogues are shrinking, creative synagogue resources are growing. There are new prayer books, new synagogue music, new types of engaging programs, more outreach to interfaith families, better Jewish educational materials, and organizations that think about how to make synagogue life better and deeper and richer. Some of the best minds in contemporary Jewish life — among them Lawrence Hoffman, Ron Wolfson, and Hayim Herring — are spending their considerable intellectual capital on figuring out this shrinkage problem. But all of organized Jewry’s best attempts will fail unless there are Jews in the synagogues to make them a success. I pray it is not too late. If non-affiliation with the Jewish community is the illness, then we can still teach a new generation that they are the potential cure. By simply affiliating with a synagogue, we can say, you are strengthening the Jewish people and the Jewish future. This is not going to be easy. It will mean re-imagining what Jews should “get” from synagogue membership. It will mean strengthening partnerships between Jewish professionals and lay leaders. It will mean serious ego swallowing. It will mean paying attention to what Christians – yes, even evangelical, fundamentalist Christians – are doing to re-vitalize their churches. Some synagogues will need to re-invent themselves and do a “product re-launch.” In 70 CE, after the destruction of the Temple, the sages gathered at Yavneh and re-invented Judaism. By the 2,000th anniversary of the destruction, we should have created numerous suburban Yavnehs and re-invented Judaism once again. Jewish hope compels me to say that we can do it. Jewish necessity compels me to say that we must. n Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin is the rabbi and executive director of Kol Echad: Making Judaism Matter, a trans-denominational adult Jewish learning community in Atlanta, Georgia. His most recent book is “A Dream of Zion: American Jews Reflect On Why Israel Matters To Them” (Jewish Lights).
Breaker: ‘Despite the existence of local success stories, I know of no national trend indicating that non-Orthodox synagogue membership is growing.’
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