Synagogues Envision Ways to Attract Jews in the 21st Century

If a nationwide project envisioning dynamic synagogues of the future is successful, American Judaism in the 21st century may be thanking the likes of evangelical mega-churches, Disney executives and star film director Steven Spielberg.

The $2.1-million project might also be remembered gratefully next century for embracing Jewish healing services that were experimental in the late 1990s.

Not that the Synagogue 2000 Project, led by a Reform rabbi and an educator in Conservative Judaism, pictures wild-eyed rabbis praying for miraculous healings, creating Judeo-Christian congregations or turning synagogue complexes into mini-theme parks.

Instead, “We are taking the principle of how ideas work in Disneyland or in churches and applying them to the synagogue,” said Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman, professor of liturgy at Hebrew Union College in New York City.

“We are trying to learn from as many sources as possible how to create a welcome place of spiritual nourishment where people can find God in their lives,” said Ron Wolfson of Encino, who directs the Whizin Center for the Jewish Future at the University of Judaism.

Hoffman and Wolfson co-direct the Synagogue 2000 project that selected 16 energetic synagogues to serve as ongoing models for the future. Divided evenly between Reform and Conservative synagogues, they range in location from Boston to Los Angeles and include heartland congregations in places such as St. Paul, Minn., and Omaha, Neb.

Included are Temple Isaiah, a Reform temple on Los Angeles’ Westside celebrating its 50th anniversary, and 35-year-old Congregation Ner Tamid, a 570-family Conservative synagogue in Rancho Palos Verdes. “We are a fast-growing congregation that gives me, the cantor and the staff a lot of latitude for creative changes,” said Ner Tamid’s Rabbi Ron Shulman.

About 60 of the synagogue leaders recently attended a service at an evangelical Christian church, Saddleback Valley Community Church in Mission Viejo, to pick up pointers. The Saddleback church attracts 13,000 persons each Sunday, making it the fastest-growing Southern Baptist church in the country.

Project leaders have also looked at a large independent church outside of Chicago and Menlo Park (Calif.) Presbyterian Church.

“We would be in complete disagreement with their religious beliefs, but we are looking at places that generate excitement and community in the midst of a new religious awakening in America,” Hoffman said.

Wolfson attended a Disney-run seminar for business executives on customer service quality that impressed him with its daily hospitality and gift-giving. “One day they had what looked like a bar mitzvah--better yet a wedding--with beautiful, long-stemmed roses at every seat,” he said.

The Spielberg connection is primarily financial. The filmmaker’s Righteous Persons Foundation, supported by his profits from the movie “Schindler’s List,” is giving $300,000 over three years, as is the Shirley and Arthur Whizin Trust. Another $600,000 is coming from the New York-based Nathan Cummings Foundation, established by the founder of Sara Lee Foods.

Representatives of the three foundations said in interviews last week at a Synagogue 2000 meeting at Camp Ramah in Ojai that they may continue financing the project after the current funding ends in 1998.

Spirituality has become an important area of funding, said Rabbi Rachel Cowan, speaking for the Nathan Cummings Foundation.

And spirituality includes Jewish healing services, the foundation representatives said.

“Some people are still leery of the word ‘healing’ because it sounds Christian or New Age,” Cowan admitted. But the funders agreed that attitudes are changing.

“If three years ago we said the synagogue was a healing community, people wouldn’t have come,” said Bruce Whizin, representing his family’s trust.

“Only one year ago!” chimed in Rachel Levin of the Spielberg foundation.

Synagogue 2000 isn’t the only Jewish project exploring the value of healing services, which advocates say do not raise expectations for the instant cures touted by some Christian faith healers but instead seek to demonstrate care for the afflicted, pray for strength to endure pain and guide people to spiritual resources.

Reform Judaism’s rabbinical body, with money from the Lilly Endowment, gave grants this year to five synagogues to develop healing services. One recipient was Temple Judea of Tarzana, where Rabbi Donald Goor said the Nov. 7 service drew 90 people instead of the 40 anticipated.

“Some people are still talking about it, and we plan to have our next one on Jan. 30,” Goor said.

Spirituality--when defined in terms of tradition-breaking, emotion-filled religious experience--will even pop up at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, a Conservative synagogue whose Rabbi Harold Schulweis is known for his intellectual prowess and wariness of mysticism.

Three innovative services will be held in weeks ahead by Rabbi Daniel Satlow aimed at young professionals “looking for a more powerful emotional experience,” and modeled after services at B’nai Jeshurun, a popular synagogue in New York City.

Indeed, the Synagogue 2000 Project brought the rabbi and musical director of B’nai Jeshurun to Ojai last week to demonstrate the Shabbat service that draws 1,500 persons to Friday night services in Manhattan.

The New York synagogue leaders are typical of Jews “who are breaking the mold and pioneering the spiritualization of the synagogue,” Hoffman said.

Though the five-day meeting at Ojai concentrated on new ideas in prayer and healing, a future conference will examine innovations in study and doing good deeds. “If Jews heal their own souls, then they will want to heal the world,” said Hoffman.

Wolfson said a web site on the Internet will chronicle changes introduced by the participating 16 congregations as well as lay out creative ideas on music, synagogue design and other techniques to attract members.

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In that way, contrary to the academic instinct to save findings for publication in books and professional journals, the two project directors will make information quickly available. They also will eschew thorny ideological, political or internal synagogue turf problems, they said.

Hoffman and Wolfson said they want new, long-range solutions for creating congregations that will retain adults as members long after their children have completed bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies.

“It used to be different because people had loyalty to their synagogue,” Wolfson said. But in recent decades a consumer outlook has taken hold in what Hoffman called “pediatric Judaism”--synagogue affiliation only while the children attend religious school.

At the same time, rabbis and lay leaders have witnessed many adult Jews seeking spiritual experiences for themselves outside of Judaism.

The desire for “God-talk” and personal religious expression is simultaneously increasing in congregations that once appeared to satisfy most members by focusing on broader Jewish community issues. That raises the question that Wolfson says Synagogue 2000 is posing:

“How can we create a synagogue as a spiritual center and get that message out?”

In a small concession to the consumer-mentality of even religious Americans, Wolfson added: “We think we have a great product--we’ve been around 3,000 years.”