Shabbat

“In the same way that you plan for a concert or theater series or for family time, we want you to plan to be with us,” said Rabbi Arnie Rachlis, launching a new monthly program at the University Synagogue in Irvine with a sermon titled “Synaplex: Opening Soon in a Shul Near You (Ours!).”

Standing behind a different lectern, this one in Beverly Hills, Rabbi Laura Geller launched the same program at Temple Emanuel. “It used to be if you wanted to go to synagogue on a Friday night or Saturday morning, there would be one service and maybe a cookie and a cup of tea. Not anymore,” she said.

At still a different lectern, in New Jersey, Rabbi Alan Silverstein of Congregation Agudath Israel of West Essex introduced his synagogue’s new program with an enthusiastic collision of metaphors: “Friday evening through Saturday night is Jewish prime time, and CAI will be issuing free tickets of admission--VIP passes--for a multiplicity of gateways, many portals into the Shabbat rhythm.”

In all, Synaplex opened in 11 synagogues across the country in the fall of 2003, and in six more in 2004. This year, another 17 announced Synaplex programming in yet another series of High Holy Day sermons.

Synaplex is a concept, a franchise, a marketing tool and a monthly event, all designed to improve synagogue attendance on Shabbat (Sabbath) weekends. The wordplay is hokey but apt. Like a Cineplex that screens several movies at once, the Synaplex formula suggests that by offering several activities simultaneously, a synagogue will draw a bigger audience.

One Friday night or Saturday morning each month (the “Jewish prime time” that Rabbi Silverstein spoke of), synagogues participating in Synaplex offer their congregants choices. You don’t like sitting through a Friday evening service? That’s no excuse to skip shul! Maybe you’d prefer a Jewish-themed yoga class, or tai chi. Or come to temple after services for Israeli dancing, or come early for a discussion on current events, or to sit in meditation. Synagogues are encouraged to be creative--this month Temple Aliyah in Woodland Hills offered “a night at the Improv” with the AB3 Improv Troupe after Friday night services and invited kids to “experience Shalom through the ancient art of a drumming circle” on Saturday morning.

The goal, says Rabbi Hayim Herring, executive director of STAR, the organization that conceived of and funds Synaplex, is “to have the congregation become the place to be, no matter who you are, what you believe.”

It may sound like Judaism Lite--do a bunch of Jews doing yoga in a synagogue really constitute a valid expression of the religion?--and Synaplex certainly has its critics. “It is a project that asks Jews to come to synagogue not for transformation, but for confirmation of who they have become--assimilated, secular and alienated,” wrote Rabbi Rafi Rank, vice president of the International Rabbinical Assembly, in a column for the Jewish Post of New York.

Ron Wolfson, co-founder and president of Synagogue 3000, a nonprofit institute dedicated to revitalizing synagogue life, has been studying synagogue transformation for 10 years. He sees Synaplex as an old concept with a fancy new name. “The first thing to understand when it comes to Jewish prayer experience is that it is different strokes for different folks,” he says. “Some people love traditional chanting and the kind of very straightforward service that comes with it; some people really want something that for them is more accessible. The idea of there being multiple activities, or minyanim, is new to some communities, but in some Conservative and Orthodox synagogues it has been going on for 25 years.”

Wolfson thinks the programming is the easy part. “Synaplex opens the door and brings people in, but the next challenge is how do you translate that attendance to commitment and relationship? . . . Kol Ha-Kavod, all honor to things that bring people into the synagogue, but my job is to keep pushing us further, and deeper.”

The founders of Synaplex aren’t necessarily interested in getting Jews to become more religious or less secular. While they talk about “nothing less than a renaissance of Jewish American life,” for now they seem content simply to get Jews in the synagogue door.

“Halachically”--by Jewish law--”you don’t have to believe in God to be considered a good Jew,” says Herring. “Sure, it would be nice if everyone believed in God, but it is not going to happen. It hasn’t happened in the state of Israel, and they have a monopoly on the religion there. Getting more people to believe in God, that is not the goal of Synaplex. Getting more people to show up is not the goal. The goal of Synaplex is building community, because community-building has always been the genius of the Jewish people.”

Star, an acronym for synagogues: transformation and renewal, is the result of a broad idea that occurred to a wealthy Jewish oilman from Tulsa named Charles Schusterman. The idea went something like this: Synagogues reach more Jews than any other Jewish institution--more than federations, more than Hillel (the foundation for Jewish campus life), more than summer camps and day schools--so if Judaism is going to survive, synagogues need to become less alienating. Now.

“My late husband Charles was concerned because he realized that people needed synagogue spirituality, but that synagogues were not welcoming,” says Lynn Schusterman, Charles’ wife of 38 years. “Jews would go twice a year for the High Holy Days, but that was basically their synagogue-going. He wanted to see if there was an idea that would make synagogues more engaging.”

The Schustermans themselves were not frequent synagogue-goers--”we were those Jews who went twice a year,” Lynn admits--but they were frequent donors to Jewish causes, giving millions through the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation to projects that they felt strengthened Jewish identity.

Charles Schusterman began thinking seriously about synagogues in late 1997 and came up with the idea for STAR in late 1998. In 1999, about a year before he died of leukemia, he asked his friends Edgar M. Bronfman Sr. and Michael Steinhardt--both prominent Jewish philanthropists--to join him in putting up a few million dollars each to “lay the foundation for comprehensive synagogue transformation and renewal across the denominational spectrum,” as stated in a December 1999 press release announcing the venture.

“For me, this project is another down payment toward creating an infrastructure to sustain Jewish identity in a free, open society,” said Steinhardt, who identifies himself as an atheist, in the same press release.

It was business speak from business folks, and that business approach to synagogue renewal would become a defining part of STAR, which also has developed a program called PEER (Professional Education for Excellence in Rabbis) to school new rabbis in executive leadership.

After Charles died, Lynn Schusterman took over STAR, which had spent its first 18 months compiling research on what makes synagogues work and identifying and studying synagogues that had transformed themselves. It gave out challenge grants to see “what innovations would bubble up,” as Herring says, when already thriving synagogues were handed an extra $20,000 to $50,000. (“Ten of those original programs are still ongoing,” he adds, “so not a bad initial investment.”)

Ultimately it concluded that there is no single formula for success. “We learned, as others have before us, that synagogues are idiosyncratic,” says Herring. “There is no one-size-fits-all.” Undeterred, STAR came up with a plan to give synagogues what Rabbi Michael Strassfeld of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, a Reconstructionist and Conservative synagogue in New York City, calls “several cups of tea.”

Thirty-six synagogues around the country responded to an open invitation to apply for $85,000 grants and the right to use the Synaplex name. The 12 chosen to test the program agreed not only to take the money, spending it to set up multiple activities to be offered concurrently on one Shabbat a month, but also to take part in ongoing training sessions, to begin keeping track of attendance at Shabbat services and to create Synaplex committees. They also agreed to get over the stigma of selling religion and designate $5,000 a year of their own money for advertising their Synaplex dates.

The first synagogues selected differed in size and denomination--Conservative, Reform, Orthodox, Reconstructionist--but most were already offering children’s services, adult education, and opportunities for community service and social action. STAR just suggested that they offer all of those activities at once.

Herring, who was a congregational rabbi for 10 years before going back to school for a doctorate in organization and management, likes to remind people that throughout Jewish history the synagogue has been considered not just a house of prayer, but also a house of gathering and a house of study. “We didn’t invent those values,” he says. “They were there already. What we did was to help reorganize them and say to congregations, ‘Look, you are doing these things already, but they are scattered throughout the week.’ ”

“What was innovative to us about the Synaplex notion is that Shabbat is at the center,” says Laura Geller, the soft-spoken but resolute Reform rabbi of Temple Emanuel. “So we were doing all kinds of other stuff, but we hadn’t yet imagined that to bring it all together on a Shabbat you are actually communicating something very important. Which is that Shabbat is central to Jewish tradition and that there are many different doors into Judaism.”

STAR does not dictate Synaplex programming. “Synagogues and rabbis are pretty good at innovative programming,” says Herring. Instead, it franchises the Synaplex concept, then lets each synagogue figure out what to schedule and when. The synagogues communicate with one another in monthly conference calls to offer advice and support, but in the end, Synaplex looks different at every synagogue that tries it.

Temple Emanuel, in Beverly Hills, traditionally has been attractive to families with young kids, thanks to its day and religious schools and the fact that most liberal Jews seek synagogue affiliation when raising children. Its Synaplex program begins on Friday night with a healing service and a “Tot Shabbat” offered simultaneously at 5. At 6 there are three dining options: a free candlelight wine and cheese social for young professionals, a “Beyond the Nest” dinner for older adults and a potluck for families. The monthly “Shabbat Unplugged” service, which a lay leader describes as “more spiritual and meditative” than the usual service, begins at 7:30. At the same time, there is a class on current events taught by adult educator Margot Ellen Reiner. Finally, there’s some type of cultural program--a reading, a lecture or a film screening.

On a regular Friday night, Temple Emanuel counts up to 100 congregants, “and in all honesty the majority of those people tend to be saying kaddish [the prayer for the dead] or connected to the bar mitzvah,” says Rabbi Geller. On Synaplex night, it usually expects more than 300.

At the Reconstructionist University Synagogue in Irvine, Rabbi Arnie Rachlis and his lay leaders have experimented in the past two years and found that a succession of activities, rather than concurrent ones, works best. Congregants are invited to attend as few or as many as they like. Held on the first Friday of the month, because Orange County Jews are “a Friday night crowd,” says Rachlis, a typical Synaplex night begins with a “Tot Shabbat,” followed by a buffet dinner and a main service called “Shabbat Alive.” But for many congregants the big draw has been the guest speakers, which have included Michael Dukakis and Ruth and Judea Pearl, the parents of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

University Synagogue has 600 member households, which translates to roughly 1,600 members. While attendance at services is consistently good--150 is average--it usually doubles on a Synaplex night, and if the guest speaker is well-known, it can triple.

Synaplex doesn’t work for everyone. “I quite honestly don’t like it,” says Debra Friedkin, a congregant for 13 years. “Shabbat is a time of peace. It is not a flurry of activities. Friday night I want to come into my shul, I want to have a seat, kibitz a little bit, then have a true service. We used to sing ‘Lecha Dodi,’ and they would bring it to a crescendo, like a spiritual. Then you were ready to sit down and chant the prayers, and we don’t do that anymore. I mean, I have nothing against change, and change with a growing congregation. But ‘Shabbat Alive’ is the 8 o’clock show where you sing the prayers to jazzy tunes.”

“I like that they have things I have no interest in,” says Jack Mervis, another congregant and a fan of the program. “Even though our congregation always leans toward a lot of creativity, this has really taken it quite a bit further.”

This year University Synagogue added a second Friday called “Synaplex Shabbat of Learning,” says Rachlis. “We used the cachet of the word Synaplex because it was a hot word within the synagogue, and we applied it to a night that had only a couple of choices. We debated whether to use the word Synaplex, but everybody loves the word and it sends a message: ‘You’ve got choices. This is special.’ ”

Today star no longer gives grants to synagogues, and about half of the 34 that are running Synaplex programs this fall will receive little or no financial support. Still, without any advertising, STAR has a waiting list of more than 50 synagogues, and is planning a national roll-out of the concept. Until now, Herring says, it had proceeded cautiously to ensure brand quality. “We’ve only been operational for a couple of years. Any business wants to test the product first, so when you grow into new markets you aren’t compromised.”

Herring--like Schusterman, Bronfman and Steinhardt--is fond of facts and figures. “My funders . . . are all people that understand measurable results, and that quantitative, as well as qualitative, but also quantitative results matter,” he says. “And they matter because at a certain point, if you don’t have enough people involved in Jewish life, then you can’t sustain the quality of Jewish life that we have.”

He and his funders also agree that synagogue leaders should take lessons from the business world in how to run a successful organization. “The public part of Synaplex is the innovative programming. I think the other part that we’ve been able to bring to congregations is building up their skills and knowledge in key areas of being a successful congregation that any nonprofit could benefit from,” he says.

Synagogues that use the Synaplex model participate, mostly by conference call, in training sessions on marketing, evaluation, volunteer engagement and recruitment, advertising and outreach.

“We get specialists who say, ‘Look, what you are doing is great,’ it’s sort of the pep talk, and then there’s the ‘How you can do it better,’ ” says Rabbi Rachlis. “And I don’t think there has been one wasted phone call. Synagogues don’t usually have coaches or consultants--that’s kind of a phenomenon of the business world--but it has been adapted here and it really does work.”

Persuading rabbis and synagogue board members to embrace the marketing of Judaism has been a hurdle for STAR, although Herring says that recently he has seen less resistance to the idea. Traditionally, synagogues, like the mainline Christian churches--Episcopalian, Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian--have relied on congregants to pass their religion down to their children. But with increasing awareness of religious options and decreasing social pressure to show up at church on Sunday or synagogue on Saturday, younger generations are becoming less brand-loyal than their parents. Churches and synagogues have no choice but to get competitive. “We think it’s something we have to do,” Herring says. “Everybody markets everything these days.”

Both Temple Emanuel and University Synagogue have made tentative forays into creative advertising since launching Synaplex. In a sort of meta-campaign, Temple Emanuel announced its Synaplex programming with an on-screen ad at the AMC Century City 14 multiplex last year. University Synagogue runs a newspaper advertisement for Synaplex services with marquee lights around the border, and for a while was even running it in the entertainment section, “because that’s where people who might like us would look before they look at a religion page,” Rachlis says.

Herring says Synaplex isn’t designed to make synagogues more like mega-churches. “We learned a bit from the mega-church experience, but we’re not trying to turn synagogues into a big multipurpose, all-inclusive place, because the Jewish community isn’t structured that way.” Rather, he says, Synaplex gives Jews a sense of what a successful synagogue experience looks like.

“Our approach is, let’s not just talk about a renewed vision of Jewish life; let’s give people up front a different picture,” he says. “And even though it is ideally four to six months of preparation for the launch of Synaplex, once it launches you see the results right away. When suddenly you are seeing three, four, five times the number of people, you don’t have to imagine how a synagogue can be different.”