'Try a Synagogue' Springfield temples band together to reach members
By Stacey Dresner
Booths at Long Meddowe Days, the town of Longmeadow's historical annual celebration, held on the town green last weekend, included the usual kind of vendors - those offering food, antiques, kids' activities, arts and crafts. But one lively booth asked passersby to "Try a Synagogue."
Rabbis and members from the three Springfield synagogues were there, shaking hands and chatting with the crowd. People visiting the booth were able to enter a raffle for pieces of fine Judaica. And the three congregations - the Orthodox Congregation B'nai Torah, the Reform Sinai Temple and Temple Beth Elm the Conservative temple - got the word out about their synagogues.
"Many people stopped by to look at the booth and get information and try to win prizes," said Kenneth Abrahams, president of B'nai Torah, one of the people working the booth. "The three synagogues were represented and it was very nice. I think the community enjoyed the three synagogues getting together."
The booth at Long Meddowe Days was just one of a series of joint programs the three congregations are hosting, in conjunction with the Jewish Federation of Western Massachusetts and the Harold Grinspoon Foundation.
The goal of this grassroots effort is to reach out to unaffiliated Jews in the Springfield area, to help the synagogues increase their membership - and in the meantime, to help strengthen the entire local Jewish community.
A main piece of the program is a special promotional membership that all three synagogues are offering potential new members. Jewish community members who have been unaffiliated with another congregation for the past three years can join one of the three participating synagogues for $365 in the first year and $550 in the second year.
"You would have to be a rabbi with your head in the sand to not be questioning and wondering whether you are reaching out enough," said Beth El's Rabbi Amy Katz "Speaking for Beth El, I think we have a very fine product, but you have to know where, when, how to access the product. We need to be at Long Meddowe Days. We can't wait for people to come to us...We really need to be trying to reach out."
Getting together
The three synagogues began meeting with each other last November.
Mark Stone, president of Sinai Temple got the idea to join forces after a meeting of temple presidents last year, where they had discussed a Jewish Ledger survey of the local Jewish community.
"There was one question in there that sparked this with me, and it was the question about whether or not someone was affiliated with a synagogue. The number [of people who were not affiliated with a synagogue] was alarming," Stone said. "I started to think, 'What can we do at Sinai? How do we deal with retention and recruitment in our synagogue?'"
Inspired by the teamwork involved in the mergers between both the Conservative and Orthodox congregations in town, Stone decided to contact the leadership of both Temple Beth El and B'nai Torah, and they all came together to discuss the issues.
"We decided that together we could address this in a much stronger way than the congregations looking at it on their own," Stone said.
The members of the committee include all three rabbis from the synagogues - Rabbi Katz of Beth El, Rabbi Mark Shapiro of Sinai and Rabbi Fred Hyman of B'nai Torah - the presidents of each shul - Stone of Sinai, Jonathan Goldsmith of Beth El and Abrahams of B'nai Torah.
The temple leaders began meeting first and then invited the Jewish Federation and the Grinspoon Foundation to sit in on the process.
"The idea was to talk about what we can do as a community to help promote our congregations with the understanding that when our congregations do well our other institutions do well, the Federation does well," Dragon said. "It helps create a holistic look at the Jewish community."
The committee has met monthly since their first meeting to work out details and to devise a series of programs to help attract new members.
A promotional piece for the whole project humorously explains their mission:
"Joining a synagogue is like getting married...so maybe you should go on a couple of dates first!"
So with events like Long Meddowe Days and several others coming up this summer, the group has "taken our show on the road to help people understand what the community is about, what the synagogues are about, what we do," Dragon said.
These other joint programs include "Bagels, Books and Beyond" at the Hatch Library at Bay Path College; "Jewish Java" two get-togethers at the Longmeadow Starbucks in June; and an August open house among the three synagogues.
"My goal is to give people an opportunity to meet me; to give people an opportunity to learn more about Beth El; and to give people an opportunity to ask questions in a non-threatening environment," Rabbi Katz said. "It is not that I think we will get 25 new members. Although that would be very nice that is not a realistic goal. My real goal is that the people have a chance to ask questions. If they find I am accessible, even if they don't call me and join Beth El tomorrow, we have planted the seed. To me, it is not just about Beth El, it is about Judaism being relevant and accessible."
A sense of spirit and cooperation
To promote the program a website, www.tryasynagogue.org recently went up and visitors can find on it more information about the congregations and the upcoming events. Ads have been running in local papers (including a full page ad in this issue of the Jewish Ledger) to get the word out about the upcoming events.
And the Federation has contributed a comprehensive list of members of the local Jewish community who are not affiliated with a synagogue.
"This is so unique for our community," Dragon said. "While there has always been a good sense of spirit of cooperation, this is the first time that the three congregations in Springfield have sat down and really worked together and thought about the community as a community bigger than each institution."
At one recent meeting, the congregation leaders brainstormed about the upcoming "Try a Synagogue" events and talked about marketing the program, bantering warmly with each other and laughing easily like old friends.
"Essentially from day one, we have gelled," Stone said. "There is a sense of camaraderie and community. The cooperation and the support we are getting from our partners and the people in our synagogue and the Federation is fantastic. It is just a very positive, upbeat group of people that are working towards a common goal of reaching out to unaffiliated people to get reconnected or connected with synagogue life."
And that connection to synagogue life is so important, said Rabbi Mark Dov Shapiro of Sinai.
"In general, all of us feel that synagogue life is important...that synagogue involvement can be nourishing and valuable for Jews," he said. "Synagogues educate and offer Jews ways to express themselves as Jews. So, in the first instance, we would always think that belonging to a synagogue is a good thing for a Jew to do.
"The second thing that is unique to this particular year is that there is a lot of pressure on the synagogues, vis a vis maintaining membership, so from a practical perspective, we actively need people to remember how important synagogues are and we need them to join."
"We want to promote synagogue life in the area," agreed Rabbi Fred Hyman of B'nai Torah. "We feel we provide a traditional option for people who want that. My experience is that this kind of collaboration with three denominations is unique - and also the partnership with the Federation is unusual. It is necessary in a practical sense, but also in an ideological sense to demonstrate the unity of the Jewish community."