Synagogue Dues …and dont’s

Part one.

Early this morning, I read Nina Badzin’s thoughtful article on the changing structure of Synagogue dues. Badzin begins by quoting from an article written by Michael Paulson in last week’s New York Times about the effects of “growing secularization, declining affection for institutions, …and an end to the era in which membership in a congregation was seen as a social obligation.”

Though she sees the necessity of this change, Badzin questions wether this change alone is “sufficient” on its own without “addressing the deeper disinterest in attending Synagogue….for a Jewish population that doesn’t see how the Judaism that the Synagogue offers has anything to do with their lives.”

A quick glance through this week’s Torah portion reminds us that we were struggling with this from the get go, and the Torah is wired with insights that are as relevant today as they ever were.

The end of the portion of Mishpatim describes Moses going up the mountain to receive the rest of the Torah after the giving of the Ten Commandments. Though his ascent was obviously justified and necessary, in retrospect his timing might have been off.

This fledgling nation, newly freed from the prison camps of Egypt, were still very much a traumatized people. It might have been more beneficial for Moshe to have delayed the receiving of the remainder of Torah, in favor of remaining among his people, reassuring them with his calming demeanor, soothing them with his soft, saintly presence.

The association of Moses going up to the mountain to hang with a g-d who appeared on that seventh day in the image of “an all consuming fire” was probably not helpful either.

A Rabbi must always be emotionally accessible and fully present for people. To all the Rabbis out there who love studying more than they love people; who prefer to spend time up in the cloud, at the summit of Sinai, and not at its base together with Am Yisroel — it shows.

History has shown that a detached, remote-control style of spiritual leadership succeeds only in the creation of a communal vacuum, one that is quickly filled with a worshiping of whatever the contemporary equivalent of the “golden calf” happens to be.

The benefit of an “I — thou” structured spiritual relationship over the instinctive “I — it” hands-off approach, is that it fills far more than empty chairs in Shul.

So all you Rabbis out there, this might sound like a strange question: raise your hands if you’ve ever driven a member of your community to the airport, or even offered to do so? And no, I’m not suggesting that the Rabbi double as the designated Synagogue Uber representative.

All I’m saying is that we are asking all the wrong questions. Instead of worrying about getting people to fill the vacant chairs in the Synagogue, we should be focusing first and foremost on how to address the spiritual vacancy in the collective Jewish soul — a soul crying out for a spiritual connection more than ever before, a cry that is merely a SYMPTOM of those empty chairs — certainly not their cause!!

I challenge every Rabbi to answer this question: how many of you have invited every member of your community at least once for a Shabbat dinner in your home? How many have been inside the homes of every member of your community at least once that, on an occasion that was not funeral related?

Here is the bottom line. If today’s Rabbis are welcomed to fill a seat in the homes of the Jewish community, then the major part of the battle is already won. A Rabbi welcome in the home is like installing “Central Mezuzah,” — an acknowledgment that Judaism is relevant where it counts the most. A Rabbi bouncing around your home during the Super Bowl, even if the half time show does get wicked awkward, means that there is a real place for Judaism in your life.

The seat that you fill in those homes can be the catalyst for the beginning of a spiritual journey and a joyous lifelong process of filling the empty seat in the heart. The Rabbi filling the empty seat in the home will eventually translate into the spontaneous filling of an empty seat in the Shul.

I want to share a story that never fails to be inspiring and transformative for me about the late Meir Absehrah, an extraordinary man who single-handedly inspired many hundreds to reclaim Judaism for themselves and their families. A Rabbi who shall remain nameless, one of the first non- Chassidic Rabbis to finally come around to appreciating the Rebbe’s pioneering “outreach” approach, wanted to see this “phenomenom” firsthand and got himself invited to one of Abserahs renowned Friday night Shabbat dinners at his Jerusalem home.

The Rabbi was amazed at what he saw. An Orthodox Jew sharing Shabbat dinner with seventy or eighty very unorthodox secular Jews.

He went over to him afterwards and asked him “what is your secret, how do you “get” them?”

Reb Meir looked at him and answered without hesitation: “I don’t ‘get’ them, they are my friends!”

Much love,

Rabbi Yossi