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The Holiday Appeal:
A Synagogue Curse
ELANA NEUMAN
Special to The Jewish News
E
very year around High
Holiday time, an old
joke is retold:
A young boy runs to the
synagogue to deliver a mes-
sage to his father in the
middle of the Kol Nidrei ser-
vice. Not having a ticket,
however, he is denied en-
trance.
The boy pleads with the
gabbai to let him in. Finally,
the gabbai gives in. "I'll let
you in this time," he says,
shaking a finger at the boy.
"But I better not catch you
praying."
For many synagogues, this
bittersweet story rings true.
The High Holidays are a
time for synagogue fund-
raising as well as prayer.
They are a time for annual
appeals, donation cards,
solicitation phone calls and
ticket sales.
Some rabbis treat the
fund-raising aspect of the
High Holidays as a mitzvah
that hightens their holiness.
For many rabbis, though,
fund-raising is merely a ne-
cessity for religious institu-
tions in an age of assimila-
tion and secularism. Others
see fund-raising as a
distasteful perversion of the
sanctity of the holidays, in-
appropriate to the season
and the setting. "All the
barrage of appeals during
the High Holiday period
makes the service into a big
fund-raising rally," said
Rabbi Arnold Goodman of
Ahavath Achim, a Conser-
vative congregation in
Atlanta. "It gets in the way
of the feeling of the holiday
and ruins the mood."
Ahavath Achim, which
has a membership of 2,100
families and accommodates
over 5,000 people for Kol
Nidrei, nevertheless sells
tickets for its High Holiday
services. "It gets to be a
sticky situation,"Rabbi
Goodman admits, "but it's
also practical. How else do
you pay electric bills?"
For many smaller syn-
agogues, the High Holiday
appeal and ticket sales do
pay the bills and are, in fact,
their main source of income.
"Ideally we would like to
see year-round membership
and support which would en-
title the individual to free
attendance on the High
Holidays," said Rabbi Bob
Miller of (Reform) Temple
Beth Avodah in Newton,
Mass. "But in reality, we
acknowledge that not all
Jews choose to affiliate."
In an age where many
American Jews are assimi-
lated to the extent that they
make their twice-a-year ap-
pearance at synagogue for
Rosh Hashanah and Yom
Kippur, synagogues are suf-
fering.
"People are naive," said
Rabbi Paul Silton of Conser-
vative Temple Israel in
Albany, N.Y. "They don't
understand how much
money goes into running a
shul. For them it's out of
sight, out of mind."
For years, Silton's syn-
agogue allowed free admis-
sion to Yom Tov services;
this year, however, they will
The synagogues
see fund-raising as
a necessary evil.
What else will pay
the bills?
start charging for tickets. "I
would rather give people
tickets and let it be on their
conscience that they do not
support us," Rabbi Silton
says, clearly uncomfortable
with the new policy. "Rather
than it be on my conscience
that we turn people away."
Rabbis are often the ones
caught in the vise. They feel
pressure from their con-
gregational boards to utilize
the holidays to their fund-
raising capacity, but also
recognize that the various
mechanisms for such fund-
raising may not be ap-
propriate to the service or to
Jewish values.
Rabbi Haskel Lookstein of
Kehilath Jeshurun, a
modern Orthodox congrega-
tion in New York, re-
members his father's fund-
raising ploys on Yom Kippur.
Kippur.
"The appeal used to take
an hour, and pledges were
announced out loud," he
recalled. "And all my friends
and I used to entertain
ourselves by doing our own
mental calculations.
"Eventually my father
recognized that this was ab-
solutely desecrating the
holiness of the moment,"
said Rabbi Lookstein. His
father switched to the
parlor-meeting and phone-
solicitation methods that
Kehilath Jeshurun is still
using today.