A Spiritual Renewal
Happy Passover!
Ay
AGENCIES OP CHANGE
Synagogue 2000
Celebrating with you
peace, freedom, and hope.
ROVIDENCE
New York
Founded in 1996 by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
Rabbi Larry Hoffman and the University of Judaism's Dr. Ronald Wolfson,
S2K, as its leaders call it, works intensively with Reform, Conservative and
Reconstructionist synagogues over a three-year period.
The synagogue's lay leaders and clergy study traditional and modern
Jewish texts together, focusing on six "spokes" of synagogue life: prayer,
institutionalizing change, study, good deeds, ambiance and healing.
Starting with 16 congregations around the country, S2K is now working
with 11 synagogues in the Denver-Boulder area and five in the Washington
area. It is about to start working with groups of synagogues in suburban
Detroit and New York as well as a national group of 18 Reform temples.
The Experiment In Congregational Education
A project of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion's education
school, ECE has worked with 14 Reform temples since 1992. As with S2K,
H OSPITAL AND MEDICAL CENTERS
Member of St. John Health System
MANHATTAN
L'Shanah Tovah!
May you be inscribed into the
book of life and may you fill
that life with books.
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from page 59
leave the balcony, as hundreds of
people clog the stairs and entryway
and hundreds more spill out onto the
street to chat.
This is B'nai Jeshurun in the quiet
time of year, when one of the rabbis is
on leave and Manhattan is relatively
quiet. When it's not summer, the con-
gregation has twice as many people
every Shabbat, forcing it to rent space
at a nearby church and offer two sepa-
rate Friday night services.
"B.J.," as it is known to insiders,
was the site for the recent Ben Stiller
film Keeping the Faith, about a hip
young rabbi who livens up services
and draws in new blood with music.
It was fitting to shoot the movie at
this synagogue that is now nationally
renowned for its lively worship, but
just 15 years ago was an aging, demor-
alized synagogue that could barely
pull together a minyan on Shabbat.
Most credit the shul's transforma-
tion to the leadership of its late rabbi,
Marshall Meyer, who died in 1993.
Synagogue lay leaders brought
Rabbi Meyer — an American who
was instrumental in founding the
Jewish Theological Seminary of
America's Latin American campus and
active in organizing Jewish resistance
to repressive political regimes in that
region — to B.J. in 1985 in hopes he
would revitalize it.
A charismatic leader, Rabbi Meyer
attracted congregants with his passion
for social justice, his openness to
to
innovation and the vision he articulat-
ed, which is still displayed prominent-
ly on the congregation's Web site: "A
community synagogue which responds
to the authentic questions of life,
death, love, anxiety, longing and the
search for meaning can, once again,
attract Jews — families and individu-
als — if it is willing to grapple with
the great issues of life."
Is It A Fluke?
B.J., which was originally
Conservative but is now unaffiliated,
is arguably the most-talked-about shul
in the United States.
Congregations around the country
talk about wanting to replicate at least
some of B.J.'s rags-to-riches success.
And it has become a regular destina-
tion for many Jewish visitors to New
York.
But is B.J. a recipe for reinventing
American congregations or simply a
fluke, a lucky combination of circum-
stances?
The leading synagogue renewal
engine, Synagogue 2000, is banking
on the fact that the shul has some-
thing to teach. That organization,
which works with congregations seek-
ing to change, recently launched a
$160,000 ethnographic study of the
synagogue.
"We hope to find out what makes
B.J. the place that it is, and then to
invite other congregations to employ
the principles in their own case — not
to become a B.J., but to become their