1
ECE congregations form teams of lay leaders and clergy who study together
and develop a vision for improving the synagogue.
ECE encourages congregations to make education central to all synagogue
activities rather than simply a function of the religious school.
The project leaders no longer work directly with synagogues and are instead
putting together a series of books about synagogue transformation as well as
developing a Web site to help congregations start transformation processes.
Synagogue Transformation And Renewal
A philanthropic partnership of mega-donors Charles Schusterman, Michael
Steinhardt and Edgar Bronfman, STAR will invest $18 million over five
years in efforts to reinvigorate synagogue life.
A program of challenge grants invites experiments that involve congrega-
tions of differing denominations and partnerships with community agencies.
Another effort will Rind training synagogue-change consultants through the
Alban Institute and a third will funnel money to local federations that
increase their support for synagogue activities.
❑
— Jewish Telegraphic Agency
own kind of spiritual success story,"
says Rabbi Larry Hoffman, one of the
co-founders of Synagogue 2000.
But Rabbi Daniel Freelander, who is
overseeing the Reform movement's
Union of American Hebrew
Congregations' partnership with
Synagogue 2000, said the B.J. story is
only "minimally" applicable to most
congregations.
"If you have a congregation with 30
families left and it's bankrupt and has
to choose between going out of busi-
ness or allowing someone to change
things 100 percent, then you can
[innovate like] B.J.," he says.
"We have 900 congregations and
can't ask them to start from scratch,"
he notes. "They have to go through
incremental, slow change."
Through a recently discontinued
project called Friday Night Alive, the
Jewish Federation of Greater
Philadelphia actually imported the all-
Hebrew B.J. service to several area
congregations in hopes that it would
attract unaffiliated Jews. While hun-
dreds of people attended the services
— held once a month at rotating
Conservative, Reform and
Reconstructionist congregations —
and many praised the project, it did
not work well in Reform congrega-
tions where congregants were less
accustomed to Hebrew or unfamiliar
with the melodies.
"We felt like a one-size-fits-all isn't
the way to go," says Ellen Bernstein,
who coordinated the project. She
notes that while Friday Night Alive
energized the participants, it was less
successful at engaging the unaffiliated
in any ongoing way.
B.J.'s Rabbi Marcelo Bronstein says
other congregations can learn from B.J.'s
success if they understand it is not simply
about a type of service or "technique."
Instead, Rabbi Bronstein says, they
should focus on the shul's commitment
to ongoing experimentation, its inclusiv-
ity, and its governing style — in which
rabbis and lay leaders work as partners,
and rabbis play a larger role in decision
making than at most synagogues.
KIES
EIN-
sPo
WITH LAURA KILPATRICK
PLEASE JOIN US OCTOBER 6 & 7
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EUROPEAN FACIALS
MICRODERMABRASION
DIAMOND PEEL
Tears OfJoy
Synagogues that can glean even a frag-
ment of the enthusiasm surrounding
B.J. may well consider themselves
lucky.
One member, who says B.J. is the
first synagogue she ever joined, says
the shul was the biggest reason she
recently decided against moving back
to her native Australia.
Ilana Eberson, a 39-year-old natural
medicine student, says she found B.J.
after years of trying out other Upper
West Side synagogues and was so
happy her first time at services —
where a stranger welcomed her right
away and she instantly fell in love with
the music — that she burst into tears.
Where else are you going to find
1,200 Jews on a Friday night happy to
go to shul?" she asks, adding, "If there
were more B.J.s, there would probably
be more affiliated Jews."
"
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ILLUSIONS BY SHERRI
360 HAMILTON • BIRMINGHAM
248-644-2144
❑
Related commentaries: page 74
9/29
2000
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