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The three-year program ends this fall, leaving its
participants enthusiastic and a little unsure of
what the future holds.
"S2K works in some ways and fails to work in
other ways," says Lisa Yufit of Huntington Woods,
an S2K team member at Oak Park's Conservative
Congregation Beth Shalom. "I've met some mem-
bers of the shul I wouldn't have otherwise. But it's
hard for us as a group to translate what we've
learned to our shul. There are people in our shul,
like in all shuls, who don't want change."
•
The Detroit Cohort
Sloan Krugel, 18 months, enjoys Kabbalat Shabbat services at Congregation Shaarey Zedek with her grandfather,
Richard Krugel, of Bloomfield Township and her father, Howard Krugel of Ferndale.
DARING TO BE
DIFFERENT
Synagogue 2000's message of renewal
meets with varying local success.
DIANA LIEBERMAN
StaffWriter/Copy Editor
hen we started working with Synagogue 2000, we thought
something big would happen," says Jamie Abelson.of Ann
Arbor's Beth Israel Congregation. "Well, no one big thing hap-
. pened — but a lot of good small things."
Abelson says the synagogue renewal program known as Synagogue 2000, or
52K for short, has encouraged new leadership at her 450-family-member
Conservative synagogue.
"It was absolutely worth the money," Abelson says. "We got the juices flowing
— now we're ready to go."
In November 2000, Beth Israel joined 12 other metropolitan Detroit Reform
and Conservative congregations as a regional grouping, or cohort, of S2K, a
national program that provides a framework to examine congregational life and
culture and to find ways to enhance the experience for congregants.
4/ 4
2003
64
The Synagogue 2000 program operates through
teams of 12-30 diverse members in each partici-
pating congregation.
Team members commit themselves to a regimen
of monthly meetings, independent study and indi-
vidual soul-searching, guided by hefty binders of
S2K-provided outlines and background materials.
The binders, given to each team member, grow
exponentially with every chapter of each study
unit.
"We bring in the best organizational thinking
for a sacred goal," says S2K Conservative co-
founder Dr. Ronald Wolfson, vice president of the
University of Judaism in Los Angeles and director
of the university's Whizin Center for the Jewish
Future. He says S2K uses techniques that have
worked "from the corporate world and in the
mega-churches" and combines them with the
unique tradition of the Jewish people.
The Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit
foots the bill for the program, which includes
yearly fees to S2K of about $100,000 plus the
salaries and expenses of two coordinators: Steve
Posen, liaison between S2K and the congregations,
and Federation staff person Dale Rubin, who
coordinates technical details.
Overseeing metro Detroit's involvement in S2K
is Harlene Appelman, director of Federation's
Alliance for Jewish Education.
S2K runs three conferences a year for each
cohort, featuring a variety of S2K leaders and
guest lecturers on the topic the cohort is studying
at that time.
An outstanding feature of each conference is
group singing; one of S2K's best-known innovations
is encouraging congregations to try new, more con-
temporary tunes for traditional songs and prayers.
"People have no idea how recent their traditions
are," says S2K Reform co-founder Rabbi Lawrence
Hoffman, professor of liturgy at Hebrew Union
College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York
City. "Some things they think of as sacred,
unchangeable traditions are only a generation old.
"For instance, people growing up now think
[songwriter] Debbie Friedman's Mi Shebeirach [the
traditional prayer for healing] is ancient. But she
only wrote it eight or nine years ago," says Rabbi
Hoffman, who has also served as director of
HUC-JIR's school of sacred music.
Attending the conferences helps inspire team
members, says Iry Wengrow of Troy, one of three
team facilitators at Congregation Shir Tikvah, the
Troy Reform-Renewal congregation.