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A Vulnerable Institution

HAPPY HOUR

on the coast?

A look at the changing tunes
of synagogue life.

Debra Rubin

JNS.org

R

abbi Kerry Olitzky is an opti-
mist.
While other Jewish commu-
nal leaders worry about dwindling rates of
affiliation, Olitzky points to the creation of
600 Jewish startups in the past decade.
"I'm very optimistic about the American
Jewish spirit," he says.
Olitzky does, however,
worry about "a dearth of
adaptive leadership" — lead-
ers who not only recognize
that the American Jewish
community is in a period of
transition and that the com-
munal institutions as they exist
today — synagogues, JCCs,
federations — may not exist
tomorrow, but are also willing to
reinvent those institutions.
That's why Olitzky wrote Playlist
Judaism: Making Choices for a Vital
Future (Alban Institute). With chapters
such as "Turning the Synagogue Inside
Out" "Intermarriage as an Opportunity,
Not a Problem" and "Leading the Jewish
Community into the Future the book
focuses primarily on synagogues.
Olitzky's aim, he writes in his
Introduction, is "to assist synagogue lead-
ers in reshaping the synagogue so that
it can reclaim its vital role in American
Jewish religious life"
The executive director of the Jewish
Outreach Institute, a nonprofit dedicated
to bringing Judaism to the unaffiliated and
intermarried, Olitzky tells JNS.org that he
has always been interested in Jews "on the
periphery, as opposed to people in the core."
Given the high number of Jews who
aren't institutionally affiliated, he says,
"what we call the Jewish community is
really the minority, not the majority. I'm
puzzled why the Jewish community has
been satisfied with reaching the minority:'
The author uses the notion of "play-
list Judaism" to explain that, just as the
music listener "wants to control his or her
listening habits" and now has the option
through iTunes and the like of buying
individual songs rather than albums, the
individual Jew "doesn't want the Jewish
institution to create his or her Judaism:
"People do not want the things that meet
their needs bundled with other things
that they don't think meet their needs and
thereby be forced to buy the entire pack-
age Olitzky writes.
The author sees American Judaism as in
transition, with those in their 20s and 30s

"far enough away from the trajectory of the
immigration experience that they are part
of the American fabric"
No longer do many American Jews
make their choices in terms of "what is
good for the Jewish community" says
Olitzky. Instead, they make choices about
Jewish life based on what's good for the
individual.
As a result, the self-
described futurist says that
some institutions may no
longer be needed.
"I don't worry that many
of these institutions will be
sunsetted" he says, point-
ing to now-defunct Jewish
hospitals — founded
to treat Jews who were
refused health care by
other facilities and as a
place for Jewish interns
and residents to train.
But the synagogue,
too, he says, no longer has its original
raison d'etre.
"For their parents, the synagogues
represented a claim on American soil
as citizens. For the millennials, the
synagogues are just buildings that serve
a Jewish communal and religious pur-
pose" the rabbi writes.
"If synagogues continue to focus on
the needs of the institution rather than
on the needs of the individual, they will
lose their dues-paying members and
eventually become financially unviable,"
he writes.
Olitzky advocates "public-space
Judaism" — holding holiday-related
and other Jewish-content events outside
of Jewish institutions — and also gives
examples of novel synagogue models.
He points, for instance, to Ikar, a 500-
plus family unit nondenominational
"alternative synagogue community" in
Los Angeles with "free-form worship"
and Temple Israel's Riverway Project in
Boston, with a focus on worship, inten-
sive Jewish text study and social-action
activities and events held outside the
synagogue building in an area where
younger Jews are more likely to live.
While he's not certain exactly what
the Jewish community will look like in
the next generation, Olitzky is certain
that 21st-century Judaism is in an era of
transition.
"We don't know when this era will
conclude" he says. "The only thing we
can be sure of is when the transition
concludes, the Jewish community will
not look anything like it did before"

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