33
ImagInIng the JewIsh Future
Saturday. It doesn’t matter to them if
they have a rabbi. They just happen
to be two Jews who got married and
the religious aspect of their life is just
not important. And I’m not sure what
to do with that. I’m not sure how to
integrate that into my Judaism, but
we have to keep that in mind.
The truth is that 58% of Jews are
marrying non-Jews. If you break that
down into the liberal movements, it’s
72%.
A new cross tab that I can’t verify
says that 82% of Reform Jews are
marrying non-Jews.
That is not a “good news, bad news”
statistic. That is just reality. We are
mixing more. We are marrying non-Jews.
And on every single identity marker,
the behavior of those intermarried
couples is changing. Again, I am not
giving it a good or bad weight.
They are changing and I’m not sure
we have changed enough to meet the
needs of that population. And if you
go down every marker, it’s just different
news. 9% of intermarried Jews attend
synagogue once a month. And the
truth is that less than one-third of
American Jews across the board say
they belong to a synagogue at all. But
when I ask any group of Jews what
is their primary means of identifying
with Judaism, they would say,
“
Belonging to a synagogue.”
So right there we have to really rethink
how we behave. Collaboration itself has
to have serious goals or it’s not worth
it. What does that mean? The goal
of collaboration is not collaboration.
That is not sufficient. We have to look
for greater results as a result of doing
our work together. Applying what we
can learn from the business world, not
the Jewish world, we have to create an
environment where innovation will
thrive more than it does in a single
siloed institution.
We have to make Judaism more attractive
in ways we have not yet thought of
on our own. We have to create a more
accessible Jewish community.
The value of collaborating has to
be greater than the cost that will
necessarily be incurred when you
collaborate. And believe me, there
will be cost.
We live in a North American ecosystem
of congregations that reflects the
society from which they emerged. We
built a membership model that requires
dues, sometimes fairly expensive dues,
and a model that is difficult to sustain
by itself.
I travel all over the country and speak
with congregational leaders. Very few
congregational presidents say to me,
“
Our financial model is successful. And
we have no worries.”
I know on Friday nights when there’s
a new person in town, especially
in towns in the Midwest where the
population is growing but growing
slowly, someone would come through
the door and there would be a love
bomb around that person to get them
to join the congregation. Now, part
of that is we want people to affiliate.
But it also represents a dues rise if
we get new members. And we need
those people to support the budgets
that we’re building. That’s how we’re
built. But I don’t know that this model
is going to work into the future,
especially when only one-third of Jews
are walking through those doors. You
have two-thirds outside the doors. So
what do we do with this data?
People love their rabbis. They love their
synagogues. They love their programs.
They love their buildings. And those
are good things. But I don’t think it’s
enough.
We have individual siloed membership
models that I think promote barriers to
collaboration. There are five barriers to
collaboration that in many ways we are
perpetuating through this system.
The first two barriers are about how
we think: attitudes and motivations.
The first one is hoarding, which can
be found both in business and in
the congregational model. We hoard
our greatness. Hoarding is part of
human nature and a huge barrier to
collaboration. Hoarding comes from
an ecosystem that was largely built in
a different Jewish era.
For example, my mother, who turned
85
last week, is the President of
Hadassah in St. Paul, Minnesota.
That’s sweet, but there is something
wrong with it.
In the Pew Study, 7% in her generation
identify as Jews of No Religion. But in
my generation, the generation of her
children, 17% of us define ourselves
that way. And when it comes to my
children’s generation, it is at 32%.
Look at how quickly that’s changing.
What will the statistic be among my
future grandchildren? We have to change
the model of hoarding, the first barrier.
The second barrier is a mindset, which
I call holy arrogance: How could things
be any better? We are so good at what
we do. So you have to go back to the
values proposition. Is there something
that we can do better by virtue of
doing it together?
For example, I have been working
really hard in my community to get us
to do one Purim carnival. Why do we
rent six cotton candy machines? We’ll
make the cotton candy kosher and the
Orthodox shuls can join us. Why do
we have to rent forty-seven bouncy
toys? The only person who stands to
lose is the rental place! We can do it in