Have it your way
A few years back I wrote what I still consider one of the finest essays ever to examine the synagogue phenomenon known as the “kiddush club.”
Granted, it is, as far as I can tell, the only essay ever written on the topic, but I still made one or two good points. Well, one, anyway. I argued that in peeling off from the main synagogue service to say “l’chaim” over a shot of whiskey, members of the kiddush club were acting out what two Brandeis University sociologists once called “safe treif.” That is, they were rebelling against the rules of synagogue life, but in a way that stayed within the bounds of Halacha, or rabbinic law. The kiddush clubbers may be getting slightly tight, but they say the blessing, the whiskey is kosher, and they make it back into shul in time for the concluding prayers.
It turns out, however, that the kiddush clubs are not quite safe enough. This Saturday, Orthodox rabbis are being asked to announce the elimination of kiddush clubs at their synagogues. The request came from the Orthodox Union — which knows a thing or two about treif. “These clubs also have a harmful influence on young people because of the clubs’ idealization of alcohol,” explained OU Executive Vice President Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb. “This is particularly disturbing because it is emblematic of the larger dangers of alcohol consumption and substance abuse in our community.”
The OU went on to remind its congregants that the synagogue is a “place for prayer and kedusha,” or sanctity, and that any behavior that detracts from that sanctity is “insulting to the entire congregation.”
The OU should be applauded for dealing so honestly and publicly with issues of substance abuse. Synagogue-goers of all stripes, meanwhile, can take its example to pause and reconsider what the purpose of synagogue is. Because beyond the issue of alcohol consumption there is a question about unity and authority, and what happens when community and self-expression collide.
Gone are the days when synagogues offered one large Shabbat service in the sanctuary, with perhaps one or two junior congregations for the little ones. Taking a cue from mega-churches and pop culture at large, synagogues have begun to offer “boutique” services for various constituencies. As Rabbi Weinreb described it in the OU statement, “the number of prayer services (minyanim) within each synagogue are growing, so that on a given Sabbath there may be multiple services taking place simultaneously; …advanced study takes place daily; and…programs for children, teens and adults are held with large attendance.”
In non-Orthodox services you might have an informal minyan with an alternative liturgy or Torah discussion, a healing service, and the occasional “Carlebach” service for the spiritually inclined. The foundation-funded “Synaplex” initiative encourages congregations to add even more choices, including “hip hop” youth dinners, meditation sessions, yoga, and story-telling.
“We provide multiple entries to Shabbat,” is how a synagogue official in Los Angeles once explained the Synaplex concept. “To some, it’s prayer; to some, it’s study; to some, it’s Israel.”
The Synaplex and the Orthodox early risers’ minyan are an acknowledgement of a bell curve, with perhaps the majority sitting within the mean and others grouped at the narrowing ends. Rabbi Sidney Schwarz, author of a book on synagogue renewal, said the Synaplex is a solution for those Jews for whom synagogue prayer is a “non-starter.” The premise of the Synaplex is that “once you get people into the building, they might give stuff a try they might otherwise not have.” Orthodox synagogues may not face the same challenge of getting followers into the building, but they recognize that one size does not fit all.
And that’s where religion and the marketplace seem to be merging. Individualism is changing the way Americans do business. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that the fashion industry is no longer able to dictate seasonal trends. “Today,” the Journal reported, “the industry’s authority has been shattered as consumers take their cues from a proliferating new array of influences.” The article included a quote that surely made fashionistas gag on their crudi: “I have created my own style,” said one shopper, “not what the magazines are telling me to wear.”
Successful businesses are ones that can deliver the illusion of individuality in mass quantities; writer Christine Rosen has coined the term “egocasting,” meaning the “thoroughly personalized and extremely narrow pursuit of one’s personal taste.”
But synagogues are not trying to move product. What many rabbis and communal leaders worry about is the clash between individualism and kehilla, or community. If fewer and fewer worshippers are in the “main room,” does the idea of community have any validity at all? Religion scholar Robert Bellah famously wrote about a subject named Sheila, whose individualized religion she called “Sheila-ism.” Bellah has gone on to champion the idea that an established house of worship, “however secularized, provides some notion that we are in this thing together, that we need each other, that our precious and unique selves aren’t going to make it all alone.”
I’m on the fence on this one. I’m sympathetic to the rabbis who hate kiddush clubs not only because they promote drinking but because they represent exclusivity and the breakdown of community. But as someone who gets incredibly restless on Shabbat, and sometimes finds himself on Saturday morning in the shul library reading back issues of The Jerusalem Report, I welcome the synagogues that offer “multiple entries” to Jewish life.
Perhaps the resolution is found in a notion I once heard attributed to Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of the Reconstructonist movement. Kaplan envisioned the synagogue as a “Jewish center,” where multiple services were being conducted simultaneously, and room, and rooms, were found for people with all kinds of interests. The key, however, was that all the alternative services and activities ended at the same time, after which everyone came together — for kiddush.