A Serious Man: An Ad for Rabbinical School?

Enough people have reviewed the film so all that I’ll say generally is it is indeed like a modern day take-off on the Biblical book of Job, with a lot more irony and less resolution. What I want to explore in greater depth, though, is the treatment of the three rabbis….In short, you’re served rabbis who are detached (Marshak), demented (Nachtner), or deluded (Scott)–not exactly an advertisement for rabbinical school.  Read more.

Schools: A Case Study in Change for Shuls

Schools: A Case Study in Change for Shuls

I was recently at a favorite coffee shop in Minneapolis. When I went to pay the bill, there was a post-it note attached to a bowl which had some pennies in it. The note read, “If you fear change, leave it here.” Given the rapid pace of change in our lives today, I sometimes wish I had a bowl into which I could place my fears about change! But whatever anxieties I have are irrelevant, because it seems that even the most storied institutions we’ve taken for granted are experiencing change.

In fact, I’ve been reading about the next area of great change — higher education– because it has an indirect bearing on synagogues. Read more.

I confess that I don’t know very much about tools. However, I do know enough to recognize that the question, “What tool should I use?” must be asked in some context. Just as you wouldn’t use an Allen wrench to pound in a nail, you wouldn’t want to use a survey instrument that was mismatched for the information that you desire.

There are three assessment tools which lend themselves nicely to congregations and non-profit organizations: questionnaires, interviews and focus groups.  These three methods work well because they are simple, easy to learn and enable you to use volunteers who have expertise in these areas.  This post is going to review some basics about questionnaires. Read more.

This is the second post on the topic of assessment. In my first post, my main points were:

1. Healthy individuals take regular stock of their lives: where they’ve been, where they are presently, and where they hope to be in the future. The same is true of organizations.
2. Assessment is another word for organizational learning. Its essential purpose is to help organizations measure whether they’re fulfilling their mission of changing lives and changing their communities.
3. Assessment doesn’t just drive excellence; it drives the purpose of Jewish existence as expressed in the synagogue.

Many synagogues are hyper-active so it’s simply impossible to assess all activities.   Read  more and comment.

Image from Flickr, canonsnapper

This has been a tough financial year for many people. And a change in financial status has other potential serious consequences: loss of self-esteem, anxiety and physical ailments, to name a few. It’s as if we’ve walked into a hotel, and the guest representative checking us in said, “If there is anything that you need, please let us know and we’ll teach you how to live without it.”

But a passage from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel z’l can help us recapture a perspective on what really matters in life: “Every human being is a cluster of needs, yet these needs are not the same in all men nor are unalterable in any one man.  There is a fixed minimum of needs for all men, but no fixed maximum for any man.  Unlike animals, man is the playground for the unpredictable emergence and multiplication of needs and interests, some of which are indigenous to his nature, while others are induced by advertising, fashion, envy, or come about as miscarriages of authentic needs.” (Between God and Man, ed., Fritz Rothschild, p.130).  Read more and comment.

I recently learned from Elaine Kleinmann, a former STAR consultant, about how her rabbi is using technology in a very simple way to help his congregants prepare for Rosh ha-Shanah.  While this was done for Elul, it could be adapted to work with any holiday.  With thanks to both of them, I’m sharing it with you.   – Rabbi Hayim Herring

Elaine writes:

Rabbi Neil Kurshan of the Huntington Jewish Center in Huntington, Long Island, NY, started a lead up to Shabbat called “Torah Teasers”.  These are emails based on the parasha of the week, and raise questions which elicit responses that do not require additional knowledge of the Torah to answer.  The emails are sent to all those who had requested to be on his listserve, and it is a way to engage people and tie the Torah into personal experience.  Participants can then respond to the entire network. On Shabbat morning, in lieu of a sermon, Rabbi Kurshan gives some background of the parasha, raises the questions again with the congregation, asks for responses, and shares some responses from the listserve.  Following the give and take, he uses that opportunity to share his learning and perspective.

He sent a new request this summer to all those who are on his Torah Teaser listserve. He asked to “be able to share with all of you during the month of Elul some of the experiences that make Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur meaningful for all of us… just a paragraph about a High Holiday experience that was particularly meaningful for you.  It can be an experience from your childhood or from more recent years.  It can be an experience at services, within your family, in your home or from anything else connected with the holidays.  I just want you to describe in some detail the experience–what happened and what it meant to you.  I would then like to share these experiences during the days of Elul with the online community in our shul that makes up our Torah Teasers network.”

As a member of this network, I have been receiving these responses since Elul began.  One is about blowing the shofar, one from someone who underwent a health crisis in the past year, one was about childhood memories of Rosh HaShanah dinner, and one from someone who had moved (with her nuclear family but away from her birth family), and had her first encounter  at our synagogue on the high holidays. Rabbi Kurshan’s request  inspired and motivated me to write about my Russian born father, his ambivalence about Judaism in general and Yom Kippur specifically, and the irony of his death occurring a few hours before Kol Nidre 18 years ago.

Image from Flickr, Alexander Smolianitski

It’s hard to believe it, but Rosh ha-Shanah is closing in already! In the weeks leading up to the yamim noraim, the Jewish High Holy Days, we’re supposed to be especially introspective. We’re to take stock of the year and measure ourselves not against someone else—but against the better selves we can be. (Actually, according to Jewish tradition, we’re supposed to conduct a spiritual check-up at the end of each day!) And, as we get older, we don’t only take stock of the single year that has passed. We use the time to do a more complete assessment of our lives.

I didn’t intentionally plan to be writing about assessment during this season, but I’m glad that this topic will be the focus of my postings during this time when many of us are engaged in personal self-reflection. For as it’s supposed to go for the individual person—self-examination in small and large increments—so, too, should it go for an organization.  Read more and comment.

Your comments will be used to shape his upcoming book, Tools for Shuls: A Guide to Make Over Your Synagogue.  If your idea is used, you will, of course, be credited.

Holly Ross, NTEN

I recently learned that online fundraising made up only about 5% of total annual giving in 2008. I was floored. I thought it would be 30 to 50 percent. Why? Because I spend all day, every day in front of a laptop tweeting about my Facebook links.

Okay, you can’t do that for real, but you get my drift. I live in a bubble — a tech bubble. The kind of of bubble so cushy, I can check my email in the bathroom if I want. (But I don’t, ‘cuz that’s not cool.) I’m betting many of you live in that same bubble. It’s a fine place to be. The problem is, not everyone is in here with us, and many of those people are our clients.  Read original post.

Kyla Cromer
STAR Technology and Communications Specialist

I promised that I would report back on the recommended sermon topics for this Rosh ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur. In no special order and with a little editing, here they are:

• From Dawn Kepler: Of all the sermons I’ve heard, the ones I remember most are when the rabbi took a personal experience and made it a universal message. One spoke about a mentally disabled brother and talked about how we treat people who make us uncomfortable. …One spoke on a Chinese grandmother and what we learn from caring, ethical people. One spoke about what we put up on our refrigerator because it tells us what we value day to day.
• From Robert Braitman: “Ladies and gentlemen, I am worried about your health. It’s time that each of us focused on being Shomrei HaGuf, caring for our wellness. So I am challenging our Men’s Club and our Sisterhood to develop programs for their members to improve their wellness, I am challenging everyone who serves food here to present healthy choices. Most importantly, I am issuing a ‘Yom Tov Challenge’. Between Sukkot and Shavuot, I want to see a change in our health. You develop the metric but when we study together Erev Shavuot, let’s celebrate our accomplishments!”
• From Steven Kraus: The connections between the two Torah readings on Rosh Hashanah and what they mean in our lives.
  Read more.

Today is Rosh Chodesh Elul, the beginning of a month-long, intensive period of spiritual preparation for Rosh ha-Shanah. If you’re a rabbi, you probably have some good ideas by now about what your sermon ideas will be on Rosh ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur. But, speaking from experience, there’s still time for one or two more to make it into your sermon. If you’re a congregant, in a few weeks, you might be asking, “What is the rabbi going to speak about this year?”

The sanctuary or chapel may not be so full during weekly Shabbat services, but it’s packed on these holidays. Rabbis have an annual opportunity to reach large numbers of their congregants during these days. One message may not change a life, but it can draw people into greater Jewish involvement—or, it can move them further from it. So, rabbis especially feel the weight of the responsibility and opportunity to reach for deep impact with their sermons at this time, and congregants who primarily come to services infrequently hope for words that are meaningful and relevant for them.

So, here are two timely questions for readers of Tools for Shuls:

1. What issues are most important for rabbis to address this year in their Rosh ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur sermons?
2. What topics should they avoid?

Whether you’re a rabbi or a congregant, please contribute your ideas. I’ll share the responses in the next post, which will appear this coming Monday.

Thanks!

Rabbi Herring

Inspired by the wonderful discussion during the STAR Synagogue Consultant Community of Practice session this month, I wanted to highlight some thoughts about terminating consulting projects.

“Moses heeded his father-in-law and did just as he had said.  Moses chose capable men out of all Israel, and appointed them heads over the people – chiefs of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens; and they judged the people at all times:  the difficult matters they would bring to Moses, and all the minor matters they would decide themselves.  Then Moses bade his father-in-law farewell, and he went his way to his own land.”

Exodus 18:24-27

As we learn from Yitro’s example, the last phase of consulting is to say farewell.  But an ending requires more than just saying goodbye.  “Termination involves two components:  the formal, deliberate ending of the consulting project and an assessment of your effectiveness as a consultant.  You have finished the work that has been agreed upon and all terms of the consulting contract have been met” (Lukas¹).  We need to ensure that we have also left them with skills, knowledge, and a roadmap that enables them to build upon the work we began together.

Our goal is essentially to work ourselves out of a job:  to leave the synagogue in a place where they can continue the work without us.  We need to make certain that by the end of the consultation, the synagogue has a person or team in place to continue the work of the project.  This includes someone who can function in any roles previously served by the consultant.  In addition, we need to provide them with a maintenance plan for moving forward.  Possible ideas are:

As part of the STAR Synagogue Consultancy Project, we have an outside evaluator who conducts closing interviews with the consultants and representatives of the 12 participating synagogues.  While this will assess the success of the overall STAR Synagogue Consultancy Project, it will not provide specific information about individual projects.  Some ideas of ways to receive feedback about the individual projects are:

• Does the client feel that they accomplished their goals?
• What were the main things they took away from the process?
• What parts of the process were most helpful?
• What could the consultant have done differently to achieve better results?

Whatever we determine is the best ending strategy for the work with each individual synagogue, an important thing to remember is to share that strategy with the synagogue.  “The key notion is that every consultation relationship must have some plan for a healthy, mutually satisfying termination of the working relationship.” (Lippitt and Lippitt²).

This discussion on ending strategies exemplifies the rich discussions of the STAR Synagogue Consultant Community of Practice throughout this year.  It has been a wonderful journey and I’m looking forward to using what we’ve learned in our continued work with synagogues.

Gayle Bloom
Project Manager
STAR Synagogue Consultancy Project

¹Lukas, Carol A. Consulting with Nonprofits: A Practitioner’s Guide.  Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, St. Paul, MN, 1998, p. 99.

²Lippitt, G. and Lippitt, R.  The Consulting Process in Action. University Associates, San Diego, CA, 1978, p. 34.