The other third of the bloggers who inspired me to try blogging myself is back posting regularly.
I serve as a vice president of my synagogue, but fear that the paradigm of big expensive houses of worship that 20th century non-Orthodox Judaism was centered on may be a recipe for 21st century irrelevance. Reading Steven I. Weiss's Canonist and CampusJ gives me hope that thoughtful people my age and younger are actually trying to do something about it.
Check it out.
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2 comments:
I am glad to hear that you are heartened by efforts at synagogue revival, renewal and rethinking. The question is, are we also ready to consider something new, rather than reshaping the extant? Perhaps the synagogue model has outlived its usefulness? And I say this being a synagogue professional (Education Director) at a DC Metro area congregation myself.
I don't know if it's outlived its usefulness, but I'm certain it's too damn expensive.
To erect and maintain the buildings we insist on building, and to pay the professionals the salaries and benefits they both merit and deserve, we must set our dues at a level no sane twenty- or thirty-something without a child will pay.
This leaves all the decisions in the hands of the wealthiest among us. And wealth is no guarantee of wisdom. At my own shul, with some noble and notable exceptions, it seems mostly a guarantee of the opposite.
But you know that already.
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