How to Bring People Back to Shuls? AMAZING FOOD

As we all lament the state of our synagogues, battered by COVID and vying to recapture our communal mojo, shul boards and their clergy are desperately trying to figure out how to win back IN PERSON the congregants that have left or stationed themselves on the Zoom sidelines. 

It’s no small challenge. Many congregants have lost their shul-going muscle memory. Their inclination and their muscles have atrophied. When that happens in an athletic context, it takes a lot of conviction and discipline, and maybe even the intervention of a physical therapist, to regain your former gait. You have to want it!

Megillahs have been written over the course of the pandemic that our well-being is fundamentally ill-served by a sustained Zoom existence to the exclusion of human interaction. Hugs and smiles and storytelling and spontaneous encounters are the fuel that revs our human engines. So let’s concede that point: being together is in our nature, and in our collective communal and individual interest. 

That said, is there one BIG IDEA that can encourage lots of Jews to flock back to shul and rediscover the elixir of community togetherness? If that idea exists, we know it has to be something with deep, affecting resonance and magnetic attraction that surrogates like Zoom are simply incapable of imparting.

In other words, it has to be food.

And not just food, but amazing food. Food so amazing that people will believe you when you invite them every Saturday morning to the Ultimate Kiddush.

As Jews, we know there is no greater stimulus than food. 

In these times of distress, synagogues have an opportunity to invest in a potentially game-changing, no-holds-barred Kiddush Culinary New Deal. As Jews, we know there is no greater stimulus than food. Is there anything more Jewish than scooping your friends and family on the latest greatest meal or dish you just savored? Imagine the viral power of congregants talking about their shul as excitedly as they talk about that great new restaurant. Why stay at home Saturday morning when you and your kids could be in shul enjoying the best fare in town — as well as the hugs of your friends and the kibbitzing and the singing you know in your heart you fondly recall and dearly miss. 

The return on investment on this Ultimate Kiddush is inestimable. What price, restored synagogues?  There is none. It’s priceless. The fate of our synagogues, and arguably our faithfulness and togetherness as a people, are in play. 

To succeed, this initiative must get funder support. It is strategic impact philanthropy.  Let’s start a nationwide Ultimate Kiddush Food Network, which would center around a fund that synagogues can tap to underwrite their own Kiddushes. Much as One Table, with wild success, underwrites young adults hosting Shabbat dinners so their peers can experience the most galvanizing community building practice we have in our tradition, so too Ultimate Kiddushes will be available to all synagogue comers, and hew to a serve-them-the-very-best standard. 

There is a galaxy of online food innovators, epitomized by Goldbelly, whose reason for being is furnishing Comfort through Food. It is a culinary aggregator, able to get you whatever food you crave from whomever makes it. All it requires is a credit card and a FedEx truck. 

Boldness is the order of this initiative. We can’t cheap out as a community. There’s way too much at stake. This investment stands to be as low-risk as a T-Bill. Ask yourself the last time you munched on warm homemade challah or tender brisket or amazing Tunisian cholent  or swooned over perfect kugel. Every sense rallied: your memory was transported to your childhood, your taste buds celebrated and your mood transformed.

What’s more, if synagogues up their game with inspirational davening, people will get the full nourishment — great food and camaraderie as the ultimate treat after the holiness of the synagogue experience. 

Is this idea a panacea? Of course not. But it’s a trusty arrow in our quiver that we can marshal — a simple yet enticing way to help bring joy and congregants back to our synagogues. The fact that it’s such an obvious idea takes nothing away from its appeal. Just the opposite. The timeless attraction of great food offers us an opportunity to address an urgent communal crisis.

If we do it right, it’ll get people off their couches and back in shul, or at least back in shul for the Ultimate Kiddush.

Howard Zack affiliates at Congregation Kol Shofar in Tiburon, CA.