Can Synagogues Provide the Radical Disruption that the Jewish World Needs?

Jewish federations can’t do it. Jewish organizations can’t do it. Jewish foundations can’t do it. But the synagogues can. 

They can and must be the entities that take the lead to reconceptualize Jewish life and infrastructure, pulling us through the challenges and ravages of the pandemic that have impacted the organized Jewish world in North America. In return, federations, organizations and foundations can back synagogues’ new big visions and ideas. 

No matter how much Jewish leadership and even a new generation has dismissed the importance of synagogues, they are where amcha, the broadest base of the Jewish people, sit. They are the largest entity where Jewish communities are formed. Synagogues attract  thousands of people, year after year on the high holidays, putting more Jewish people in touch with the organized Jewish world than any organization. They service the needs of the Jewish people on a regular basis. Their rabbis are the ones who influence a wider swath of the Jewish people than anyone else. They are the institutions that provide the most access to Torah and tradition. More than any other institution, synagogues cultivate eventual leadership, donors and founders of Jewish causes. The vast majority of Jewish schools are synagogue-connected. B’nai mitzvot are synagogue-produced. Most Jewish camps are synagogue-affiliated. And Jewish families depend upon synagogue rabbis to officiate funerals of their loved ones.

In recent years, there has been so much attention and funding lavished upon a new generation’s small Jewish startup ideas, that the community sometimes forgets that synagogues still make the most meaningful influence on the largest numbers of Jewish people. The majority of a new Jewish generation that wants to be connected to the Jewish world, send their children to schools, and begin a life-long organized Jewish family journey can be found in our synagogues.

If the synagogues don’t tackle our new harsh pandemic realities and determine their way forward to renewed vibrancy, the entire organized Jewish world will be seriously diminished. 

After so much pandemic devastation, if the synagogues don’t tackle our new harsh pandemic realities and determine their way forward to renewed vibrancy, the entire organized Jewish world will be seriously diminished. They carry this responsibility to the Jewish people. 

So in what spirit do rabbis and leadership prepare to take on this awesome challenge? 

The lesson is in the first few sentences of Braisheet, Genesis, words they read year after year, and probably know by heart. Here is a radical way to look at how these first words apply to the current reality. And right now, the Jewish world needs a radical disruption. 

The word “braisheet” is commonly translated to “In the beginning.” But braisheet comes from the Hebrew root “rosh” meaning head. The head represents the brain, the mind and thinking. If it is the first word of the Torah, then it is telling us that the brain, mind and thinking are held in utmost importance. 

The second word is “barah,” create. It is the first active word in the Torah. The Torah is telling us that creativity holds extreme power, because everything in the Torah follows it. So the Torah ties the brain, mind and thinking together with creativity. 

Then in the next sentence, all hell breaks loose. There is chosech, darkness, and tohu va’vohu, commonly translated as chaos. No one really knows what tohu va’vohu actually is. But if you say the words out loud over and over, they are anything but chaotic. They have a connecting rhythm; they fall over one another with a sense of purpose. The repeated sound of tohu va’vohu has an orderliness about it. Tohu va’vohou is anything but chaos. It is the material of creation, because out of it comes light/day, darkness/night, land, the heavens, vegetation, seasons, sun, moon, creatures, man and woman. 

The Torah is telling us that creativity is a holy process. Because the process creates ideas that move the world forward. 

People who attempt any form of creativity, recognize darkness and tohu va’vohu. All creative people enter into the tension of both, before they evolve their output. As a person in a creative profession and as a professor of team creativity, I know that the longer one stays in the tension, the more powerful and excellent the creative output.

Can rabbis and synagogue leadership sustain the tension required for an output of power and excellence? That is the biggest question the Jewish world now faces in order to save itself from the results of the pandemic. 

Can rabbis and synagogue leadership sustain the tension required for an output of power and excellence? That is the biggest question the Jewish world now faces in order to save itself from the results of the pandemic. 

What is that tension? 

It is the connection of recognizing and finding commonalities between disparate parts. In Braisheet, it begins in the first line of the creation of heaven and earth. Heaven and earth are the given disparate elements that collide, producing the initial darkness and tohu va’vohu. 

In the Jewish world, there are many disparate elements. We have disparate thinking. We have disparate understandings and approaches. We have disparate visions. We also have, unfortunately, disparate statuses and power bases between professionals, lay people and wealthy donors. 

Can we Jews jump into all of these disparate tensions, find the commonalities between them, remain in the tension to find the solutions, and then produce an output of excellence for the Jewish world? 

Can we break down the barriers of class and put people on equal footing so creative teams can function? Overseeing creative teams in business, nonprofits and academia, I know that when creative teams are out of balance by one person claiming more power, it paralyzes the creative process and great ideas don’t emerge. 

Jewish minds are able to do this outside the Jewish community—in business, medicine, science, literature, film, food, fashion and many other areas. Why can we do it in these instances, outside the Jewish world, but not within the Jewish world? 

It’s about intimidation. We turn the power for idea approval over to boards and wealthy people, who in many cases are only in these positions of approval by virtue of their wealth and power, not their knowledge. Few of them are equipped with the deep awareness and experience to make the best decisions for the synagogue or the Jewish people.  

This is why we have so much mediocrity. The organized Jewish world is a risk-averse culture. But in order to reach excellence we have to take risks. Many professionals, including rabbis,  don’t accept risk because they don’t want to suffer the wrath of lay people and donors. Many lay people and donors don’t accept risk because they don’t want to challenge the members of their wealth club who surround them, and with whom they want to be best pals.

The radical disruption we now need in order to survive and thrive through the devastation of the pandemic is the creation of big, bold, new ideas. Ideas change the world. They move it forward.

The radical disruption we now need in order to survive and thrive through the devastation of the pandemic is the creation of big, bold, new ideas. Ideas change the world. They move it forward. To achieve this, synagogues need to revise the way they work, establishing a creative team infrastructure between professionals, members, board members and donors—and revisit everything they do and how they do it.

Then they need to revise the approval systems of these ideas, establishing a progressive and aware leadership who can be partners in this process. Over the years I have worked with a number of people within Jewish leadership who don’t read the publications of the Jewish world, don’t study Torah, have limited knowledge of Jewish history and current events and believe that because they have been on federation missions meeting important people, they have all the answers. This will no longer cut it. 

But the biggest question is do synagogues and Jewish people recognize and accept that they now need this radical disruption? Or will they hold on to so much of the way things have been that they eventually kill the whole enterprise?

Gary Wexler was recently honored by the National Library of Israel with the establishment of the Gary Wexler archive, a collection of twenty years of his marketing, advertising and communication work for the Jewish world, to be used for research, exhibit and speaking.