Group therapy in a blog.
“Looking for the Perfect…Shul”
What are you looking for?
People have called the 20s-40s generation spoiled, that we always expect things to be tailored to our needs. But this quest for something better and more personalized doesn’t come from a sense of entitlement; it comes from a central repository of independent spirit and innovation. We live like technology, not in ever-fixed marks, but in desktops and lifestyles that can be customized hourly, down to the last icon. If we need something that doesn’t exist, we take our acquired skills, purchase a domain name and invent it on our own. If we don’t have the skills, we comb our networks for the people who do, or for the places that can teach them to us.
It’s revolution, not with ‘60s-style sit-ins and student takeovers of campus administration buildings, but with modular movement, creativity and gumption. It’s a declaration of independence not from spirituality, prayer, tradition or community, but from the structures that restrict more personal connections with those ideas. It’s a search for community intimacy, aided by Google.
The S3K/Hadar study indicates that 45 percent of the rabbi-led emergent communities and an astounding 81 percent of independent minyanim consist of people under 40. Two-thirds of the members of such communities are female. And while the oft-cited National Jewish Population Study of 2000-2001 indicated that 68 percent of synagogue members are married, the percentage is much lower in emergent communities: in independent minyanim, it’s 51 percent; in rabbi-led emergent communities, 64 percent; and in alternative emergent communities, 27 percent.What might the amateur singles anthropologist unscientifically glean from this survey and these numbers? That people under 40 are looking for something smaller, a way to discern the substance from all of the other stimuli in their lives? That women are more likely to commit to community intimacy than men? That after singles “play the field†with other synagogues and multiple memberships, they reach a point when it’s time to settle down? That today’s synagogues may not be as “under-40-friendly†as they might imagine they are?
I liked it Esther, and thought it was an important article about a vital need & response from the wider community. Hopefully it will be getting wider circulation. Cheers & Good Luck! ‘VJ’