The synagogue of the Jewish Future requires creative thinking as to the spiritual needs of its people, innovation with the traditional building blocks, and transformation leveraging learning from education, therapeutic, business processes, strategic planning and project management.
As a Rabbinic student at Hebrew Union College, and then as a congregational educator I wrote papers exploring the intellectual framework for creative, innovative, and transformational activities. The topics listed here are explorations for developing visions of the 21st-century synagogue.
Congregation Gates of Prayer 2001
What if technology enabled us to take a pulse of our members, enabling teams to build a multi-media experience/environment based on that data, then create safe settings for small groups for meaningful interaction?
https://splitrockstrategies.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/cgop.docx
The Synagogue as Antidote for Future Shock
The synagogue in essence is to serve the Jewish people as the absorber of “future shock” by providing an environment for its members to experience a stability zone which at the same time supports change. Alvin Toffler popularized “future shock” as a means of putting a handle on the ‘phenomena of coping with increasingly rapid technological, social and personal change.
Toffler defines “future shock” as “the distress, both physical and psychological, that arises from an overload of the human organism’s physical adaptive systems and its decision-making process,” or in simpler terms, “Future shock is the human response to overstimulation.”
Toffler’s “future shock” concept may be approached from two perspectives. Firstly, recent studies conducted point to the likelihood of sickness following an individual’s undergoing a great deal of stress due to changes in one’s life. It is now “possible to show in dramatic form that the rate of change in a person’s life – his pace of life – is closely tied to the state of his health.” Secondly, culture shock is that “profound disorientation suffered by the traveler who has plunged without adequate preparation into an alien culture “ in which he is “forced to grapple with unfamiliar and unpredictable events, relationships and objects. His habitual ways of accomplishing things…are no longer appropriate… in this setting fatigue arrives more quickly than usual.”
Toffler’s thesis is that the speeding up of the rate of change in our society is bringing with it increased stress with concomitant illness and fatigue. What culture shock is to the traveler, future shock is to those who stay at home!
Alvin Toffler suggests eight means of countering the effects of future shock:
- Direct coping
- Personal stability zones
- Situational groupings
- Crisis counseling
- Halfway houses
- Enclaves of the past
- Enclaves of the future
- Global space pageants
A Visual Midrash on Future Shock
The future synagogue will have programming along the lines of these antidotes.
The synagogue is the Jewish institution that is best able to provide support for its people to deal with future shock. The synagogue historically provided the Jewish people with important antidotes to the phenomena of culture shock and the crises of personal and seasonal change.
Toffler Future Shock “Coping with Tomorrow”
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Jewish Worship as Environment for Encounter
Prayer – “Yichud with the Ehad” – Encounter with the Unity of the universe to achieve a personal stability zone in which to process the changes we are experiencing.
Worship – That community we establish around us as a trustworthy sanctuary in which engage in prayer.
Environment – is both the world from which we enter worship and the sensory experience into which we enter for prayerful worship.
Jewish – The stories of a problem solving and storytellings people.
The synagogue of the future will enable teams of staff and members to create such environments.
https://www.academia.edu/43542599/Jewish_Worship_as_Environment_for_Encounter
Jewish Religious Education as Ethnotherapy
Ethnotherapy is the proactive structuring of Jewish traditional teachings as self-discovery experiences leading toward spiritual well-being and ongoing personal creativity.
It is ethnic in the sense that it draws from the richness of our Jewish historic background. It is therapy in that it has as its goals the achievement for the individual a sense of self-unity and integrity, both in relation to God and to his fellowman. It is Ethno-therapy in that anything that leads the individual to a more positive self-identification is therapeutic.
Jewish Education as Ethnotherapy
Re-investing in the Jewish Family
While the Bar/Bat Mitzvah process is a major motivating factor for synagogue membership, more attention needs to be given for family involvement in this life cycle ritual, including parent oriented programs for their coping with their adolescents and their own maturation needs.
Attention needs to be given to the adult life cycle, including retirement, and the synagogue as a meaningful source and recipient of non-menial volunteer effort.
Reinvesting in the Jewish Family Part 1
Reinvesting in the Jewish Family Part 2
Multi-Media for Jewish Education
A thought paper with some practical examples was written in the 1970s before computers and the internet.
In the cyber environment, the synagogue could be a source of meaningful digital programming, created within or from other sources.
Multi-Media for Jewish Religious Education
Visions need practical tools and processes for implementation. The items listed below are but some of the available learnings from education, business and therapeutic models.
With an emphasis on four key areas, financial, customer or membership, internal processes, and investments in learning and growth, attention is drawn to activities in these areas and how they relate to the other areas.
Balanced-scorecard-for-Synagogues.docx
Strengths, Weakness, Opportunity and Threats Analysis
Explorations of “how we are doing” and “what we could be doing”
Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats Analysis
An analysis of an organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats is a commonly used tool in strategic planning. Strengths and weaknesses deal with internal matters, while opportunities and threats are focused on the external environment.
Typically, there is a form that is divided between analyses of internal organization and matters external to the organization. Participants in the exercise are asked to respond to any number of questions about different aspects of the organization and its activities, listing in the appropriate box the strengths, weaknesses, opportunity and threats related to a question or a specific activity.
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Internal Organization |
External to the Organization |
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Strengths |
Opportunities |
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Weaknesses |
Threats |
“Who is truly wise, who can learn from all others” Ethics of the Fathers. As a first step in an organization’s process improvement, and or strategic planning initiative, this workshop evokes input from participants toward building a “Wall of Wisdom”. During the experience, the various inputs are then gathered into meaningful target groupings for further deliberations. The emphasis is on non-judgmental collection of ideas, suggestions, and wishes that could be then combined into various subsequent action plans.
Building on strategic mapping, developing action plans in each area with specific goals and objectives: With an emphasis on four key areas, financial, customer or membership, internal processes, and investments in learning and growth, attention is drawn to activities in these areas and how they relate to the other areas.
“Ait-La-Asot” is Hebrew for it is time for action. Action-oriented projects should follow some basic project management principles.
Synagogue leaders need a programmatic training process based on merging strategic planning with Judaic content.
Living in the Future Effectively would be the goal of adult education programs, for example using Solomon’s Song of Songs, Proverbs, and Kohelleth as young adult, middle age, and senior citizen appropriate content.