With so many non-members coming to shul on the High Holidays, it’s a challenge to make them feel at home and forge meaningful connections
 

Rabbi N. Daniel Korobkin
Beth Avraham Yoseph Congregation, Toronto

Rabbi Lisa Grushcow
Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom, Montreal

Rabbi Grushcow: The High Holidays are the time that most of our congregants are with us. It’s also the time that the most unaffiliated Jews turn up at our doors. They may not want to be members, but they want to come in.

In the best tradition of Abraham and Sarah, our instinct is always to welcome people. At the same time, most of our synagogues depend on the traditional membership model. It is our members who pay their dues and contribute to our campaigns who make sure there are services for everyone else. How can we sustain our sacred institutions while being responsive to those who haven’t officially opted in?

Rabbi Korobkin: Of all the issues facing synagogue management, this is one of the thorniest. Every year on the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah, I make the following announcement to our “regulars”: “Kindly remember that you have been ‘deputized’ to act as the ambassadors of our congregation, to greet the newcomers and make them feel welcome. If you see someone who looks out of place, please approach them with a prayer book and a smile.” 

I also relate what I once read about a large church that had cards printed with the following text: “Notice to Visitors: People who attend St. Mark’s regularly are for the most part kind and friendly people, but they tend to be a bit shy and self-conscious with strangers. They are afraid of greeting people they think are new and discovering that the ‘visitors’ have been attending St. Mark’s for years. So please help. Identify yourself to the people nearest you and ask them to tell you about our church.”

“Notice to St. Mark’s Members: Please do your best to make everyone feel welcome. Always introduce yourself to the people sitting near you if you don’t know their names. To avoid the embarrassment of mistaking a longtime member for a visitor, use the following ploy: ‘Good morning. My name is ____________. I’ve been coming to St. Mark’s for _________ (years/weeks). How about you?’”

I very much believe in empowering our members to become stakeholders in our shul’s warmth and inviting feel. It also strengthens our members’ feeling of belonging.

Rabbi Grushcow: There is another question here, which is how to make sure even our “regulars” feel connected. In Ron Wolfson’s book, Relational Judaism, he describes a woman who left a congregation after 20 years because, in her words, “I came to everything, and I never met anybody.” Part of our raison d’etre as a synagogue is to be a place where people can make meaningful connections and know that they are not alone.

I was speaking recently with a congregant from my previous congregation in New York City. She asked me the difference between what I did there and what I do here in Montreal.

“Here,” I told her, “I worry about the leaks in the roof.” 

“That sounds terrible!” she replied. 

“No,” I said, “it’s wonderful. It means I get to help shape the conversation about every aspect of the experience of the people who come through our doors.” If you are sitting in services and the rain drips down on your head, you don’t feel welcome. If you are coming in with a walker or a wheelchair and can’t enter the building, you don’t feel welcome. And if you make it in and you’re dry and comfortable but no one says a word to you, you don’t feel welcome, either.

Rabbi Korobkin: There’s an ironic paradox: the larger the congregation and the more choices available for making friends, the harder it sometimes is to break into an established social circle. In a large shul like ours, we work hard to create a sense of family and warmth despite the largeness. Every Yom Kippur after Kol Nidrei, we break for five minutes to allow every person to meet the person next to them so as to generate or renew friendships. This helps both on the spiritual and prosaic levels.

The Torah repeatedly emphasizes the need to welcome the stranger. It’s certainly only logical to do this when that “stranger,” after being welcomed properly, may eventually emerge as the next leader of our community.