By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
In every generation, the young seek to distinguish themselves as a group and form an independent identity, while the elders bemoan the state of their descendants and worry about continuity and society’s fate. This is no less so in Seattle’s Jewish community — where just one in five are actively involved in the synagogues and communal organizations.
According to a study of the area’s Jewish population commissioned by the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle two years ago, two out of three Jewish households are considered “unknown,” in that they are not part of the organized Jewish community. Half of those are families were new to the area, while a large number tended to live outside the core areas of where most Jewish organizations are concentrated.
Many have been associated with Jewish groups in the past, and some may be again. They also tend to be “less affluent and more likely to be unemployed,” single or single parents, and they include more young adults.
“I have a good friend in Seattle who’s unaffiliated, who’s my age,” says Yohanna Kinberg, the new associate rabbi at Temple B’nai Torah in Bellevue, who describes herself as the youngest rabbi in the Puget Sound area.
“We’ve spoken a lot about why they’re not affiliated with a synagogue and what they’re looking for, and why they’re not finding what they’re looking for in the Seattle Jewish community.”
In their early 30s, with one small child, Kinberg says, like many others in the same position, she thinks, “finances have a huge piece to do with it.”
“I think if you’re going to be spending $800-$1200 a year to be a member of a synagogue, you really have to be getting a lot out of it, if you’re in your 20s and 30s,” she says. “That’s unfortunate, because there is a lot happening and a lot that they could really find at the synagogue.”
Many rabbis and temple officials note that membership and close affiliation with the synagogues is typically a step people take once they begin to have children, and especially when it is time for those children to go to school. Desire for the kids to have a Jewish education becomes a determining factor that leads them to joining.
“It seems that when people come back to Judaism in that age range is when they have children,” says Araya Sol, the administrator and a board member of Congregation Eitz Or, a Jewish Renewal congregation in Seattle. “My experience is that they are off searching on their own. They’ve left their parents wings and they’re trying to see what appeals to them as individuals.
“Often,” she adds, “they will go out and look elsewhere, or else give up on religion entirely for a while. But, at least the ones who are spiritually inclined and community inclined will eventually come back, whether it’s for themselves or for their children.”
At Eitz Or, which Sol notes is a small congregation, they do not have any programs specifically devoted to reaching or bringing in younger people, but focus on creating an experience that will appeal to all their members from, as she puts it, “babies up to the 90s.”
“We don’t do anything specific to reach that [20–35-year-old] age range,” Sol says, “although being a Jewish Renewal congregation, our services are very interactive and we have a lot of singing and dancing and it seems to have a lot of appeal to that group.”
Rabbi Jay Rosenbaum, who came to the Conservative Herzl-Ner Tamid congregation on Mercer Island last year, takes a similar view, one that is common to the established congregations throughout the area.
“What we’re doing here is broad-spectrum programming to meet the needs of a wide range of people,” he says. “I think whatever appeals to people in general will appeal to all ages.
“We’re focusing particularly on holiday programming and doing it in an innovative way. So we have all kinds of programming that we feel will appeal to all kinds of people. My goal is to make the congregation as vibrant as possible. Essentially what we’ve been doing in general is making Judaism interesting, provocative and fun.”
Rabbi Sholom Ber Levitin, of Congregation Shaarei Tefila-Lubavitch, the Chassidic congregation in Seattle, sees the same issues but responds with a different approach.
“We really believe in the soul and in the shamai and in the spirit and all that is. That spirit is always desirous. It’s how do you connect with the spirit to draw it out and have it activated?” he asks.
“We’re talking about singles feeling at home in synagogue which is, many times, oriented more to families,” says Levitin. “We have to be able to work to create the environment where a single doesn’t feel out of place. If singles are not necessarily as member-oriented with synagogues as families are, their participation might not be as strong. So, when they come for the High Holidays, we [need to] be creative and proactive and make them feel at home. This may be the only time they’ll come — maybe once or twice a year. You have to be on top of that.”
“We make a special emphasis on reaching out to the individual and the unaffiliated,” Levitin continues. “The main thing, I think, is to create a very individualistic, warm environment. As many as possible come to my home for meals, to make them feel as family.”
Another aspect that seems to come into play is a differing set of expectations or needs that people seek, both spiritually and socially.
Young adults might be seeking something different.
“A synagogue is partly a spiritual place, but also a social place,” says Kinberg, “a place where lifecycle events happen, a place where the community provides for each other’s need in life and death and all kinds of things. The spiritual piece is a piece of what synagogues have always done, but they’re not spiritual centers. I think sometimes people come looking for a spiritual center, like it’s a Zen Center or a Meditation Center. That not what synagogues are — they’re noisy — people are stapling and kids are running down the hall.”
She suggested creating a quiet “sanctuary” space within the synagogue, or simply letting people know that some of those places already exist might help bring people in.
Any number of reasons have been offered for why there are so many young unaffiliated Jews in the area. Some may feel disconnected to Judaism or that they do not want the experience of a supportive Jewish community. Many others — and there are many — say existing organizations and shuls are simply not drawing them in.
This is what moved Stefanie Hader-Robbins, with friend Michael Ragozin, to found Our Minyan, a monthly gathering of mostly 20-something–30-something Jews. They both had a desire to pray together and socialize in an informal setting.
“I’m much more of a liberal in terms of my practice and [Michael] is more conservative,” Hader-Robbins says, “but we were both missing something that we couldn’t find, so we just decided to start something. The negotiating was an interesting process and what we came up with was something really nice: doing a Friday night minyan once a month with an egalitarian and community-led [approach].”
“They’re looking for a community that will serve as a community socially,” says Our Minyan member Joshua Rosenstein. It is “being able to celebrate the holidays and have Shabbat services in a down-to-earth, concrete way that doesn’t involve paying large membership fees or dressing up in suit or coming to a large sanctuary. More grassroots, I think, is probably the term.”
To some degree, Hader-Robbins says, their success has been a cause of some disarray. When they began, they anticipated a small gathering of perhaps 10 or so individuals. However, they found the monthly gatherings would attract as many as 40 people a night, a number the individual hosts could barely accommodate.
Another problem that has developed, according to Rosenstein, who has taken on the task of maintaining the email list for Our Minyan, is that two of the most committed founders, including Ragozin, have left the area to study in rabbinical schools.
“There have been challenges, as far as putting together and defining some sort of steering committee — some sort of proactive group of people that’s actually going to designate places for it to take place, designate people to lead the services, make decisions about the potlucks and about what will and won’t fly,” he says. Still, he notes, they are answering a need that a lot of people evidently feel.
Rosenstein tried to explain some of what he felt people might be looking for through his own experiences growing up in both the United States and Israel.
“My biggest Jewish setting memory is of a small community minyan in Israel on a moshav, where we’d meet in the moadon – the clubroom – on plastic chairs and community members would lead the Kabbalat Shabbat and the kids would lead the Adon Olam and there’d be kids traipsing around during it. Then you’d have home-baked cookies and go home for Shabbat dinner. Likewise,” he continues, “when we lived in the States, we went to large synagogues that also made allowances for small minyans or small havurot to meet in their facilities. It didn’t detract from the main services, but it made allowances for different kinds of services and different kinds of Jewish communities.”
In contrast to Our Minyan, which does not have a rabbi or see itself becoming a congregation itself, the six-month-old Kol Ha Neshama Progressive Synagogue Community, was organized, in part by Rabbi Michael Latz, with the aim of putting together a Reform congregation for the West Seattle area.
“It is a group of mostly people who have been unaffiliated,” says Jackson Holtz, who acts as a spokesperson for the group. “Our intention at Kol Ha Neshama is to become affiliated with the Reform movement, so we won’t be unaffiliated for too long.
One of the goals of this new group was geographic, because there was a Jewish community that wasn’t necessarily being served in West Seattle. But I think more was the idea of creating a very participatory, progressive community and a small community.”
Holtz adds, “We will probably maintain the spirit of a small synagogue community that in many ways is largely independent, because we will have our own prayer book and our own way of doing services and really, our own outlook in how we want to build the community. I helped create a community with several other people that we contributed [ideas of] this is how we want it to be. It’s very exciting, really, to be part of a community where you can have such an impact as an individual,” says Holtz.
B’nai Torah’s Kinberg allows that “maybe there’s a spiritual component that exists now that didn’t exist in the ‘50s or ‘60s and the people are looking for that.
“I think,” she adds, “the synagogues are starting to respond. I think both Reform and Conservative, and definitely Reconstructionist and Jewish Renewal, are starting to incorporate ‘Godal’ language that might speak to a wider variety of people’s lived experience of the Divine in their lives.”
At the same time, she says, “everybody’s spirituality is very individual.”
Kinberg, who says she was inspired to become a rabbi by the uniquely engaging programs and the sense of community on the Upper West Side of Manhattan several years ago, explained that “it’s very, very difficult to create what’s been happening at B’nai Jeshurun, because you can have the most fantastic, amazing musical service in the entire universe and the most dynamic rabbis that have ever lived, and you don’t have the same benefit of having all the people live sort of on top of each other in a very small part of a little island.”
So why not at least try? Synagogues around the country that have tried to emulate B’nai Jeshurun have met with limited success. This area’s congregations, whether for financial or other reasons, have chosen to wait for the population to start families before getting serious about younger members.
“There’s definitely great potential in Seattle for a thriving, young adult Jewish community,” says Reneé Cohen. As assistant director of Hillel at the University of Washington, she should know. “There are a lot of young Jews here, and a lot of excitement about getting together with other Jews,” she says.
Although the organization lost funding for its popular 21–30 JConnect program earlier this year, Cohen says Hillel is working on raising the money for a full-time position to keep it going.
The new part-time staff member, Josh Miller, has already begun to expand the program’s reach with a monthly community Shabbat dinner and musical service.
“There is, I think, a reluctance to be identified and affiliated among this population. Young Jews want a community experience but don’t necessarily want to have a formal, identified, affiliated experience,” Cohen says.
“I think it’s a matter of a Jewish context that is relevant and speaks to them,” she continues, “which can sometimes be a challenge. These are people who are working more hours than they were a generation or two ago. There are more competing interests for their time.”
Our Minyan’s Rosenstein says being the contact person for Our Minyan has convinced him that something real is happening among the young adults in the Puget Sound’s Jewish population.
“I am very often exposed to young people in the community, and new people in the community, and basically the unaffiliated,” he says. “There are hundreds of people in the Seattle area – young, unaffiliated Jews that really want some kind of meaningful Judaism. It’s a real need and there are real high numbers. I wish I knew the answers to what to offer to it, but all I know is that it definitely exists and I talk to it and email it every day.”