Today’s ‘orphans’ and ‘widows’ belong in shul too

Shuls (synagogues) have a rather lousy business model. You can attend the same shul your entire life and not pay the shul a penny. You don’t need a membership card to attend shiurim (classes) or daily davening (prayer services) in an air-conditioned room. There is no payment required to receive free babysitting in the form of youth groups or to enjoy cholent every Shabbos, and freshly brewed coffee every morning. This poses a challenge to shuls, which provide many costly benefits, but have no mechanism to enforce payment.

It’s a challenge I am more than sympathetic to, as my paycheck relies on these membership dollars. I and my shul leadership often discuss how to encourage more people who attend our shul regularly to formally join us. But by focusing on pushing membership, we risk losing sight of the most basic and historic role of a shul — to serve the community at large.

In pre-war Europe, the destitute would sleep on shul benches. They did not “pay membership fees” and yet, these community members were such an integral part of shul life that many shuls instituted saying Kiddush and Havdalah during davening for these people who had nowhere to eat — a custom that many still maintain. However, over the years, as larger shuls professionalized and with the explosion of shtiebels (small, homey synagogues) each catering to very specific subsets of the community, this ideal of a shul being a community center slowly gave way to a more myopic model of servicing their members only.

This shift in thinking was illustrated to me in a recent conversation with a shul president of a large shul. We were discussing a recent initiative of the Orthodox Union to ensure that our communities were more welcoming and respectful towards divorcees, widows, and single men and women. The president replied that they take great care of the three divorcees and two widows in his shul and that they have no singles. I nodded along, but I could not help wondering how many divorcees, widows, and singles lived in the immediate vicinity of this shul. Likely more than those five.

If shuls are focused on servicing their membership, the president would justifiably be proud of how they are accommodating their members. If shuls are to be focused on servicing the broader community, they are failing miserably.

Over a third of my shul’s 295 membership units are divorced, widowed, or single. This did not happen accidentally. It took a lay leadership who saw value in being the welcoming place we are today and making significant changes to make such a population feel embraced. It took explicit messages like talking about the challenge of not being married with children in a community that appropriately elevates family, as well as implicit messaging, such as unique membership prices for single men and women and single-parent families. (To be clear, the goal of these membership categories is not to get more people in this population to join. Many in this population are unable to afford membership at any price. The goal of having categories of membership that reflect their personal life experience conveys the simple and important message that they are seen and valued.)

Probably the most important step we took was giving divorcees, widows, and singles leadership roles in our shul. Having them at the decision-making table has provided endless insights as to how we can be more accommodating and welcoming and has conveyed to all that not being married with children does not mean you are less than.

I have yet to meet shul leaders who are not eager to make their shul more welcoming and accommodating, not only for those in their shul, but for the countless men and women who do not have a shul to call home and could desperately use one. It must be noted that there are many different types of people, not only divorcees, widows, and singles, who may not feel welcome in our shuls. Most recently, there has been much talk about welcoming the unaffiliated, who, after October 7^th, have a renewed interest in their heritage. This and every group that make up the Jewish people is critical. However, do we not have a more basic obligation to those who already live in our community, but feel estranged and ignored? More fundamentally, this population is most akin to the “orphan and widow,” to whom we are instructed to give special care. For those interested, I created a non-scientific self-assessment tool for shuls to rate how welcoming and accommodating they are, which can be found HERE.

For the near future, shuls will likely be tethered to the membership financial model, but that does not mean they must act like businesses. Shuls can serve their members and serve the broader community like they did in the not-so-ancient past. With a change of perspective and small steps, we can reimagine the function of a shul as a center of support and connection for the entire community. And who knows? Perhaps people will be more inclined to financially support such shuls, recognizing their unique ability to create community for the many spiritually and socially homeless who live among us.