Are You Maximizing Your E-Newsletter?

Your synagogue e-newsletter is your best opportunity to reach the largest number of people the most frequently. Does it do what you need it to do? Would you send it to five friends who don't belong to your synagogue? If not, take a step back--it’s time to revamp.

Here are some of many steps you can consider taking to make your e-newsletter a more effective communication channel.

1. Make signing up easy & enticing. Make it easy to find, with simple prompts, and for goodness sake, make it look good!
Consider all of the elements of your subscriber process. “Join our list” is not compelling, nor shares the value they can expect to get in exchange for giving you their info if they sign up. Make it a strong and appealing call to action. Think of the “sign up” link on an e-newsletter or website as a tool. Learn strategies for getting the “sign up” tool found and ways to encourage individuals to join.

2. “Sign up” and “share” ON your e-newsletter. Provide an easy-to-find link to sign up and share your e-newsletter on your e-newsletter.
E-newsletters are social media -- allow them to work for you. You need to put the right information in front of the right people. You may be sending an e-newsletter to the individual associated with membership, but the opportunity is to get other household members to subscribe, as well as their extended family and friends. And don’t stop there...

3. “Sign up” ON your homepage, at least! Provide an easy-to-find link to sign up for your e-newsletter on your homepage.
Prospects are going to your homepage first to check you out. Get them on your e-newsletter list and keep the good information flowing to them. Don’t stop on the homepage, but identify frequently accessed pages throughout your site to add a sign-up link.

4. Leverage social media for subscribers. Create feedback loops -- no dead ends.
Take your e-newsletter sign-up link to social media and take your relationship to the next level. Reach out for new subscribers in all of your channels of communication. Create a permanent spot on your Facebook page for all the ways to connect with your community: e-news, blogs, Twitter, etc.

5. “One size fits no one.” Create communication channels specific to different segments of your membership.
Consider creating multiple e-newsletters that are focused on the needs of your membership -- not the needs of your synagogue. Parents of Hebrew school children have different needs than your “boomer” members. It is your responsibility to be relevant to your members. Otherwise, they will not read your content. Consider various channels for different segments, but that’s another blog....

6. Make it relevant. Write about opportunities.
What are the opportunities to connect, to enhance the relevancy of Judaism and to engage constituents, prospective members and the community at large?

7. Make it permission based. Communicate with recipients who are choosing to give you their attention.
Author and marketing guru Seth Godin says that permission marketing is all about turning strangers into friends and friends into customers. You get the picture....

8. Measure everything. Use metrics to get data on the effectiveness of your work.
Get data-driven feedback on how many folks are opening your e-newsletter, what are they clicking on and how each e-newsletter stacks up to the previous and industry standards. You’ll see clearly what your readers find interesting. And then give them more of that content.

Email newsletters are an essential part of your social media engagement program. Fill them with brief and interesting content. Create links that will bring readers back to your website or be their lead to take them to exciting outside content. The more vibrant and interesting your enews is, the more engagement you will foster.

See you at synagogue.

P.S. And just so you don’t think I’m biased on the subject: Top 7 Alternatives to Constant Contact. It happens that it was written in 2007, but you decide....

What a Website Calendar Can Do

Over the past several months, we at Jvillage have been talking with many synagogues about their website needs and wants. We have asked synagogues to tell us what is working and what is not working as well as what is on their dream list for their website. And the number one issue that comes up is the community calendar. Synagogues believe that most of their member website activity is focused on their calendar. And at best this is an intuitive response, when it could be an analytical response. But that’s a conversation for another time.

At Jvillage, we have worked diligently to create calendar capability for your website that can help you with membership engagement, retention and fundraising.  Here are several key tools that the Jvillage calendar can provide your synagogue:

• Easy calendar administration. If you can type, you can update your calendar. You can create several calendars including shared calendars (public and private). We heard loud and clear that this was a priority for synagogues, and we have developed one of the easiest to use and update calendars possible.
  
  
• Promote your upcoming events. Use your homepage to promote an event. Our website administration tools enable you to check off a box that allows you to create a  promotional message for your homepage or any page (sisterhood, day camp, services, etc). And like a slide show, you can have different promotional messages appear one after another.  
  
  
• RSVP directly from your calendar & make payments. An event on your calendar can provide an RSVP email address or printable sign-up form for registration or response. And the email response can go to as many people as necessary to be informed of your member’s interest, such as the event organizer, other event participants, and your executive director. You can also gather all the info you need at once, including requests for volunteers to set up, a tally of vegetarian or fish dinners and payment -- all in one fell swoop.
  
  
• Social bar. With the use of a “social bar” (the option to share with others) a user can forward an event/item in an email to someone else or just as a self reminder.
  
  
• Event content. An event may contain links to internal or external content.  An easy click and you can provide all the information your congregants will need to make a decision on an event.  Whether it’s supporting an event with photographs, sending viewers to a YouTube video or providing an external website for further learning, you calendar can become much more engaging for current and prospective members.
  
  
• Multiple calendar display. An event calendar can be displayed in calendar format or list format. Or it can be displayed differently on different sections of your website.
  
  
• Full Hebrew calendar. You will be provided with the Hebrew dates for all holidays, as well as the Western calendar dates.
  
  

Find out more about how a Jvillage Network calendar can work for your synagogue. Go to our website and sign up for a demo.

Shalom and Your Website

“Shalom” is one of the most powerful Hebrew words that I know. Our use of it in the vernacular is as a welcoming greeting or fond farewell. We could be saying “hi,” or “hello,” but instead we greet people with Shalom. And when we say “Shabbat Shalom” we are saying much more than welcome to Shabbat. The word itself greets you with a blessing from God. A blessing that comes with peace, completeness, well-being and perfection. What a meaningful idea to greet someone with Shalom! How much better it would be if we understood the meaning of Shalom.

Whether it is our Hebrew language or the traditions of our organization, we need to understand the words’ meaning and impact on members and prospective members. Everything we do should be viewed through the filter of the “drive by Jew.” And many of our members are in this drive-by-Jew category. As active Jewish leaders, we quickly lose sight of the high bar of entry into our organizations. I for one think we should lower the bar to the ground, and instead think about building connective bridges.

Our unintentional day-to-day living through our Judaism can lead to barriers that make it difficult for other Jews to join us. We need to make it easier to see and appreciate the value of our Jewish organizations. And our websites should lead this effort. Our websites enables us to integrate and engage with our members. No longer should a website be a stagnant provider of information; it should be as much a part of the day-to-day life of the Jewish community as our brick and mortar buildings.  

A website can provide your membership with a full and rich:

• calendar experience that includes sign-up and payment opportunities
• religious school collaboration between parents, teachers and students
• private committee blogs for the community
• a public blog for the rabbi
• Judaica shopping experience
• education about our Holidays and traditions
• webinar opportunities
• and on and on...

We should explore ways in which we can bring the true meaning of “Shalom” to life in our community, both on and offline.

Shalom

Opening the Sermon's Doors

I am always amazed at the amount of time the clergy spends each week thinking, preparing, writing and delivering their sermon. All that time spent, and how few receivers there are for the message. Shouldn’t a sermon be available to all the members of your synagogue? Those who benefit are those who come to Shabbat services, and hopefully retain the essence of the message. But what about the other members, or if you miss a Shabbat? The weekly sermon is often a foundational building block to greater outreach. Rabbis do not leave us with dead ends--they leave us with the possibility for more. How can your community use the rabbi’s sermon as a key foundational outreach opportunity?

Why doesn’t the rabbi offer the sermon on the website?

Why doesn’t the rabbi blog about his/her past sermon, or maybe the sermon coming up this Shabbat?

Why doesn’t the rabbi tweet?

And here I need to stop for a moment and own up to the fact that I am one who regularly attends Shabbat services. I attend for many reasons: 

my need to honor our tradition

my need to honor my family that gave so much

my need to replenish my soul

my need to take time out from the madness and chaos of the world around me.

Most often I find Shabbat sermons to be meaningful soul searching opportunities. And yet, most often when I go to revisit that state of reflection, or the parts of the sermon that were meaningful for me, I have trouble remembering what was said. There is an unfortunate clash when the power of the sermon’s message meets the power of my personal world. No matter how hard I attempt to take the essence of a sermon with me into the coming week, it is inevitably confronted by a bulldozer of the day-to-day realities. And if anything, those day-to-day realities are coming at us quicker than ever before; ironically providing us with an ever greater need to find that personal reflection time.The rabbi’s sermon can become one of the foundational components to the synagogue’s website, providing members and prospective members with a library of the philosophy of the synagogue. And what a wonderful opportunity for someone searching for reflection or greater knowledge, to know that they can easily turn to one of them on the website to fulfill a need they have at the moment.

Most sermons are rich with many connection points for greater learning and study. Most of us in the blog world start with a potential readership of zero, and moving from there forward is a long hard road. Yet, a rabbi starts with a readership base filled with many who would be interested in reading and reflecting on their thoughts, and a readership base that is inclined to share the rabbi’s thoughts with others, both in the community and outside. What are the possibilities for your community if the rabbi blogged twice a week? A Sunday blog sharing the key idea from the past Shabbat sermon that links back to the full sermon on the site. And a Thursday blog that shares the key idea that will be in this Shabbat’s sermon linked to further Jewish study on the topic. An early Friday tweet could provide a message that brings members into Shabbat. We all know how important the rabbi is to the success of a synagogue. And each week the rabbi does the heavy lifting of the sermon. We need to put together a team that helps spread the rabbi’s message to the rest of your membership and the Jews who are window shopping. The next time you hear an inspirational or meaningful sermon, think about how you could take it a step further. Would re-reading it deepen the meaning? Would a discussion thread allow others to participate in the conversation? Would a pre-Shabbat tweet encourage more listeners? And for members who do not make it to services this week, would access to the rabbi’s sermon benefit them? How can the sermon serve the community?

Your Portal to Everything Jewish

Today the online portals we have to “Everything Jewish” are Google and Chabad. Google is so big and unfiltered that searching for a specific Jewish resource can be as fulfilling as trying to find a proverbial needle in a haystack. Chabad, while more focused, often carries a perspective that many would rather not use as a primary source for Jewish life. The undeniable fact is that your synagogue’s website should become the portal for “Everything Jewish” for your congregation. There’s no doubt that this is a big undertaking, a major commitment, and not something you need to accomplish in the short-term -- but it is time that you create the vision and begin to set goals for transforming your website into the portal to “Everything Jewish” for your congregation.

With this as a goal you will be providing additional value to your membership by helping them integrate and associate their lives more fully with the life of the synagogue. Many Jewish questions arise in the course of everyday life, from the basic holiday questions to more in-depth Torah studies. The synagogue that moves toward being the portal for “Everything Jewish” and helping seekers address, explore, and answer these questions becomes more valuable and indispensable to all of its members. After all, as Rabbi Aaron Bisno of Congregation Rodef Shalom in Pittsburgh reminds us, “Our congregations are voluntary membership organizations.”

Start with the basics by offering your members comprehensive information online about Torah, Holidays, Life Cycles and Israel. With these foundations in place, you will have a dynamic website that will be a win-win for everyone.

Judaism in the Digital Age

In America, there are many branches of Judaism. The “leading four” branches are Reconstructionist, Reform, Conservative and Orthodox. These four are followed by Jewish Renewal, Humanistic Judaism and probably others of which that I am not even aware. And within these six-plus branches there is a great degree of variation in beliefs, observance and practice. However, even with all these denominations of Judaism, many Jews consider themselves “Jewish” with no branch affiliation. One might ask, “Is the Jewish community today more unified or more fragmented?” But we will let those with much more wisdom than I debate that question.  

As for digital technology, it is the great community-builder of our time. As technology becomes more and more integrated into our daily lives, the opportunities to build Jewish communities increase.  We see it as communities like our synagogue website and rabbi’s blog to AIPAC, J Street and JDate continue to gain visitors, membership and traction. And as these individual Jewish communities grow, so too does the larger Jewish community. The more we are connected around our Jewishness, the more we communicate, the more we learn, discuss, cry, argue, laugh, despair, hope and raise awareness of our Jewish selves and our Jewish identity.

There is no doubt that at the same time we are also losing large numbers of Jews from active participation in Judaism. American culture today provides many options for our spiritual, educational and social needs. And our organized Jewish communities, by and large, have not stepped up to creating value and desire to participate in Judaism. The organized Jewish outreach is still rooted in obligation as the primary reason to participate in our community.

Judaism is and has always been in flux, constantly changing to adapt to the modern world—from one of the most tragic times for Jews in modern history, the Holocaust, followed by the creation of the state of Israel, to Jews leaving their Orthodox roots in huge numbers and beginning the Reform movement, to the shift in our children’s Jewish education from what was once a daily part of their lives to what is now an hour or two out of their week.

And now we find ourselves again in one of those moments in time that generations to come will look back on as a monumental cultural shift: the digital age. This new age can both diversify and unify the Jewish people. It is two sides of the same coin. The digital world creates the opportunity for greater unification and identification with our Judaism through the proactive and passionate use of the digital tools available to us today. We are able to build online communities where like-minded Jews can gather and share, where we can participate at our own speed and level of knowledge.  

And like a hammer, saw and chisel, the traditional tools of creation, we need to look at “digital” as a new tool. Architects and planners are dreamers, and their dreams come to life through the appropriate use of tools. Rabbis, educators and passionate believers are the dreamers for the future of Judaism and digital technology can help bring their dreams to life.

Building and Managing Your Website

Technology and Social Media
 
Today, synagogues are beginning to understand the importance of the various social media tools available to them.  Facebook, Twitter, blogging and email are all becoming important tools as we work to create greater engagement and reach into our communities. And at the heart of all these communication tools, both offline and online is the synagogue’s website. All of your communication should invite people to a deeper and richer conversation that is centrally located through your website. But who in your organization manages the development and updating of your site?

We conducted research that showed that synagogues are successfully managing both the building of their website and updating of information on their sites in very different ways. For instance, we found that the majority of synagogues built their existing website through either a lay person with experience or they hired an outside professional. The day-to-day management of the site was primarily handled by internal staff.

But one of the surprises we saw in our research was that while most of the synagogues are satisfied with the website they have today, they indicated a strong desire to add new features to their sites that would make them more engaging and help to connect with the community.

The shift from a website that provides basic information to one that truly engages a community requires the rethinking and restructuring of how synagogues have been managing this process. And building a truly engaging site, and managing that site are two very different functions. Where should those functions live in a synagogue structure today?  Should there be a website committee?  Each synagogue will answer this differently depending on the size of their community, the interests of lay leaders and the interests of key staff.  

Here are a few things to consider as you think this through:

Building a new website.  It’s an iterative process; there will always be new technology, new people, new programs, shifts in you membership demographics, changes in our larger society. Beyond updating, plan on a redesign at least every three years to present your organization as current and welcoming as possible.  

·         Consider the creation of a website task group to take this on. It’s one of the most effective ways of building involvement in the community and getting new ideas and actions into play. This is not a standing committee, but a task group that has a life of six months. And the website task group reports directly to the board.

                  The six month time frame should breakdown into 4 phases:

·         community input and research - 1½ months

·         website outline/architectural planning - 1½ months

·         build the site - 1½ months

·         populate the site with your content and test launch the site - 1½ months

·         The website task group should be comprised of six to eight members of your congregation (remember the larger the group the longer the process). These members should be the most tech-enthusiastic members of your congregation, mixed with one professional staff and one or two non-technical lay persons who represent your target demographics.

·         The process must begin with seeking input from your membership. What does the membership want from a website? The more input into this process the greater opportunity for success and launching an engaging website that your community will use.

·         Once the site is launched, this task group should be recognized with a special Shabbat service, followed by the formal announcement of the site. Although this group has completed their work, most synagogues will find that several members of the task group will volunteer to move over to the committee now responsible for the management of the site. Again, utilizing task groups with limited scope projects is one of the most effective ways of building involvement in the community.

Maintaining an engaging website.  The overall desire for engagement that already exists in your community, combined with the right online engagement tools results in an effective website for membership engagement. One will constantly be raising the bar for the other. With an engaging website, managed by different people in your congregation, you will see an overall increase in your reach and effectiveness.

·         Overall website management should be under the direction of a committee that is engaged in outreach and community building. It should not live with a technology committee. And one professional staff member should be assigned to support this commitment.

·         Each committee in your organization should have a member that is responsible for updating their section of the website (including the board).  

·         The Hebrew school should be one of the most active users of the site: Individual teachers can create member groups for their classes, informing parents of progress, assignments, upcoming events and presentation of recent projects.

·         The clergy also should be active contributors to the site.

Set up a dedicated task group to provide your synagogue with the site your community wants and needs. After all, your website is a key entry point into your community. How to start the process? Look for a platform that is easy to maintain, has the online tools you need now (and provides room to grow), and you’ll thank me in the months ahead for this one -- that allows unique logins for access to maintain only certain sections of the site. Get the right people writing the content while not giving them access to areas that could bring the site down. With that, Happy Holidays.

Creating an Engagement Map for Your Synagogue

(Technology and Social Media, Marketing, Organizational Development)
 
Your ability to enhance the relevancy of Judaism and to engage constituents, prospective members and the community at large is key to the strength of your congregation. Once engaged, your membership’s participation will grow. It is a wonderful cycle that will continue, and yet, requires a plan that not only invites people in to participate, but creates ongoing paths of involvement with no dead ends. This can often be challenging as we all get absorbed in our day-to-day tasks, and can neglect setting an over-arching engagement course--an engagement map, if you will. Be deliberate in this endeavor, move to a more proactive plan to engage and connect with your community.

Deepening relationships and increasing commitments doesn’t tend happen out of luck. Your course of action may start with creating a new task group to plan this out. Creating task groups is an engagement strategy to involve more members in your community. A task group has a limited agenda and a limited time commitment, plus a lower barrier to entry than committee membership.  

Here are three things you and your leadership should think about with regard to engagement:

·         Not all members are the same. A synagogue has multiple groups it needs to engage. Start by identifying your membership and segmenting. You can use the traditional membership classifications such as Hebrew school Parents, Boomers, Empty Nesters, or create your own based on criteria which might include age, gender, interests, needs, patterns, etc. Every synagogue will have different membership segments. The overall intent is to identify groups of similar members and potential members, to prioritize the groups to engage, to understand their patterns and to respond with appropriate engagement strategies. This path will lead to greater engagement, retention, vitality, new membership and in the end, increased revenues.

·         Engagement needs to be designed for individual members. First, avoid top-down engagement programming. For engagement programming to be successful, you have to understand the needs of your member segments and then create programming that will truly begin to engage them. Understanding needs can be accomplished through several basic assessment options:

             - Low barrier to entry is creating an online survey. Go to www.surveymonkey.com with a prepared list of questions.
              - You can also mail this same survey to your members for those not apt to see it online. Remember to provide them a return stamped and self-addressed envelope with the survey, as this will increase responses.
              - And last, you could create a series of gatherings in members’ homes, engage them in a conversation and give the opportunity to fill out a survey. While this requires a greater commitment, it will yield the most engagement.
Your biggest challenge after this assessment process is to prioritize the outcome. What are the key opportunities that will begin to create an ongoing engagement path for more members?

·         Membership engagement can lead to overall synagogue alignment. Change in synagogue organizational life is part of the new world that we are now living in. There are new challenges for professional leadership and lay leadership. Often these challenges divert attention to (important) short-term issues, which may result in longer term alignment initiatives taking a back seat in the ongoing work load. Focusing and delivering on membership engagement is a way of creating a cohesive and proactive leadership. Membership engagement is about putting your members’ needs first. Focus on member needs and the synagogue organization will come together behind this effort.

Creating an engagement map involves developing the entryways into your community and ongoing paths to deepen the relationship with your members. By creating a task group, you are creating an opportunity to bring key stake holders into the process -- always an excellent strategy in membership engagement. What are the pathways in your organization? Are they navigable? Do you make it easy to get involved? How do you take the relationship to the next level?

Will You Be Ready? The Potential Positive Baby Boomer Impact

(Culture and Community) 

Over the next 20 years we are going to experience a population boom in the 65 and older generation – the Boomers.  Over 20% of the United States population will make up this generation, and the majority of boomers are looking forward to this shift in their lives.  Getting older has two overly simplistic sides to the coin.  On the one side we are approaching our final chapters in the book of life, and on the other side we are looking forward to our “retirement” years.  

Is your synagogue planning for this?  The synagogue boomer population has great growth opportunity according to Rabbi Gerald Weider, founder of Jboomers, an organization that uses Facebook to connect Jewish baby boomers nationwide with opportunities for hands-on tikkun olam service, Jewish learning, spiritual fulfillment and Jewish travel. According to Rabbi Weider, neglecting the needs of this important segment of the population will come at the expense of the larger Jewish community.

Most synagogues are structured to live their mission through committees.  Does your synagogue have a ‘boomer” committee? If not, consider what such a committee can provide:

·         Volunteer opportunities

·         Learning opportunities

·         Social opportunities

·         Healthy living opportunities

Synagogues have always attracted our elders.  Yet this group of elders approaching retirement is different than what we have seen over the last twenty years: more positive in their outlook, more active, looking toward a longer retirement period, and financially more secure.   Creating an “elder circle” committee, a group focused on the needs and wants of the Jewish boomer segment, is the starting point for opening the doors of your synagogues wider to this important group.

Given what a major impact on our Jewish lives this population will have over the next twenty years, what better institution than the synagogue to both support our elders and harness their energy?

Start the New Year with a Blog

Blogging generates new visitors to your website by:

• Search visibility: blogs are organized to be search engine friendly.  Plus the more content you have the more chances there are of attracting search traffic.

• Click through traffic: through posting interesting articles a blog gives a reason for other people to link to you.

• Engaging content: posting from your leadership or using Jvillage content channels sets you apart from others.

• Repeat traffic: regularly updated content and comments bring visitors back...and back.  

• An easy way to update your website: every new post is fresh content on your site.

• Personality: create a blog around your synagogue or organizations culture and let your personality attract others.  Blogging is a safe way for people to make friends with you.

Yoram Samets, Co-Founder of Jvillage Network, has over 30 years of experience in the marketing and communication industry. He is also a partner in Kelliher Samets Volk, a marketing group that employs more than 60 people at its offices in New York City, Boston, and Burlington, Vermont.

Shut It Off

Holidays and Shabbat

It feels like life's roller coaster has been traveling at speeds never clocked before, the highs and lows breaking all records.  And although I live in that world everyday, I believe this sense of chaos is driven by the times and the culture we have created.  Is this time any more challenging than Jewish life under the Pharaohs, the destruction of the Temple, the Holocaust? The difference is that those times were missing the great cultural benefits of CNN, FOX, Twitter, Facebook, and on and on.

So as we go into this scared time, as we have the opportunity to go into ourselves. SHUT IT ALL OFF.  The world will still be in the same shape after the High Holidays, and you will be in better shape to be more intentional about moving forward in it.

Shana Tovah. Have a good and sweet New Year.

Yoram Samets, Co-Founder of Jvillage Network, has over 30 years of experience in the marketing and communication industry. He is also a partner in Kelliher Samets Volk, a marketing group that employs more than 60 people at its offices in New York City, Boston, and Burlington, Vermont.

A Synagogue’s Ten New Year’s Resolutions

Holidays and Shabbat

1. The Rabbi will blog his or her sermon weekly.

2. All community events will get on our calendar with links to more information.

3. Our website homepage will have pictures of people on it, not buildings.

4. We will promote shopping through our website on a regular basis.

5. Our website news channel will feature more Israeli news.

6. We will organize a group to bring community vibrancy to our Facebook page.

7. Our communications will have no dead-ends.

8. The religious school will use the synagogue website to inform parents and grandparents.

9. Thursday will be twitter day, tweeting the upcoming Shabbat events.

10. We will develop an engagement plan for the upcoming year.

Shana Tovah, from our village to yours.

Yoram Samets, Co-Founder of Jvillage Network, has over 30 years of experience in the marketing and communication industry. He is also a partner in Kelliher Samets Volk, a marketing group that employs more than 60 people at its offices in New York City, Boston, and Burlington, Vermont.

High Holiday Connection Opportunity

   

Each year we are provided with a valuable opportunity to reach beyond our inner circles and make the High Holidays a time of reaching out to make new connections. Our Jewish community is a microcosm reflecting the diversity of our broader communities, including youth, single or newly married 20-and 30-somethings, LGBT and interfaith couples and families, baby boomers, retirees, and on and on. While the Jewish thread may run deep through each of these groups, every demographic, and especially every individual, will experience and participate in the High Holidays differently.

Yet all too often, our synagogues--often filled to the brim--offer a one-size-fits-all experience of the High Holidays. As a result, many Jews do not step foot inside a synagogue at all during this very special and important time of the Jewish year.

There is no quick fix for this situation.  What is needed is a long-term program that:

• engages more of the congregation that does show up for the High Holidays to become involved throughout the year; and
• meets the needs of the Jewish community that does not come to synagogue during this time, yet seeks ways to be connected nonetheless.

In our small Jewish community here in Burlington, Vermont, one of the local synagogues provides traditional High Holiday services in the sanctuary and a parallel service at the community boathouse located on the shores of Lake Champlain. Each draws its own participants. Another area synagogue holds a mountainside service, taking advantage of our powerful natural surroundings.  What can your community be doing to meet more Jews where they are most comfortable gathering, and where they are most likely to feel the holy sparks of connection and community?

In order to successfully meet the individual and communal spiritual needs of an increasingly diverse Jewish population during the High Holidays, every community, each organization, must have at its core a passionate and committed group holding a broader vision of the community. This core group must embody the connection between giving of themselves and welcoming those who might be less inclined to participate. After all, what we all have in common is the fundamental desire to belong.

This year, what will your core community do to increase a sense of inclusion and belonging among more and more of your members during the High Holidays?  

by Yoram Samets

Posted by judy@jvillagenetwork.com at 9/11/2012 3:01 PM