The Heart of Your Community

If we think about the synagogue as a human body, I believe that the heart of its life is the religious school, with its vibrancy of children and parents.  And the board of the synagogue, well... I will let you decide on that body part. Yet my view of reality has the religious school as a structural attachment, or maybe a detachment.  Many times there is a void between the board of the synagogue and the religious school.  At times they can feel like two distinct organizations.  

Synagogues need to restructure themselves with the school at their core.

Just take a look at the non-Jewish communities we live in.  Whether it is an urban or rural community, the vibrant heart is the community that grows around and out of the schools.  Unfortunately, for many synagogue boards of directors, lay leadership kicks up at a time when individuals are very removed from the connection of school life.  And today that disconnect is greater as our children and young parents are ever more connected in ways that we do not relate to.  

We have become our parents.

Creative energy is the spark of life.  Creative energy comes from our youth and those directly connected to them, parents and teachers.  Congregational religious schools are the number-one providers of Jewish education, outside the home.  We as parents need our religious schools to broaden and deepen what we are teaching our children at home.  Today this is more and more challenging for the schools, as they face the challenge of transitioning from outdated teaching models to an ever-increasing digital structure, from "Hebrew education" to Jewish education--all at a time when there are challenging economic realities impacting synagogue life as a whole.

There are a number of organizations deeply involved in improving our Jewish education for children.  All the movements understand the importance of educating our children, whether they attend one day of religious school or six.  But the biggest transition we can make is in our own communities, and the importance we place on educating our children.  The movements and others can provide more structure, more training, better curricula--but what they can not provide is local community leadership that can reconnect the synagogue and the religious school and, more specifically, reconnect the importance of educating our children with the board of the synagogue.

Look at your synagogue board.  How many board members are parents of children in your school?  Does the educational director come to every board meeting?  Does a religious school committee member have a leadership position on the board's executive committee?  Our children are the future.  Is your board structured in a way that ensures the success of our children's education?