From Central Synagogue Strategic Plan - 1993
Central Synagogue, a Reform congregation affiliated with the Union for Reform Judaism, is one of the oldest Reform congregations in New York City. Formed from the merger in 1898 of Shar HaShomayim, founded in 1839 by German Jews, and Ahawath Chesed, founded in 1846 by Bohemian Jews, the congregation changed its name to Central Synagogue in 1920. Central Synagogue stands at the heart of one of the greatest centers of Jewish life. It has always played a significant role in the national Reform movement and in the creative and complex Jewish community of New York City. Its Rabbis and members continue a long tradition of leadership of local, national and international Jewish and civic organizations.
The mission of Central Synagogue is to embody and to celebrate the "brit" (covenant) between God and the Jewish people as originally revealed in the Torah and as it has evolved through our history. We are commanded to live as individuals and as a community with sacred purpose, with dedication to the continuity of the Jewish people, and with awareness of God's expectations of us as we pursue tikun olam (repair of the world) and reflect the covenant in our personal and communal life.
The Synagogue will joyfully support and embody these values so that they become integral to the life of its members through:
This is an extraordinarily healthy and vital period in Central Synagogue's institutional life. Our membership has increased significantly in recent years. The congregation continues to offer expanded and diverse programs. Above all, increased numbers of congregants regularly attend services and other synagogue functions. Central Synagogue has an excellent reputation in New York City and the reform movement. We continue to build an excellent and well-regarded senior staff.
Why then is a Strategic Plan necessary at this time? Because we know that too often the seeds for failure are sowed during an era of success. We may languish unless our congregation continuously considers our core values and institutional purposes and how to reflect these ideals and actions. If the synagogue does not establish and clearly communicate our values and priorities we may not fulfill the mandate to be a leader in the community. We choose to be active in pursuing the highest purposes of our tradition and faith in the framework of our institutional structure and activities.
Our congregation must be as dynamic as the evolving constituency of our growing membership. We know that as our numbers grow, and as our society evolves and changes, our worship practices, learning needs, and communal commitments must evolve and change. Regular strategic planning will help us reflect contemporary reality and needs. For all these reasons developing a new strategic plan for Central Synagogue is a significant and necessary task.
Sam Wasserman, president of the congregation, with the full support of the board of trustees and senior staff, determined that this is the appropriate time for Central Synagogue to again examine its mission and articulate its defining core institutional values. To that end the membership of the Strategic Planning Committee was constituted to represent a cross-section of the congregation: trustees and non-trustees, members of longer and shorter duration, members presently involved and those not involved at all. Clergy and senior administrative staff participated on the committee. The requirement of all committee members was that they be willing to commit the necessary time and energy to undertake this critical and challenging task.
An essential principle guiding the Strategic Planning Committee was that it is not sufficient to merely revise old programs. We cannot only prune the existing trees; we must plant anew. We would not adequately serve our congregation at this critical juncture by merely revising the present program; we must be ready to make real changes where necessary and appropriate. The Strategic Planning Committee was charged with the responsibility to dream about what could be and not merely modify what presently exists. We recognize that many of the changes identified by this plan will involve an evolutionary implementation, while other changes may be more drastic. We will make sure that the congregation continues to be aware of the steps being taken throughout the process so there will be no surprises.
We believe that we have met our goals and offer this report to the congregation for its review and consideration.
The Committee commenced its deliberations in fall 2001 by carefully examining the existing governance, committee structure, nature of worship, educational program and financial and space constraints of Central Synagogue. We conducted interviews with the chairs of most committees and examined the function and budget implications of almost every activity within the synagogue. Additionally, the entire congregation was invited to attend one of five focus group meetings in order to obtain input that would assist the Strategic Planning Committee in formulating its response. Other sessions were held with staff, committee chairs and the Board of Trustees.
It was determined that seven subcommittees were necessary to study the critical areas of synagogue life. The subcommittees were asked to make recommendations both in reaction to present needs and according to their view of the synagogue's core values. The committees performed an audit of present conditions and provided the clearest overview of what our congregation has been doing. The seven areas of study were:
A list of the members of the Strategic Planning Committee and chairs and members of the subcommittees is attached as an appendix to this report. The congregation owes a great deal of appreciation to these dedicated individuals who worked diligently to produce this report.
The second Mishnah in the first chapter of Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) cites Shimon HaTzaddik (Shimon the Righteous) as saying:
"The world stands on three things - on the Torah, on the service of God and upon acts of loving-kindness". This philosophical triad has often been used by Reform institutions to define three-core principles essential in Jewish life.
The Strategic Planning Committee engaged in significant discussion of this and other models as organizing strategic principles. Upon reflection we submit that the traditional configuration and description of the synagogue would be a Beitter guide for us at this time in our congregational history. Historically the synagogue has been known as a Beit Midrash (house of study),Beit Tefila (house of prayer), Beit Kenesset (house of gathering) and it is here that we begin.
We therefore propose that Central Synagogue's entire program be constituted under the following three centers, each with an Advisory Board:
These Centers would represent the organizing principles of Central Synagogue. Each would have a senior staff member as a resource, a lay chair and an advisory board, and would be responsible for overseeing the activities under its governance. (Clearly we foresee communication, collaboration and integration in the work of these Centers.)
All activities in the synagogue (except for administrative function) would be aligned with one of these three Centers and each Center would develop program through many of the existing committees and programs and newly formed projects. The advisory boards of these centers would meet periodically through the year to gauge the success of programs within their centers and to consider creative projects or programs to Beitter fulfill the mandate of the synagogue as set forth under the mission of their Center.
The goals and missions of each Center are considered below with the understanding that the full mandate of the Centers needs to be more fully developed.
We believe that learning and education need to be expressed core values of the synagogue in principle and function.
The Beit Midrash is responsible for life-long education through existing school structures and as yet undefined formal and informal opportunities. Education and learning have always been primary foci of every synagogue and established goals of Jewish life.
Formal educational opportunities in the context of synagogue life traditionally consist of programs for children of pre-nursery-school age and their parents, nursery school, religious school (from kindergarten through confirmation and high school) and adult education. However, the Beit Midrash would need to explore a multitude of untapped programmatic and other opportunities to make education a part of every member's contact with the synagogue. Additionally we would need to consider whether the traditional educational models are suited to meet our current and future needs.
There should be an educational component in every synagogue activity. We need to consider unusual forms of teaching. For instance we imagine printing a teaching text on dues invoices, a d'var Torah at the beginning of all meetings. We need to assess the educational purpose and content of the Bulletin and the Order of Service.
A primary issue is how extensive our educational programs should be and what are the appropriate curricula. A basic question to be decided is whether education is to be text-based or more broadly based and cover, especially in the area of adult education, subjects of general interest. We need to consider what a synagogue uniquely can and should provide and, conversely, what educational programs may be competently and conveniently provided elsewhere, especially in a city like ours which has multiple opportunities for Jewish and cultural education.
The next step in the Strategic Plan process is to embark upon a complete strategic planning process for education, formal and informal, to develop full guidelines for the educational component of our congregation. A newly formed committee working with an educational consultant(s) expert in Jewish education should oversee such a process.
We are fully aware and subscribe to the first challenge of "A Vision of Excellence: Report of the Task Force on Congregational and Communal Jewish Education" published by JESNA (Jewish Education Service of North America). Titled "Developing a Clear Vision" the report indicates that
"Effective education is grounded in a community's vision of the values, knowledge, and skills that it seeks to transmit from generation to generation. In many Jewish schools today, the stated vision and goals of the school are neither linked directly to an institution-wide vision - enabling the school to be effective in its role as an agent for cultural transmission - nor to the vision or goals of the national movement. Nor do school goals visibly inform the practical approaches being implemented in the classroom."
The stated strategy of the JESNA report responding to this challenge is "develop a clear vision for each educational program that is anchored in a larger institution-wide vision for Jewish education."
We understand the challenge and fully subscribe to this strategy and propose that we mobilize the entire congregation in the educational strategic planning process recommended above. For all these reasons, we suppose and suggest that individual ideas, solutions, and directions be considered. Realizing what we need to do we take note of the formal programs currently in place.
The existence of pre-nursery and nursery school programs provide appropriate opportunities to introduce Judaism into the first learning experiences of Jewish children. These programs also make affiliation with a synagogue inviting to young families and new parents. (Our congregation has a stated policy that families registered in the Nursery School need to be members.)
Some of the challenges inherent in these programs are to (i) provide a quality of program that is consistent with the stated mission of the synagogue, (ii) operate them on a cost-efficient basis, (iii) provide adequate space for their activities, (iv) attract and retain competent teachers and administrators, and (v) provide competent advice and support for admission of students into the desirable ongoing schools within the city. As potent as the arguments are for the continuance of these programs, the challenges are real. We must continually evaluate whether and how effectively we can meet them.
Supplementary after school education (religious school) is presently considered a critical component of the educational responsibility of any synagogue. Many of the challenges of the nursery school program set forth above apply to this program as well. The religious school has the added challenge of providing a curriculum that will enable the students to develop a relationship with God, be prepared for Jewish adulthood, celebrate becoming a Bar/Bat Mitzvah [] in a meaningful context, continue their education through Confirmation and high school graduation, and to understand and relate to Jewish faith, tradition, history and moral principles.
Our present program consists of two hours per day, one day per week. These limited hours are themselves a challenge. In the current 38-week religious school academic year there are only a total of 76 hours of classroom time a year. This means that a student would receive only 760 hours of religious school education Beitween kindergarten and confirmation, a ten-year period. By comparison a kindergarten student would be in class in a secular school 1000 hours in that first year. The ability of any program to fulfill its mandate needs to be realistically evaluated in the context of current limits in time and class size and curriculum.
Continuing education beyond high school may represent the greatest opportunity but also the greatest challenge. Since there is no prescribed educational standard to be met and the course offerings and collateral programs can be freely formulated, the leadership of the synagogue is in a position to create programs that can be in furtherance of the core values established for Central Synagogue. Commitment to lifelong learning should be one of the requirements for positions of leadership in the congregation. The ability, however, to formulate, market, staff, house and fund a quality continuing educational program is a major undertaking requiring significant commitments from staff. Again, we must carefully evaluate what we are doing against the backdrop of the existing demands on clergy as well as the education and administrative infrastructure.
The Beit Tefilah would be responsible for translating personal Jewish identity and faith into action. For the purpose of this report we juxtapose tefilah (prayer) and avodah (worship, or service to the Divine). In Judaism Avodah (worship) includes the community rites of gathering and prayer. While we affirm the importance of community worship we propose that a personal connection with God should also take the form of service to and within the community so that each of us may be partners with God in the completion of creation. For the purposes of this report we conclude that there are presently three avenues of service: worship, personal ritual observance, and acts of loving kindness and tzedakah. We believe that other components will be added to the work of this Center.
The Reform movement has made great strides in recent years in emphasizing worship as a central focus of synagogue life and setting forth guidelines for worship and observance. The worship style of Central Synagogue has evolved to be viewed as within the mainstream of the movement. It is obvious that our congregation represents a wide spectrum of knowledge and adherence to tradition and observance. In recent years the use of Hebrew in our worship service has increased. Other traditions, customs and practices have been introduced. Friday night service attendance has grown significantly and the Shabbat evening service has become the primary worship experience of the congregation. There is a perception among many members that Shabbat morning services are primarily for the families of those children becoming Bar/Bat Mitzvah. Therefore the Shabbat morning service does not have the same degree of congregational attendance and participation as Shabbat evening. We need to investigate ways to foster greater congregational involvement in the Shabbat morning service. []
We uphold the value of ritual observance and believe that it is appropriate to teach about personal ritual at home and in the synagogue including matters of Shabbat, the use of traditional blessings, and personal traditional practice.
We believe that the leadership of the congregation must be involved in discussion and learning regarding personal observance. People want to learn about such matters so that they can make educated decisions about the place of ritual in their lives. Our responsibility is to fully present the menu of Jewish observance according to the mandate of our movement and to encourage our members to understand that while the degree of personal observance does not measure the dedication or value of any Jew, we each gain benefits from such observance. We further encourage the use of appropriate blessings and rituals at all synagogue functions (i.e. blessings before and after meals and before study, a level of Kashrut, Shabbat observance and tzedakah.)
Involvement in ethical behavior, pursuit of justice and humanitarian activities can be [] viewed as the fulfillment of God's command and our covenant with God. That is, we engage in such acts as Jews -- they are an expression of our religious commitment.
The principle of Gemilut Chasidim is based on the verse in Psalms (89:3): "For I said, the world will be built through kindness." Rambam, in fact, lists some of the most important acts of kindness, indications of exemplary character traits including visiting the sick, tending to the burial rituals, accompanying departing guests and celebrating with bride and groom. Those are not the only acts required of us, however. We are also commanded "justice, justice shall you pursue." And above all, the Torah repeatedly directs us to "remember that you were strangers (slaves) in the land of Egypt," with all that admonition implies. One challenge for our synagogue is to clarify that social action and the work of social justice are acts of divine service in our tradition rather than simply instinctive secular acts of goodness.
Social action in its broader sense raises other issues. Each generation must wrestle with the dilemma of the particular and the universal -- to what extent do we focus on helping Jews and on concerns within our own community and to what extent do our concerns engage the community at large? That has been true for centuries. Hillel's oft quoted statement makes the point: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am for myself alone, what am I? If not now, when?"
Like our forebears, we too have to deal with those questions of definition. As we do, our touchstone is this: Central Synagogue's social action activities are guided by our tradition, mandating study, exposition and a decision as to whether a particular "good act" is consistent with our understanding of our beliefs. An appropriate reference could be to the parashat Kedoshim that sets forth the commandments to "not stand aside while your fellow's blood is shed" and "to love your fellow as yourself" (Leviticus 19:16-18). In other words, social action may be expressed as and is rooted in the linkage of tzedakah (righteousness), tzedek (justice), zachor (remembering that we were slaves and strangers) and rachamim (mercy), all being expressions of our responsibility to live within the guidelines of God's commandments and to engage in acts of tikkun olam (repair of the world). Once that nexus is clear with respect to a particular social action project, we then address the question whether the activity is nevertheless Beitter undertaken inside or outside the synagogue because of resource constraints or like concerns.
We believe that it is essential that the synagogue be an open place, including for community gathering. Therefore we propose that the Center for Community be deliberate in providing opportunities for our members to meet and gather with others. Rather than view the entire synagogue as a single community we know that community building will, in large measure, be guided by an exploration of what we mean by "community".
Rather than defining community by population density, our congregants will define community as it occurs in their lives. Therefore we propose that we focus on bringing "constituencies" together. Congregants sharing gateway events in their lives share a common interest (which often provide the opportunity for a member to join or become active) which may create communities within the congregation. Such gateway moments include but are not limited to marriage, birth, a school age child, divorce or bereavement. Other constituencies that are age defined or those that share religious interests, emotional needs or life situations may form a community. Obviously then the synagogue becomes the house of multiple communities each with different needs and expectations. The Center for Community will need to be deliberate in determining the congregation's role in establishing these "communities" and in overseeing the structure to serve them.
Serving the needs of these communities of shared experience will demand a range of educational, worship and programmatic responses. We believe that this Center needs the involvement of a senior staff member who will be responsible for tracking all our members, involving them in appropriate groups, or when necessary referring them to community resources designed to serve their needs.
The challenge for Central Synagogue is to organize itself so that it meets the needs of our members, is easily accessible to our membership and communicates well what we believe, how we function and are organized. It is essential that we are clear about our values and expectations of our members and that our members have the ability to easily express what they expect from the synagogue. We believe that by instituting these three Centers, we create a simple organizing principle for all programs and provide a means for assessing what appropriately falls within our mandate and province.
This document is not intended to cover matters of membership, finance and administration, development, governance, communications and space. These matters fall outside the ken of the three Centers and will be strategized to best serve the needs of the congregation. We know that what the synagogue may be able to provide in the way of service to its membership and the broader community will be constrained by space, finances and the capacity of clergy to fulfill the pastoral and other demands of a large and growing congregation. Some implications of these constraints and matters that need to be addressed by the Board of Trustees are the possible limiting of membership size, curtailment of existing programs and the elimination of committees. Additional consequences may be the need to foster greater cooperation with other congregations and cultural institutions throughout the city and the establishment of the synagogue as the threshold to the services of other institutions that can Beitter serve specific needs of the congregants.
The goal of the Strategic Planning Committee is to address the questions of "Who are we as a synagogue?" and "What do we want to be?"
The objectives of the Strategic Planning Committee should be pursued in the context of an overriding goal of building community - making the synagogue feel like home for as many congregants as possible. The synagogue should be viewed as the central address for Jewish involvement for our congregants. We are the hub of the Jewish wheel, the place to which Jews will always come in times of need, loss, triumph, search and challenge. Though our members may be involved in other Jewish institutions the synagogue is alone in having the capacity to combine all elements of Jewish life.
We believe that this plan provides a roadmap as we embark upon organizing ourselves to meet current challenges and visions for the future.
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