The time has come to admit that synagogues do not serve most Jews.

Since I made this claim as part of a panel at Limmud 2020, I’ve been taken aback at the strength of
reaction – on both sides. Rabbis and community leaders from the US, Canada and the UK have
agreed with me, while one blogger has suggested I am as dangerous to Judaism as the false messiah
Shabbetai Zevi.

But the facts bear out my argument.

Based on research carried out by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR), it’s thought that only
half of the UK’s Jews belong to synagogues. And according to JPR’s 2013 National Jewish Community
Survey, while 76% of Jews attend synagogue at least once a year, only 28% attend once a week, and
a quarter do not attend at all. These numbers are dramatically lower in the major centres of world
Jewry, Israel and the United States.

Anecdotal evidence supports this. Even committed members of synagogues do not necessarily
attend services. I know dozens of people who volunteer, teach, learn, and even take on leadership
roles, but never show up to pray.

While an observant minority (of all denominations, Progressive and Masorti as well as Orthodox) are
committed and presumably satisfied shul-goers, even the best prayer-orientated synagogues are not
meeting the needs of the Jewish people.

So should we try and get Jews into shuls, or should we change our model?

The answer is both. There are people out there who might love synagogue if exposed to a really
good one, and most of us want shul at key lifecycle moments like marriage and bereavement. We
should not give up on them and we should work hard to make sure our synagogues are compelling,
spiritual and relational community spaces. Masorti Judaism, the organisation I lead, is working hard
to grow our synagogues and to found new ones. The latest example is Ohel Moed, a prayer-focused
congregation set up recently by young graduates of Noam, the Masorti youth movement.

But for the majority of Jews, we still have to recognise that the current model is wrong.

What kind of change do we need? One direction could be organisational: changing how we operate
to appeal to those – particularly younger – people who are resistant to traditional institutional
structures – dues-paying membership, committees, hierarchy, and rigid denominational boundaries.

But this ignores the heart of the problem. I believe alienation from communal life is caused by our
insistence on focusing almost exclusively on prayer. Prayer is perhaps the hardest part of Judaism to
connect to, especially in our secular times, yet we keep trying to push it as the mainstay of our
Jewish lives.

I’m influenced by the great twentieth century American Jewish thinker and community leader Rabbi
Mordecai Kaplan, whose most famous book, Judaism as a Civilisation, argued forcefully that Judaism
is much more than a religion. There are lots of other bits of Judaism to connect to, all of which are
more intuitive for us and no less authentic to the tradition: Torah study (broadly understood),
Hebrew and other Jewish languages, life-cycle events, practical home-based ritual around Shabbat
and holidays, tzedakah (charity), gemilut hasadim (acts of loving kindness, which could translate as
volunteering), music, social life, food, culture, politics, and more.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z”l once suggested that Kaplan’s agenda was to ‘base [Judaism] on something
other than religion … on what he calls Judaism as a civilization or, as we would put it today, Jews as
an ethnic and cultural group’. But this is not the case. In fact, Kaplan was a profoundly religious
thinker. He believed that the Jewish people were still bound together in a covenant. This was not a
‘contract’ with a supernatural God, but an obligation to bring the Divine into the world by working
collectively to make it a better place. Kaplan continued to emphasise the importance of Jewish
observance and spirituality as things that bind Jews together and enable them to fulfil their mission.
But his Judaism as a civilisation was much broader than our customary conception of a prayer-
focused religion.

Lots of shuls, while keeping prayer at their heart, do embrace these other areas of Jewish life. I know
hundreds of committed, active synagogue members who learn, volunteer and contribute, while
rarely attending services. But what would it look like if we created whole communities that
emphasised these other areas and downplayed prayer?

For example, Masorti Judaism has been involved in supporting a new community, created by young
adults and young families, called the Havurah. It was founded by people who wanted Jewish
community but described themselves as ‘shul allergic’. It hosts regular activities including Shabbat
morning singing for families, Jewish learning, tzedakah projects, and festival celebrations. It looks
and feels a lot like a shul – but with hardly any prayer.

One final thought. The UK Jewish scene now features lots of organisations that address these
broader areas of Jewish civilisation, but hardly any of them fulfil the vital role of a synagogue – being
a community. Many of them are focused on providing a product or a service, seeing people as
customers, and not concerned enough with what a community should be about – building
relationships between its members.

There are traces of this in some non-synagogue institutions – for example the network of Limmud
volunteers, Moishe House, and Zionist youth movements. But the UK Jewish community needs to
find a way of incubating and scaling this kind of initiative, as a ‘third way’ between customer-focused
organisations and synagogues focused exclusively on prayer.

The future lies in institutions focused on relationships, participation and the broadest possible
understanding of Judaism.

Dr Matt Plen is the Chief Executive of Masorti Judaism.