Reform study finds rabbi-membership disconnect

By Sue Fishkoff

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA)—Leaders of Reform synagogues don’t quite get their members, according to a new study by the movement.

The study shows a marked disconnect between what the leaders think their members are looking for and what the members say they actually want. In general, the synagogue leaders seem to underestimate their members’ interest in Jewish practice and worship. And they overestimate the synagogue’s importance in the religious lives of their families.
   
The two-year study, released at the Reform movement’s Dec. 12-16 biennial in San Diego, Calif., suggests that synagogue leaders better focus more on building warm, welcoming communities if they want to have and hold their members.
   
Questions addressed by the study—Why do people join Reform congregations? Why do they leave? And what can synagogues do to make themselves into warm, welcoming communities?—were a major focus of the 69th biennial conference of the Union for Reform Judaism.
   
The new membership study involved two years of research in Cleveland, Seattle, Springfield, Mass., and Boca Raton, Fla.
   
Results show that current and former members of Reform synagogues mostly join for reasons of community, not for “services.”
   
“Congregations that work go out of their way to integrate new members, inviting them to Shabbat dinner rather than just putting them on committees,” said Emily Grotta, URJ’s communications director, who conducted many of the study’s phone interviews.
   
Grotta points to one Cleveland congregation that created small havurot, or prayer fellowships, of members with similar interests, and successfully built a sense of community that permeated the larger congregation.
   
The survey found that synagogue leaders misunderstood members’ interest in spirituality and worship.
   
It included interviews with 910 former members of Reform congregations to find out why they joined and why they eventually left.
   
Whereas 50 percent said they joined because they wanted a place to worship, synagogue leaders thought worship was important to just 5 percent of those former members.
   
Synagogue leaders also overestimated the importance of their institutions in the religious lives of their members.
   
Fifty-eight percent of former members said they “were able to be Jewish without a congregation,” a factor that didn’t show up on the leadership’s radar. Also, 18 percent said they filled their Jewish needs “elsewhere,” again a factor the leadership failed to recognize.
   
That should serve “as a wake-up call to all the denominations,” Grotta said.
   
Interest in worship and spirituality is pronounced among newer as well as former members of Reform congregations, she said.
   
“What jumped out at us was the number of new people who join for worship, for spirituality, to learn how to become better Jews,” Grotta said. “The leaders didn’t get that at all.”
   
Money is also important, or rather the perceived value of what members get for their dues: 40 percent of former members of Reform congregations said they withdrew because membership was too expensive. Just 9 percent of the leadership thought cost was an issue.
   
Overall, the study shows that Reform Jews remain synagogue members if their congregation becomes their community, the place where their friends and family are.
   
Thirty-five percent of those who left Reform congregations said they “didn’t find community” at the synagogue, and 33 percent said it was because their “children didn’t connect” after they became b’nai mitzvah.
   
“If we don’t build a sense of community,” movement leaders warn in the study’s conclusion, then members of Reform congregations “will leave when they have received the services they want.”