In The Beginning

by Erica Schacter Schwartz
News Editor

I recently had the experience of participating in a “Kiddush Conversation” at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, where every Shabbat members of the synagogue’s beginners’ and intermediate services enjoy the opportunity to come together after davening, talk about an interesting Jewish topic and nosh on cholent and other good kiddush fare.

Granted there was hot food, but it was amazing to see people who were actually happy to remain in shul for “overtime,” when so many of us in the main service can barely stay seated until Adon Olam. It was also amazing to see the energy and enthusiasm of the participants, the insightful questions and comments and the overall strong sense of community among a roomful of people from an assortment of places and backgrounds.

Ranging from

out-of-synagogue services to offbeat classes to musical and artistic events, many efforts are being made today throughout the Jewish community to reach the growing number of unaffiliated American Jews. But beginners’ services represent a different kind of answer. They are the conventional answer, the traditional answer through which longtime established synagogues (mainly Orthodox, but a few Conservative as well) attempt to open their doors to Jews with little or no religious background. And to witness it is truly inspiring.

For KJ, as for many synagogues that have a beginner’s service, the structure is based on a model created by Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald at Lincoln Square Synagogue in 1975, and further formalized through the National Jewish Outreach Program, which he founded. The NJOP model sees the beginner’s service as a classroom of sorts, in which participants, Rabbi Buchwald explains, “are entitled to stop the service at any point to ask questions” and the Torah portion is read in English.

The Lincoln Square service, which, over the past 30 years Rabbi Buchwald says, has attracted more than 10,000 beginners, also omits what are known as the “devarim she b’kedusha,” the prayers like Kaddish or Borchu that require a minyan. The goal, says Rabbi Buchwald, “is to encourage people to eventually leave and go on to the main service.” In other words, to make sure the beginner’s service is not an end in itself, but a means of incorporating a new community of Jews into the larger synagogue community.

But what’s interesting is that just as there is diversity among synagogues there is diversity among beginner’s services. Ultimately each community finds its own way of connecting with beginners — and in this way beginner’s services themselves are becoming less conventional and more innovative in their own right.

At KJ, for instance, explains Rabbi Elie Weinstock, the rabbi of the beginner’s service, the community started an intermediate service, featuring a chazzan and a reading of the full Torah portion in Hebrew, because people were searching for “a traditional service but with more stage direction, a service with less discussion than the beginner’s but still with ample opportunity to ask questions.”

At The Jewish Center, Rabbi Mark Wildes, the founder and director of Manhattan Jewish Experience, conducts an MJE beginner’s service, which started as a replica of the NJOP model, but was modified after Rabbi Wildes witnessed what he calls “the Carlebach craze.”

“I was having trouble incorporating singing,” he explains. “The class structure does not fully tap into a group of unaffiliated Jews who really want to sing and embrace” the prayers. Rabbi Wildes’ group is primarily composed of people in their 20s and 30s and so this spiritual energy, this more musical service was important to his constituents.

In this sense, beginner’s services evolve to reach out to different kinds of people — some who wish to discuss the prayers and their meanings, some who wish to sing and close their eyes to the liturgical melodies and some who might simply wish to schmooze with other beginners over a good kiddush. The idea is that even in the traditional synagogue setting, there are so many different points of entry for a novice, so many different kinds of beginner’s services through which a newcomer can grow comfortable and connected to prayer and Jewish life.

Today we observe the holiday of Shavuot, our annual celebration of receiving the Torah. Embedded and perhaps central in the readings of the festival is the story of Ruth, a non-Jewish woman who chose to embrace Jewish law and tradition, and whose descendants, we are told, will include the Messiah. What we can learn from Ruth, and what we can appreciate about each new success story of the beginner’s service, is the unknown Jewish potential found in all of us, the idea that every Jewish journey can lead someplace great, no matter where it is beginning. n

Erica Schacter Schwartz’s column appears the first week of the month.

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