Rabbi Michael Wasserman
The New Shul, Scottsdale, AZ
Perhaps the most important message to come out of Synagogue 3000 is its call for synagogues to break with the consumer paradigm. As Lawrence Hoffman has put it, “Whatever authentic Jewish spirituality is, it can find its way into synagogues only if synagogues cease being communities that people join as consumers, buying services with dues” (Rethinking Synagogues, p. 131).
When we put a price tag on synagogue membership, we in effect define membership as a purchase, which turns members into customers. Having made that equation, we cannot blame members for expecting synagogues to organize themselves around the “sovereign self.” When we “buy” something, we value it according to how well it meets our personal needs. The customer is always right. We should not be surprised that members apply that logic to the synagogue, if the synagogue itself frames its work in market terms.
The vocabulary of consumerism is so deeply ingrained in American synagogue life that we often take it for granted. How often do synagogue leaders speak, without irony, of their programs and services as their “product,” and their outreach as “marketing?” But that vocabulary undermines attempts to make the synagogue a place of deeper meaning. To the extent that synagogues embrace the language of the marketplace – i.e. of private benefit – they find it difficult to speak with credibility of mitzvah. If we wish to revitalize the synagogue, to cultivate a sense of meaning and belonging deeper than a vendor/customer relationship, we must use a different vocabulary.
The call by S3K to move beyond the consumer paradigm resonates very deeply with me, as co-founder (with my wife Rabbi Elana Kanter) of a synagogue that has done that at a very literal level, by eliminating membership dues. When we launched The New Shul in Scottsdale Arizona in 2002, one of our core principles was that membership would not be for sale, and hence all giving would be voluntary. The New Shul’s message on membership was, and is, that financial support is not the price of belonging, but an expression of belonging, part of a broader sense of shared commitment that defines participation in a spiritual community. Our alternative – and we believe the only real alternative – to spiritual consumerism is a culture of mutual responsibility, or, in a word, community. For the past seven years, our members have supported the shul (complete with payroll and building mortgage) entirely on voluntary pledges. Because membership is not a purchase, no one asks “What am I getting for my money?”
We have found that moving beyond the vocabulary of the market is tremendously validating to those who have the greatest potential to revitalize non-orthodox Judaism, those who are searching for religious meaning in commitments that transcend the self – or, to put it another way, who understand that their deepest need is to be needed. Their sensibility can be called “post-liberal” in that they take their personal autonomy for granted, and hence feel no need to hoard their freedom, to resist commitment. Their autonomy has evolved from freedom from to freedom for. This post-liberalsensibility, in which voluntary obligation is not an oxymoron, is at the heart of the neo-traditionalism that informs many of the new emergent communities that Synagogue 3000 has studied (see Emergent Jewish Communities and Their Participants, Steven M. Cohen et al, 2007).
To be sure, post-liberal Jews inhabit mainstream synagogues as well. Often, they are the heart and soul of those institutions. But ironically, even as they strengthen mainstream synagogues with their energies, they often find themselves out of sync with those institutions’ public vocabulary. The language of the market, which their synagogues rely on so heavily, does not describe their own involvement. They pay their dues like everyone else, but they do not think – or at least do not wish to think – of the money as payment for services rendered. They hunger for a language that can give voice to a deeper sense of mitzvah.
Restructuring our synagogues so that they speak the language that those Jews truly wish to speak, that use the vocabulary of shared responsibility, ought to be a priority for us. So I say amen to the call by Synagogue 3000 to transcend the consumer paradigm.
The picture gets more complicated, however, in that many of the practical prescriptions coming out of SK3 – ostensibly designed to meet that goal – seem to be at odds with that vision. Much of the S3K literature calls for customizing synagogue experiences to individual tastes, and marketing programs to specific interest groups, drawing on the retail and entertainment industries for inspiration. Lawrence Hoffman, in his model of the non-orthodox “Experience Synagogue,” forgoes any notion of shared commitment (at least as far as worship and/or learning are concerned), and emphasizes personalization instead. He envisions people taking advantage of a wide menu of synagogue offerings according to their individual tastes, much as they shop for clothes (Rethinking Synagogues, pp. 174-175).
If we ask for no sense of shared responsibility, then aren’t we treating people, in essence, as spiritual consumers? Aren’t we inviting them, in effect, to “buy” spiritual experiences? How does this differ from the paradigm that we are attempting to break with?
I am not suggesting that models like the “Experience Synagogue” have no place. To the contrary, there is clearly value in upgrading the existing consumer paradigm, in offering more attractive programs and services to the tentative and uncommitted. Religious consumerism will be with us for a long time, and, as long as it is, we need to do a better job of – yes, marketing what are in essence spiritual products. My point is not that we should reject that work. It is that, even as we support that work, we must recognize that it is very different from the other task that we have set for ourselves, the task of creating communities that move beyond consumerism. Enhancing the consumer model, figuring out how to do it better, is not the same thing as transcending it.
It seems to me that there is a tension in the Synagogue 3000 literature between means and ends, which calls for clarification.
Choice Does Not Always Mean Consumer Choice
Rabbi Alan Brill
Seton Hall University
On Sunday nights, I am glued to my TV watching the hit show Mad Men The show ostensively focuses on an ad agency in 1962 portraying the rise of advertising and consumer culture in America. But the real story is the sense of falling and anxiety that occurred when the certainties of the nineteen fifties gave way to the individualism of the 1960’s. I find that this post “ Beyond Spiritual Consumerism. . . Or Not” confuses the plot with the real story.
In the 1950’s people learned to accept culturally constructed institutions and model ideal attitudes whose expectations might not have been experienced privately. In the 1960’s people started to seek their own individual directions and overcome the split between the institutional and the personal. They moved from dwelling to seeking. By the 1980’s and 1990’s this individualism became the norm.
Jews aspired to a collective idea of peoplehood and accepted institutional attitudes toward Judaism, family life, and society. Mordechai Kaplan’s important re-evaluation of Judaism was based on the descriptive ideas of Durkheim in which individuals express themselves in collectives. But what comes after Durkheim, and the evident decline in self-definition through Jewish institutions?
Charles Taylor in his recent work A Secular Age points out that Durkheim’s approach — in which individuals expressed themselves in collectives and institutions — no longer holds true in its original meaning. Religion today, Taylor argues, can be found in “the continuing multiplication of new options, religious, spiritual, and anti-religious, which individuals seize on in order to make sense of their lives.” Taylor stresses the complex ways in which religion is now even more a part of our daily lives, and the importance of a multiplicity of practices and interpretations to deal with this variety.
In the post –Durkheim reality described by Taylor, we need to reframe the issue away from peoplehood to individual meanings and smaller social units, in short, religion in the human life. We need to think in terms of changes based on the small changes of meanings and moral orders.
Take, for example, the variety of religious experiences and moral orders that could be found among the pews in a single congregation on Yom Kippur 2009. We will find people from whom Judaism is of varying importance in their daily lives, but for whom the content of that Judaism is different and varying. There will be those who adhere to old-time theology, those for whom Judaism is about being a politically conservative ADL supporter, those who are progressive, another who stresses social action, another who understands reality using 12-step language, and another who eclectically combines Chabad, feng shui, and Buddhist spirituality, those who are uplifted through art, and even moral majority Jews who embrace Judaism for its strong “family values.” There are dozens of other Jewish moral orders, no congregation has even half of them. People choose to obligate themselves to these diverse meanings because they help make sense of their lives.
Recently, many analysts of the Jewish community have picked up the phrase “spiritual marketplace” (first used a generation ago) and proceed to compare the Jewish choices made by today’s Jew to the choice of a “grande soy latte” in Starbucks – a simile implying a degree of pampering and meaningless luxuries. Viewing Jews making life decisions as Starbucks customers, their policy proposals emphasize the need to reach younger Jews through better marketing. However, religious choices, as Robert Wuthnow has stressed, reflect an attempt to create meaningful lives and a structure of moral orders. Multiple choices do not lead to the banal market pluralism, but to a variety of constructed finite religious identities.
When entering the contemporary spiritual landscape, the contemporary Jew experiences not three or four denominations, but dozens of flavors. Synagogues and Jewish organization become specialized into single products for specialized audiences. So of course, people enjoy the Synaplex model because it gives them a possibility, a chance, to experience what they find meaningful. If they are lucky, they can find their personal vision validated.
To return to the original issue of equating choice with consumer choice, we need to look at moral orders and meanings created.
Seekers, as Wuthnow categorized them, are not a single category but are many approaches and many moral orders. While some still seek naturalism, other seekers embrace traditional concepts of God. The literature in the field of spirituality divides spirituality into anywhere between four to ten different types. Many of the books from Alban Institute place the number at four.
Rabbis need to know that these different types of spirituality are not interchangeable and that congregants are not choosing them just for consumerist variety. Some congregants seeking certain forms of spirituality are actually repelled by some of the others. No one congregation can attempt all of the current varieties of spirituality. No Rabbi can offer all of them. But there is shopping because there in fact several different unique types of spirituality, each with their own sense of meaning, not because they have internalized the marketplace values.
The blog post asked “If we ask for no sense of shared responsibility, then aren’t we treating people, in essence, as spiritual consumers?”
The answer is no! Judaism is capacious and has the possibility of many meanings constructed and many moral orders formed. That is, unless, the vision is to return the community to the 1950’s. We watch Mad Men to remind ourselves how much we have changed.
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5 Responses to “Beyond Spiritual Consumerism. . . Or Not”
I appreciate Rabbi Brill taking the time to respond to my piece. It is true, as his title says, that “choice does not always mean consumer choice.” But it is Rabbi Brill, not I, who is guilty of conflating the two. He suggests that challenging the Starbucks model of religious life means calling for a return to the conformist 1950s – i.e. limiting choice. But surely one can criticize religious consumerism without opposing the idea of choice.
My point was not that spiritual options should be limited. My own shul represents an attempt to move beyond existing categories. Like other emergent communities, it represents an expansion, not a limitation, of choices. My point is that true spiritual community cannot be bought. It can, and in many cases must be chosen. But it requires a different kind of choice, deeper than the choice between a mocha and a caramel frappuccino.
In the debate between Michael Wasserman, one hand, and Alan Brill on the other, I clearly come down on the side of Brill. It is not that I am opposed to making demands of people; it is the way in which demands arise that interests me. The Wasserman model is authority-centered, in that it presupposes religion’s prior authority over its adherents even before the adherents decide to adhere. In this view, religion occupies a privileged place in the metaphysical realm of things. If people want in (and they should) we will include them, but only on our terms, since we understand their obligations better than they do.
That is, of course, the way nation states operate. And they get away with it – because a) we fear having to give up citizenship; and b) they have police and an army to enforce what they require. To be sure, we are fortunate to live in a democracy where the demands are hardly onerous, and where we have a say in what they shall be. They are the sort of thing we would gladly obey in any case – part of the social contract that we made because we know (as Thomas Hobbes did) that life in the state of nature is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” or, to quote the much earlier rabbinic parallel, “Pray for the welfare of the government, for without the fear we have of it, we would swallow each other alive.”
The question is whether religion is that sort of thing. As long as religion was tied inextricably to government, it was. Both Spinoza and Mendelssohn, our two quintessentially modern Jewish philosophers — at opposite ends of the Jewish-observance spectrum, mind you — tried to end it, and we have been fighting that battle ever since.
Old habits die hard, however. When the community no longer has the power to enforce its will, it changes the rhetoric by linking obligation to worthiness rather than to punishment. If we cannot punish recalcitrant members, we can at least demand that they prove their worth.
There is another model, not authority-centered but relation-centered. In the authority-centered mode, relationships flow from obligations: Lord and master, ruler and subject, teacher and student – these come into existence because the parties accept their roles prior to the relationship.
Martin Buber, among others, argued precisely the reverse: relationships come first; out of them, flow roles; the experience of meaningful roles produce willing obligations.
Another way of thinking about it is to see experience prior to doctrine. Doctrine tells us what to do. Our experiences flow from playing out the doctrinal definitions of who we are. The sea change of the last twenty years or so, has been our unconscious societal decision to make experience primary. We experience relationships; relationships tell us who we are; doctrine emerges from relationships; doctrine tells us what we need to do, given who we experience being.
Not everyone has that luxury – the poor do not choose their experiences, so much as experiences (mostly negative) choose them. But some of us are fortunate enough to be able to choose the experiences that will constitute our lives. We have become an experience–society, and despite the doomsayers who wonder about the selfishness of it all, that is not all bad – because in the end, experience is primary: it may be the only thing we know for sure.
We discover that some experiences are fleeting and momentary, not lasting and profound. The first require nothing beyond a momentary commitment – pay the price and enjoy the movie. The latter, however, are what stay with us. And they require commitments. We know that in advance, actually, but we suspect commitments that arise out of nowhere, as it were. We readily see their validity, however, when we first experience what the commitments support. .
When Wassmerman suspects me of pandering to individualism, he would mistake the two types of experience. Were I to limit myself to the momentary, they would have good reason to call me to account. My interest, however, is the momentous. I call on synagogues to foster experiences that are profound. If people have certitude that they can matter in the long scheme of things; if their communities model relationships at their finest; if they at least have intimations of the divine; then they will gladly take on obligations inherent in retaining those experiences.
I (no less than my critics) care deeply about obligation to God, to the Jewish People, and to the human community. But I believe these can come only from communities of experience, out of which responsibilities flow; not the other way around.
People do things for two reasons: because they want to or because they have to. Most Orthodox and a small minority of non orthodox Jews are in the “have to” category: ” ‘ol malchut shamayim,” is a real and abiding obligation. Some are in the “want to” category. Judaism for most who self identify as Jews is neither a “have to” nor a “want to.” What’s left is the great opportunity to persuade those marginalized and disenfranchised Jews to ‘convert’ to the ‘want to’ group. This is the ever growing pool of “just Jews” about whom the vast majority of congregational Rabbis as well as the Jewish movements, academics and “leadership” are clueless as to how to reach with measurable success. Indeed, it appears that these “experts” have abandoned the vast majority of these “just Jews.”
In contradistinction, the ten word mission statement of Willow Creek Community Church (a megachurch in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago) is “to turn irreligious people into fully devoted followers of Jesus.” Yes it’s evangelistic and so is Habad. Willow and Habad not only understand that opportunity, they both have kishke level convictions about their obligations “lo l’hibatel” from seizing that opportunity. Quite simply there can be no renewal of non orthodox Judaism or its synagogue without an antecedent non Orthodox analog/equivalent to kishke level convictions.
I agree with Rabbi Hoffman that, in an open society, a sense of mitzvah cannot be a priori. It flows, as he put it, out of relationship. That has been my experience on my own religious journey, and the premise of my rabbinic work. The sense of shared responsibility that defines a spiritual community emerges out of the connection among searching individuals.
So, if Rabbi Hoffman and I agree that building true community means breaking with fee-for-service thinking in favor of something deeper, and we also agree on where that something deeper comes from – that it flows out of relationship – then what is this debate about?
I have to say that I am not sure. Rabbi Hoffman accuses me of having an “authority-centered” worldview that is all about obedience. It is hard to figure out why he would think so. Perhaps he is expressing visceral discomfort at my call for synagogues to build a culture of shared commitment and responsibility. When he writes about religious commitment, he tends to qualify the concept rather than celebrate it. Perhaps that need to qualify is the difference between us.
I recognize that words such as “commitment,” “responsibility,” and “mitzvah” can touch raw nerves and conjure up authoritarian associations. But reacting defensively to those words has its own costs. It limits our horizons, narrowing our range of options. For example, when presented with a promising congregational model, we may find ourselves unable to take yes for an answer.
If we cannot celebrate religious commitment, then we will have no way to reach those who have the greatest potential to revitalize non-Orthodox Judaism. Such Jews are looking for a way to speak the language of mitzvah. They have no intention of submitting to external authority. Obedience is not in their DNA. But the language of responsibility, of being needed – by each other, and by God – resonates deeply with them, and they are ready to make serious choices. If we speak only about personal freedom per se, and not about the joy of mitzvah that flows from the connections that we choose, then we will lose them.
Does Synagogue 3000 have a message for those Jews?
I don’t know if s3k has a ‘message for those Jews,’ but I am struck by the easy way we use words like commitment and responsibility without defining them. Then we add the concept of mitzvah which has wide ranging definitions based on movement affiliation (or lack thereof) and personal whim.
The word we use now at s3k is engagement. Part of the concept of engaging people is accepting them wherever they are in their Jewishness. We’re finding that many are very interested in their Jewishness but not in the confines or structures of past language. I’m not saying I agree with this, but we, the Jewish community, have created this skepticism. It may simply be semantics - or not so simply… but it’s very tied to language and expectations. We’re trying to find ways to connect Jews with Judaism that are accessible, authentic and meaningful. Stay tuned!
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October 6th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
I appreciate Rabbi Brill taking the time to respond to my piece. It is true, as his title says, that “choice does not always mean consumer choice.” But it is Rabbi Brill, not I, who is guilty of conflating the two. He suggests that challenging the Starbucks model of religious life means calling for a return to the conformist 1950s – i.e. limiting choice. But surely one can criticize religious consumerism without opposing the idea of choice.
My point was not that spiritual options should be limited. My own shul represents an attempt to move beyond existing categories. Like other emergent communities, it represents an expansion, not a limitation, of choices. My point is that true spiritual community cannot be bought. It can, and in many cases must be chosen. But it requires a different kind of choice, deeper than the choice between a mocha and a caramel frappuccino.
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:39 pm
In the debate between Michael Wasserman, one hand, and Alan Brill on the other, I clearly come down on the side of Brill. It is not that I am opposed to making demands of people; it is the way in which demands arise that interests me. The Wasserman model is authority-centered, in that it presupposes religion’s prior authority over its adherents even before the adherents decide to adhere. In this view, religion occupies a privileged place in the metaphysical realm of things. If people want in (and they should) we will include them, but only on our terms, since we understand their obligations better than they do.
That is, of course, the way nation states operate. And they get away with it – because a) we fear having to give up citizenship; and b) they have police and an army to enforce what they require. To be sure, we are fortunate to live in a democracy where the demands are hardly onerous, and where we have a say in what they shall be. They are the sort of thing we would gladly obey in any case – part of the social contract that we made because we know (as Thomas Hobbes did) that life in the state of nature is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” or, to quote the much earlier rabbinic parallel, “Pray for the welfare of the government, for without the fear we have of it, we would swallow each other alive.”
The question is whether religion is that sort of thing. As long as religion was tied inextricably to government, it was. Both Spinoza and Mendelssohn, our two quintessentially modern Jewish philosophers — at opposite ends of the Jewish-observance spectrum, mind you — tried to end it, and we have been fighting that battle ever since.
Old habits die hard, however. When the community no longer has the power to enforce its will, it changes the rhetoric by linking obligation to worthiness rather than to punishment. If we cannot punish recalcitrant members, we can at least demand that they prove their worth.
There is another model, not authority-centered but relation-centered. In the authority-centered mode, relationships flow from obligations: Lord and master, ruler and subject, teacher and student – these come into existence because the parties accept their roles prior to the relationship.
Martin Buber, among others, argued precisely the reverse: relationships come first; out of them, flow roles; the experience of meaningful roles produce willing obligations.
Another way of thinking about it is to see experience prior to doctrine. Doctrine tells us what to do. Our experiences flow from playing out the doctrinal definitions of who we are. The sea change of the last twenty years or so, has been our unconscious societal decision to make experience primary. We experience relationships; relationships tell us who we are; doctrine emerges from relationships; doctrine tells us what we need to do, given who we experience being.
Not everyone has that luxury – the poor do not choose their experiences, so much as experiences (mostly negative) choose them. But some of us are fortunate enough to be able to choose the experiences that will constitute our lives. We have become an experience–society, and despite the doomsayers who wonder about the selfishness of it all, that is not all bad – because in the end, experience is primary: it may be the only thing we know for sure.
We discover that some experiences are fleeting and momentary, not lasting and profound. The first require nothing beyond a momentary commitment – pay the price and enjoy the movie. The latter, however, are what stay with us. And they require commitments. We know that in advance, actually, but we suspect commitments that arise out of nowhere, as it were. We readily see their validity, however, when we first experience what the commitments support. .
When Wassmerman suspects me of pandering to individualism, he would mistake the two types of experience. Were I to limit myself to the momentary, they would have good reason to call me to account. My interest, however, is the momentous. I call on synagogues to foster experiences that are profound. If people have certitude that they can matter in the long scheme of things; if their communities model relationships at their finest; if they at least have intimations of the divine; then they will gladly take on obligations inherent in retaining those experiences.
I (no less than my critics) care deeply about obligation to God, to the Jewish People, and to the human community. But I believe these can come only from communities of experience, out of which responsibilities flow; not the other way around.
October 28th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Shalom All,
People do things for two reasons: because they want to or because they have to. Most Orthodox and a small minority of non orthodox Jews are in the “have to” category: ” ‘ol malchut shamayim,” is a real and abiding obligation. Some are in the “want to” category. Judaism for most who self identify as Jews is neither a “have to” nor a “want to.” What’s left is the great opportunity to persuade those marginalized and disenfranchised Jews to ‘convert’ to the ‘want to’ group. This is the ever growing pool of “just Jews” about whom the vast majority of congregational Rabbis as well as the Jewish movements, academics and “leadership” are clueless as to how to reach with measurable success. Indeed, it appears that these “experts” have abandoned the vast majority of these “just Jews.”
In contradistinction, the ten word mission statement of Willow Creek Community Church (a megachurch in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago) is “to turn irreligious people into fully devoted followers of Jesus.” Yes it’s evangelistic and so is Habad. Willow and Habad not only understand that opportunity, they both have kishke level convictions about their obligations “lo l’hibatel” from seizing that opportunity. Quite simply there can be no renewal of non orthodox Judaism or its synagogue without an antecedent non Orthodox analog/equivalent to kishke level convictions.
Biv’racha,
Jordan
eashtov
October 29th, 2009 at 10:46 am
I agree with Rabbi Hoffman that, in an open society, a sense of mitzvah cannot be a priori. It flows, as he put it, out of relationship. That has been my experience on my own religious journey, and the premise of my rabbinic work. The sense of shared responsibility that defines a spiritual community emerges out of the connection among searching individuals.
So, if Rabbi Hoffman and I agree that building true community means breaking with fee-for-service thinking in favor of something deeper, and we also agree on where that something deeper comes from – that it flows out of relationship – then what is this debate about?
I have to say that I am not sure. Rabbi Hoffman accuses me of having an “authority-centered” worldview that is all about obedience. It is hard to figure out why he would think so. Perhaps he is expressing visceral discomfort at my call for synagogues to build a culture of shared commitment and responsibility. When he writes about religious commitment, he tends to qualify the concept rather than celebrate it. Perhaps that need to qualify is the difference between us.
I recognize that words such as “commitment,” “responsibility,” and “mitzvah” can touch raw nerves and conjure up authoritarian associations. But reacting defensively to those words has its own costs. It limits our horizons, narrowing our range of options. For example, when presented with a promising congregational model, we may find ourselves unable to take yes for an answer.
If we cannot celebrate religious commitment, then we will have no way to reach those who have the greatest potential to revitalize non-Orthodox Judaism. Such Jews are looking for a way to speak the language of mitzvah. They have no intention of submitting to external authority. Obedience is not in their DNA. But the language of responsibility, of being needed – by each other, and by God – resonates deeply with them, and they are ready to make serious choices. If we speak only about personal freedom per se, and not about the joy of mitzvah that flows from the connections that we choose, then we will lose them.
Does Synagogue 3000 have a message for those Jews?
November 25th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Michael,
I don’t know if s3k has a ‘message for those Jews,’ but I am struck by the easy way we use words like commitment and responsibility without defining them. Then we add the concept of mitzvah which has wide ranging definitions based on movement affiliation (or lack thereof) and personal whim.
The word we use now at s3k is engagement. Part of the concept of engaging people is accepting them wherever they are in their Jewishness. We’re finding that many are very interested in their Jewishness but not in the confines or structures of past language. I’m not saying I agree with this, but we, the Jewish community, have created this skepticism. It may simply be semantics - or not so simply… but it’s very tied to language and expectations. We’re trying to find ways to connect Jews with Judaism that are accessible, authentic and meaningful. Stay tuned!