The four projects which were chosen to be implemented, and the current status of their work, is as follows.  Please watch for announcements and get involved – nothing will happen without the enthusiasm, creativity, and participation of the community!

Program Initiatives

1.  Immersive Community Experiences

A working group met on 4/29 and 6/2. Among the ideas it will pursue::

• Shabbaton-in-the-City, a new model for a low-cost, 25-hour program, will be piloted three times next year:  one community-wide, two by demographic or theme.

Lead staff:  Sarah Verity, sverity@bj.org.

2.  Pre- and Post-Services Events

A working group met on 5/1 and agreed that BJ should focus on:

• More regular kiddushim after services
• Pre-services events, such as learning about prayers, singing niggunim, etc.

Rabbis and staff are currently working on how to incorporate these into the Shabbat schedule.

Lead staff:  Guy Felixbrodt, gfelixbrodt@bj.org

Infrastructure Initiatives

1.  Member Development System

A new Task Force met on 6/3 and will meet again soon, focusing on these goals:

• Help members to initiate and grow their participation and leadership at BJ.
• Engage new members following New Member Orientation Programs and beyond.
• Build groups/cohorts of members in relationship with each other.
• Strengthen staff-member partnership in renewing a member-oriented, relational culture.

The system will have three components:

• Cohorts:  groups of members (families and individuals) may join a multi-stage program of increasing levels of engagement. Each level will include Jewish learning; learning about BJ; skills workshops; personal exploration, etc.
• Staff-Lay Workshops: strengthen partnership of staff and lay leadership in developing members’ participation and building community.  Train in leadership skills and community-building methods.
• Community Fair:  twice a year

Lead staff:  Belinda Lasky, blasky@bj.org

2.  Online Tools

A working group met on 4/22 and 5/20 and decided to focus on:

• Social networking tools:  as a first experiment, the group created a BJ Facebook group.
• Discussion groups:  web-based, topics created by users

Lead staff:  Denise Waxman, dwaxman@bj.org

I realized that BJ and my religious and community experience was up to me – the more I put into it, the more I would get out of it. I vowed to increase my involvement and slowly but surely have done so. I participated in the contemplative retreats and practice, made some good friends and started to feel more a part of the community.   My BJ experience changed completely after traveling with BJ on the 180th anniversary Israel trip – one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. I feel blessed to have shared that experience with so many people, I’ve made some great friends through this and definitely feel part of the community.

Experiences like these led BJ’s leadership to choose to build on this strength as we move forward.  We’re calling them “Immersive Community Experiences” — opportunities to get away, go deep, and get serious about our Jewish spiritual community.  We hope to expand the kinds and the number of immersive experiences available to our members.  Cost is obviously a challenge in these times, so we hope to experiment with in-the-city Shabbatons, half-day experiences, and other variations.

A new working group is forming to take a fresh look at our current and future Immersive Community Experiences.  It is meeting on Wednesday, April 29, at 6:30 pm.  If you’re a BJ member and interested in joining us, please get in touch with me, gaustrian@bj.org.

Just one that we’re experimenting with:  follow BJ updates on Twitter!  Go to http://www.twitter.com to set up an account (if you don’t have one already).  Search for “bjnyc” then click “follow.”  Easy as that.  If you have suggestions for how BJ can best use Twitter, please leave a comment on this post.

Also, a new Online Tools Working Group of lay leaders and staff is convening on Wednesday, April 22, in the evening.  We’ll be setting priorities and piloting various tools.  If you’re a BJ member and interested in participating, please e-mail me, gaustrian@bj.org

Click here to download the full report and recommendations.

One feature of the report that I’m enjoying is a series of quotes by BJ members (anonymous, gleaned from the community-wide survey and other conversations).  Here’s one to get you started:

BJ creates the feeling of community from the very first moment a person joins.  I think the key is membership. Joining puts us “inside.” The biggest challenge once inside is figuring out what one wants from the community and what one wants to do as a member of the community. Once those decisions are made, and once we each figure out what community means to us, everything we need is there for us to participate in at any time. BJ truly makes it all available. In the end it’s up to each of us to join in.

From among four Infrastructure proposals, the group chose to focus on:

1) Online Tools, with the following notes: it should include a way to self-organize Shabbat meals; it should focus not only on individuals but on groups; and it should not become the only way to build community, so as not to exclude elderly members or others who are not active online.

2) Member Development System, also with the caveat that it should focus on developing not only individuals but also groups of members; the system should also include some activities fairs and/or current member “re-orientation” programs.

Click “Read More” to see the other proposals chosen…

From among the five Program proposals, the group chose to focus on:

1) “Pre-Onegs,” Kiddushim, and Onegs (social/educational opportunities before and after services); and

2) Immersive Community Experiences such as retreats, trips, and Shabbatons (full 25-hour Shabbat experiences), with the caveat that cost will be a significant challenge to be addressed, and that we should also consider creating extended evenings or half-days in the city.

Participating in the meeting were about 20 lay leaders from the Board of Trustees and the Membership Steering Committee, as well as the Membership staff team, Executive Director Harold Goldman, and Rabbi Felicia Sol.  The meeting was facilitated by our team from the NYU Wagner School and me (Guy Austrian).

Some of these projects will be piloted this spring.  Others will be prepared for rollout next year (meaning, during or after the High Holy Days).  Stay tuned!

If you are interested in helping to design and implement any of these initiatives, please contact me at gaustrian@bj.org.

If you did so, please get in touch with the office directly. We committed that the surveys would be anonymous and that the Wagner School team would share any responses with the BJ staff. This was to ensure the integrity of the survey.

We are eager to hear from you, but please realize that notes left on the surveys will not reach the office!

Click here to download the Summary of Findings and Proposals as a PDF. 

This document lists a number of proposals.  Next week, a few of them will be selected as priorities for implementation.  That decision will be made by a team of BJ leaders from the Board of Trustees, the Membership Steering Committee, the staff, and the rabbis.

Many thanks are due to literally hundreds of BJ members who participated in this initiative through individual meetings, house meetings, the community-wide survey, this website, and other opportunities!  Everything we heard was funneled into these findings and proposals, which were written collectively by me and our team from NYU’s Wagner School of Public Administration:  Anna Marx, Wendy Paler, Jill Snider, and Ariella Weisz.

A fuller, narrative report — with additional details from the survey, literature review, and more — will be completed around April 1.  Our intention is to move ahead now with choosing some projects, so that we can get started in making them a reality!

This spring will bring some piloting of the chosen proposals, as well as planning, budgeting, and laying the groundwork for longer-term efforts.  It’s going to take the leadership and participation of the BJ community to make it happen.  Stay tuned for ways to get involved!

In the meantime, feel free to e-mail me at gaustrian@bj.org with any questions or comments that you might have.

Among the four synagogues we’ve spoken to so far, a couple really stand out for innovation and creative thinking.

Valley Beth Shalom is a Conservative synagogue in Los Angeles, comparable in size to BJ (but with five rabbis and two cantors!). In the 1980s, Rabbi Harold Schulweis began a program called “Living a Jewish Life,” inviting families to meet with him in groups, to discuss Judaism and modern life on a monthly basis for one year. Many of these families grew into active members and core leaders of the synagogue. Today, they are thinking of developing this model further to keep members engaged and to develop their leadership from the time they join the community and all through a lifelong membership.

On the other end of the spectrum is Kavana, an independent Jewish spiritual community in Seattle. Kavana, led by Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum, is just three years old. In the area of creating a sense of belonging and developing a strong leadership structure, it has all the challenges of a massive suburban shul (minus the big building!). Yet it is also innovating in at least two remarkable ways. First, it is based on a “co-op” structure: members are called “partners,” and they sign on to support the community through dues, time, and volunteerism – they are co-owners of the community. Second, it is beginning to develop “neighborhood pods” around Seattle, with the hope of creating intimate, local clusters of people who can learn together, pray together, have Shabbat meals together, and support each other in times of need.

These are just two examples of dynamic thinking and experimentation going on in American Jewish communities today. For BJ, it’s a great reminder that our challenges are shared widely, and that we have good company as we continue to reinvent and renew how we live our life as a spiritual community.

On a recent Thursday, I sat in an open conversation with parents during pickup at the Hebrew School over cookies and coffee. (This was a follow-up from part of my effort to listen to and learn from the BJ community. I met with five lay leadership committees: the Membership Steering Committee, Interfaith Committee, Bekef (35+), the Board of Trustees, and the Hebrew School Advisory Committee.)

It was striking for me, as I listened to the parents that Thursday, how deeply motivated they are to having a Jewish community that can provide an ethical and spiritual context for their children – and for themselves.

With Hebrew School, the teens programs, B’nai Mitzvah retreats, Children’s Services, and the Junior Congregation, many of our parents and children are having profound and challenging experiences. But these settings can often feel like satellites to BJ’s central communal experience: the main services on Fridays and Saturdays.

Yet it’s clear that new families, like new members in general, are at crucial intersections in their lives. They are undergoing intense transitions in their personal lives – partnering, pregnancy, birth, becoming parents. These can be stressful, but they can also open up tremendous new possibilities for spiritual growth, personal reflection, and creative energy.

It takes a shul to raise a child. Parents are acutely aware of the private needs of their children and families. And increasingly, BJ parents are realizing that in order to meet those needs, it’s vital to participate actively in the collective effort to build the kind of BJ community that makes it all possible.

(By the way, if you want in on the cookies and coffee, come to the Hebrew School every Thursday from 5:15-6:00pm, inside the Heschel School building on West 89th Street between Broadway and West End Ave. They’d be happy to see you!)

The sample closely reflects the population in most demographic characteristics (such as age, marital status, location, and length of membership).  This means that the survey responses will be, to a good extent, representative of the community.

The survey results haven’t yet been analyzed, but it’s clear that they provide a wealth of information about what draws people to BJ and how they feel about the community.  These results will go into the mix of research and assessment that we’ve been doing — together with the individual conversations, house meetings, committee meetings, and interviews with other congregations.

Participation from across our community has been instrumental in helping to develop our understanding of what’s working well and not-so-well.  It will also help us to make appropriate recommendations for BJ’s infrastructure and programming.  Stay tuned!