May 2015 - Shul Politics

Making Things Right

One of the advantages of being involved in the day to day operations of a Shul is that it gives you the opportunity to develop a better understanding of people. One of the lessons that I’ve learned is that people want to make things right. People want to do what’s good for the Shul and what’s good for other people.

Despite these good intentions, people sometimes get upset and have disagreements. The main reason for disagreements is that people see each issue through their own lens which is shaped by their personality, experience and the roles they play. So despite the common desire to do what’s good and right, each person has a differing view of what is right in each situation.

One path to reducing disagreements is to try to see things from the other person’s perspective. This is often possible when you’re are third party observer, but when you’re more involved in the issue it becomes difficult. And even if you do see the other person’s perspective, you might still think your view is the correct one.

Perhaps a more practical solution is to understand that people are generally coming from a good place although they may disagree on any given issue. Even though you may feel slighted in a given situation, try not to take it personally as that’s usually not the person’s intent. People are good and the more we can get back to that anchoring perspective the better we’ll be at making things right.

The Death and Life of the Shabbos Drasha

I was at the Torah UMesorah Convention this past Shabbos and I listened to about 10 Drashas over Shabbos. Although the attendance at the Drashas was respectful, many of the attendees opted out of most of them. The Shabbos Drasha, which has been an integral part of the Shul growth experience over the decades is under attack.

Two common sources of blame for its demise are shorter attention spans and the appeal of shorter yeshivish-like minyanim. In many larger Shuls this has lead to a situation where the main sanctuary is empty on Shabbos as people opt for the shorter drasha-less minyanim. As it turned out, one Rabbi who actually turned around his Shul’s main minyan with his amazing drashas was at the convention, Rabbi Eytan Feiner. But the reality is that most Rabbaim don’t have Rabbi Feiner’s oratory flair, but that isn’t really what the drasha is about anyway.

The drasha is about relationships. The relationship between a teacher and a student. The relationship between the parsha and its relevance to our growth. The relationship between a Rav, who aspires to inspiration and teaching without preaching, and his congregants. It’s about hitting singles week by week in a generation that loves the long ball.

The drasha is for us. Prepared by one caring Rav who has the difficult task of giving one talk to 50-500 people with varying spiritual needs and interests. In our communities, no one is there for us like our Rebbeim. And the drashas are the spiritual arms that he uses to reach out, to comfort, and to draw us closer to Hashem and His Torah. Let’s not make the mistake of opting out of this wonderful spiritual tool. Please regularly attend your Rav’s drashas, for the benefit of all of us.

Finding Shul Officers: Beg, Buy or Recycle

Easy-to-Enlist Officer Candidates in Short Supply
Experience and discussions with people in Shuls indicates that about 20% of your member families will be continuously active in running the Shul. If your Shul has 100 member families, you will have approximately 20 active families to fill 4 officer positions: president, vice president, treasury and secretary. After a few years you will run out of easy-to-enlist officer candidates. What do you do then?

Beg
The first method to fill your officer slots is to ask people who have not been active to get more involved. A certain amount of people will respond positively if asked by the right person, at the right time, in the right way. Many will say no. We can’t blame them. People are very busy with their jobs and family and it’s not an easy exercise to determine how to allocate one’s “free” time. You may achieve more success in this avenue if the members of the selection/begging committee were officers themselves at some point. I would also recommend putting some thought into how to respectfully ask the potential officer.

Buy
If you’re not successful on the beg, anther options is to buy. One type of buying involves offering officers some sort of financial incentive such as reduced membership. The problem with this is the importance of community service is diminished and the question of why some people receive incentives and some don’t is explicitly or implicitly raised. Another type of buying is outsourcing secretarial, financial functions and making those officer positions directorial rather than operational.

Recycle
Another option to fill your open slots is to recycle past officers. It’s not uncommon for a past treasurer or secretary to accept a post as vice-president or president. Another variation is when a person accepts a position year after year. As I mentioned in a previous post, our Shul has 4 treasurers, and 3 of them are perennials.

The biggest recycling question is whether to recycle presidents. On one hand, the President can be a very demanding job and asking them to do it more than once requires thought and discussion. On the other hand, the set of managerial, leadership and personality traits necessary for an effective president are hard to find, so the pool of candidates is even smaller than the pool for the other officer positions.

Finding Shul Officers is not easy, so thanks to all those who have served, and hopes for those who haven’t to seriously consider getting more involved.

First Published Nov 20, 2013

Appreciating Fast Minyanim

In a previous post, I discussed the Matzah Minyan which allegedly finishes an entire weekday Shacharis is 18 minutes. After reading the article, a friend made some good points about faster davening, which I would like to discuss along with a few points of my own.

Everybody approaches davening in a unique way. I started davening when I was in my twenties and I took it seriously from the start. Even though I’ve worked hard on improving over the years, I still have so far to go in terms of my pronunciation, concentration and understanding. It’s a lifelong pursuit.

People who started davening before their Bar Mitzvah established patterns when they were young. These patterns can be hard to change. Some worked on it more seriously in their late teens and 20s, some in midlife, and some even later. Between the different starting points and different rates of change, we have a wide range of davening speeds and styles, but it’s probably safe to say that we all can improve in this area.

Those committed to a daily minyan have made a serious commitment to their davening. Not everyone takes the trouble to daven every day with a minyan and those that do realize that it will positively affect their davening. It’s no small thing, no matter how fast the minyan or the daveners.

How fast the davening should be in a given minyan filled with a wide range of preferences is not a simple decision. The rule of thumb is probably that it should be as fast as it was yesterday. Hopefully we can find a way to collectively work on improving, but until then the slower daveners can come early and leave late and figure out the proper pace in order to start the Shemoneh Esrai with the Shliach Tzibbur. We’re all in this together and that’s the point that makes us a Tzibbur.