Newspaper Page Text
Friday, June 23, 1972
THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE
Pag* Three
American Mews Report .... By Ben Gallob
J\ew Synagogues At Virtual Halt;
Mergers Increasing, Expert Says
A Reform expert on syna
gogue administration has repor
ted that establishment of new
Reform and Conservative syna
gogues in the United States has
come to a virtual halt while an
increasing number of such con
gregations have been merging,
an event which he called “an
entirely new development” in
American synagogue history.
Some of the planned and pro
spective mergers involve amal
gamations of Conservative and
Reform congregations.
Myron Schoen, director of
the office of synagogue admin
istration of the Union of Amer
ican Hebrew Congregations, the
association of Reform syna-
ogues, outlined the changes in
a report in Sh’ma, the inde
pendent journal of Jewish opin
ion. He attributed the changes
largely to the pressures of eco
nomics and the increased mo
bility of the American Jewish
family. But a faculty member of
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the Hebrew Union College—
Jewish Institute of Religion,
Stanley F. Chyet, suggested—in
a comment in the same issue—
that another factor probably
was involved.
Chyet wrote that “a loss of
ideological identity, too, would
seem to be far from negligible”
in the development. He noted
Schoen’s report of Reform-Con
servative unions and Schoen’s
comment that “ideological con
siderations will play little or no
role in the decision as to wheth
er the merged congregations
will end up in one (denomina
tional) camp or another.”
Citing specifics, Schoen said
that, after almost two decades
during which 20 to 50 new Con
servative and Reform syna
gogues were established annu
ally, during the past two years
both the UAHC and the United
Synagogue of America, the as
sociation of Conservative con
gregations, “have been able to
count additions on the two
hands. More important, these
additions were not net gains,”
some being the result of merg
ers. He reported that “where
formerly there were two con
gregations in some communities,
today there is only one.”
He noted that mergers were
not unprecedented in American
Jewish history but that many
in the past were “in essence
moves to increase prestige.” What
is happening now, he asserted,
is “mergers and merger discus
sions that cross ideological
boundaries as well as between
congregations that belong to the
same national synagogal organ
ization.” Such mergers, prior to
1970, were relatively rare. In
May of 1970, Rabbi Maurice
Eisendrath, UAHC president,
reported to the UAHC board
that only four such mergers had
occured in the preceding five
years. He also reported that an
equal number were in process,
some between Conservative and
Reform congregations, were “at
least a half dozen Reform con
gregations so involved.”
Since the spring of 1970,
“there have been at least a
dozen Reform congregations
that have been involved in dis
cussion of merger and seven of
these have ended up with mer
ger agreements and are now
functioning as one congrega
tion,” Schoen reported. Four
involved “mixed marriages,”
but three remained Reform, the
fourth emerging as Conserva
tive. The deciding factor in
each case, he said, was the af
filiation of the rabbi.
In three of the four situa
tions — Benton Harbor, Mich.;
Terre Haute, Ind., and Colora
do Springs, Colo. — small com
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munities were involved “that
could not afford in terms of
numbers as well as dollars the
maintenance of two syna
gogues.” Changing neighbor
hoods and the exodus by Jews
to the suburbs were the reasons
listed for the merger of two
Reform congregations in Chi
cago, K.A.M. Temple and Tem
ple Isaiah Israel.” He added
that “not even the suburbs
have been immune to the prob
lems that lead to merger,”
citing the merger of Temple
Avodah of Levittown and the
Community Reform congrega
tion at Westbury, on Long Is
land.
The problem of rabbinical
leadership is often crucial,
Schoen reported. Congregations
with less than 200 families gen
erally expend 70 percent of their
annual operating funds to pay
the rabbi’s salary, housing and
pension, “but even when the
funds are available, fewer and
fewer younger graduates of our
seminaries are willing to serve
in these smaller communities
on the basis of an ‘internship’.
The flight of young families
from these smaller communities
has made the small town pulpit
less and less desirable to them.”
Schoen reported also that the
“most delicate” of the issues in
mergers is that of which of the
two rabbis will be the rabbi of
the merged congregations. In
some cases, merger talks have
foundered on that issue, he
said.
With eight to ten mergers
known to be pending, Schoen
said, the development could
hardly be considered a “tidal
wave.” A more accurate eval
uation, he declared, was that
“an accelerated effort” was
underway “to keep synagogues
operative in communities where
the Jewish population is dimin
ishing.” He predicted “an equal
number of such mergers in the
next few years.”
Chyet, who teaches American
Jewish history at the HUC-JIR
in Cincinnati, stressed that “a
lack of ideological considera
tions” as a factor in such mer
gers "is in itself an ideological
position—and one that may be
crucial in time to come.” He
suggested that what might be
happening could be “the rise of
an ideological latitudinarism
born of an inclination to con
cede only the most tangential
importance to ideological dis
tinctiveness.”
Chyet also asserted that it
was not ideology as such that
was tangential to the lives of
American Jews today. Young
Jews, he declared, “do not
seem hors de combat where any
but denominational, synagogal
ideologies are concerned.” He as
serted that denominati o n a 1
ideologies “manifestly ” are in
retreat among American Jews
“but social and political—and
extra-synagogal spiritual—ideo
logies are scarcely on the
wane.” American Jews are
living more and more in an
age of polarization on a va
riety of burning issues and he
posed the question as to the de
gree to which the American
synagogue “is a theater for these
polarizations” He suggested, as
on answer, that perhaps the
“new” has largely “deserted or
been removed from the syna
gogue and that may be another
reason why obstacles to mergers
have begun vanishing” on the
American synagogal scene.
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