Turning Singles into Spouses
LISTFIELD, STEPHEN CHAIM
Turning Singles into Spouses STEPHEN CHAIM LISTFIELD Imagine this scene: It's an ordinary Friday night. Inside the synagogue almost all of the 1,500 seats are occupied. Most of the people are in...
...Four events commonly trigger a decision to join a synagogue...
...Most of the prayers are sung by the congregation, not simply led by the cantor...
...singles are welcome in the synagogue—theoretically...
...Gradually we added Sukkot dinners and Purim parties...
...It was an auspicious beginning: Two people who met that night later got married—a good omen for the many marriages that were to follow...
...No singles bars, computer dates or Club Med jaunts for these people— at least not this Friday night...
...Sometimes these Shabbat dinners coincided with the monthly singles service and the diners would then rush over to the services...
...They are in synagogue, which is the place to be if you're young, Jewish and single...
...For years, the synagogue had sponsored a daily kosher lunch program for seniors...
...The Embassy of Israel welcomed us annually on Tu b'Shvat...
...After all, aren't they as welcome in the synagogue as married people...
...Newlyweds often join a synagogue...
...Adult single Jews are educated and sophisticated...
...As our singles program continued to grow, the word continued to spread—among Jews and non-Jews, among grandparents and recent graduates, in government offices and in beauty parlors: If you were single and Jewish, you were missing something if you were missing Adas Israel...
...So, even though less than 50 percent of Jewish couples will join a synagogue, as time passes and children are born, the likelihood of their affiliation constantly increases...
...Athird or more of adult Jewish singles will intermarry...
...So why leave the future of American Judaism to the graduate school or the singles bar or the local vegetable counter...
...Those who marry non-Jews are not likely to affiliate...
...I have learned that singles need synagogues...
...What had begun as an occasional attempt to bring together a few assorted Jewish singles had now become an exciting monthly event that literally occupied the center stage of the synagogue...
...Why make the synagogue part of their lives later...
...She intrigued me at my study group...
...When I read a newspaper article about a Georgetown singles bar whose owner estimated that 30 percent of his Friday night clientele were Jewish, I decided it was time to create a Friday night experience for singles that was at least as authentic as a Georgetown singles bar...
...What better place for single Jews to meet than in a synagogue...
...One year toward the end of winter, one of the singles asked me what these seniors did for the Pesach seders...
...And if they don't join after the birth of a child, they might join when the child is of religious school age...
...And, yes, another serendipitous by-product: In 1984, Pat Robinson, an obstetrician and geneticist, left Los Angeles to accept a faculty position at the Georgetown University School of Medicine...
...When we outgrew it, I moved the singles into the main sanctuary and the "regular" Friday night congregation into the chapel...
...By this time we had a wonderful group of volunteers who carefully and cannily matched 12 to 16 singles at a time...
...It is highly unlikely that the person you work with or live near or bump into at the vegetable counter will be Jewish...
...In 1980, I met with a group of regular participants to discuss how we could further reach out to Washington's Jewish singles...
...Young singles in a cosmopolitan city like Washington often face holidays without family...
...We organized a two-week singles mission to Israel...
...No one at the synagogue had thought about that before...
...The problem is not that they are rebelling, as was often the case when people intermarried two or three generations ago...
...Our new programs caught on quickly...
...would not otherwise have seen the inside of a synagogue more than once or twice a year— if that...
...The problem is that once people finish school, they find themselves somewhere in the greater American marketplace...
...If we make little or no effort to bring single people in their twenties or thirties into the synagogue, by the time they settle down to marriage in their thirties and forties, they may already be alienated...
...Their participation made a difference in our regular services, in our adult education classes, in our special events—even in the Men's Club and Sisterhood, synagogue enclaves not generally bastions of youth...
...And those who do marry Jews—what will their attitudes be if the synagogue has been indifferent to their intellectual, cultural and social life during the 10 or 15 or 20 years they spent as adult single Jews...
...At first we held our service in the synagogue chapel...
...Attendance kept increasing, even though I was not using a mailing list or other advertising...
...The first is a wedding...
...It runs well into the thousands...
...Encouraged by the positive response from that event, I decided to hold a Friday evening singles service in the synagogue...
...I cannot close without answering the obvious question...
...As a rabbi, I contend that synagogues need singles even more...
...Isn't the distinction between singles and couples artificial, even patronizing...
...Like other Jews, they need the organized community to help them meet these needs...
...The program was naturally closed on weekends and festivals...
...We began with approximately 100 people...
...If newly married couples don't join a synagogue at that time, they might join after the birth of a child...
...Thus was born our monthly singles service...
...Let's examine this assertion simply on pragmatic grounds...
...After the service, 1,500 unmarried people squeeze into the synagogue's social hall...
...And again...
...It's easy to understand why...
...The singles program at Adas Israel continues, and other Washington synagogues have stepped into the arena...
...But there is another aspect to the seder for seniors that required the special singles perspective...
...Singles are, I believe, critically important to the synagogue, perhaps more important than any other identifiable group within the adult community...
...No stigma of attending singles events was ever attached to Adas Israel...
...Over coffee and cake, dozens of young Jews are meeting each other...
...Seventeen people came that night, at my personal invitation...
...About 35 people attended...
...She had relatives in Washington who told her, naturally, about the singles program at Adas Israel...
...These new members proved a boon to the synagogue, for they brought not only numbers, but youth and energy as well...
...Yes, there was an inevitable by-product: Jewish marriages...
...these are the people who identified that same situation as it faced an older, less resourceful group of people...
...Many synagogues don't even provide a dues structure for single membership—in some cases a single joins as "half a family...
...We began to offer courses in prayer, Bible and great Jewish books...
...It's gratifying to see that the response continues as well...
...This moved the singles into action...
...Synagogues have been responding...
...fi1...
...I suspect there are many more that I don't know about...
...We were regularly drawing Jewish singles from the entire Washington, D.C., and Baltimore area, from as far north as Wilmington, Delaware, and as far south as Williamsburg, Virginia...
...I'm not sure we realized it at the time, but this intellectual level of programming helped assure our success...
...Interestingly, once singles become involved in the singles program, many of them become part of the larger synagogue family...
...A few months later, Rabbi Elkins called to tell me that several hundred singles were attending his newly created monthly services...
...They have spirit...
...The biggest draw was Congressman Tom Lantos, who spoke about his rescue from Hungary by Raoul Wallenberg.* Our study group—on an interest of mine, Chasidic literature and philosophy—eventually grew into five study groups...
...But they don't come...
...And if they don't join even then, they will likely join when they want to start planning a Bar or Bat Mitzvah...
...Here in northern New Jersey, my colleagues Rabbis Alan Silverstein and Bob Rubin have developed a regional program that is modeled on my work at Adas Israel...
...And with good reason...
...Our singles are our future...
...many synagogues even give them a complimentary membership for a year, a subtle way of saying: The Jewish community recognizes you—now that you are married...
...But in either case, our singles program was transforming Friday night from a lonely and/or secular evening into a social and spiritual Jewish event...
...In addition, singles groups related to the rest of the synagogue family in special ways...
...Most of the people are in their twenties and thirties...
...And they share one other feature: they are all single...
...One difference from the usual seder—the Four Questions were asked by the oldest person, not the youngest...
...On other Friday nights, things were more leisurely...
...They have come for a religious service and they actively participate...
...I am frequently asked why a synagogue needs to create a separate program for singles...
...So I did it again...
...One year an 88-year-old woman led them...
...a year later there were more than 500...
...Any singles group can sponsor dances—we even held them from time to time—but what we were primarily offering was an ongoing series of programs that were intellectually and spiritually appealing...
...The need continues...
...The program was simply growing by word of mouth, in contrast to the conventional wisdom that singles were allergic to shut...
...This scene is not a fantasy, not a dream of Jewish Mothers of America, Inc...
...Married people, with family obligations, are simply not in a position to spend the days before Pesach, and the seder night itself, preparing and serving a meal for a hundred strangers...
...If we don't appeal to them now, why should they affiliate later...
...We decided to offer a Sunday brunch-and-speaker series and a singles study group...
...They also have obvious social interests...
...By the third time, a number of people requested a singles service on a regular basis...
...The problem is access...
...Rabbis and synagogue leaders speak of the number of "families" that constitute their membership...
...It is true...
...Those who remain single will not affiliate...
...Once we regularized it, the numbers increased even more dramatically...
...Without the singles, the seder for seniors would never have occurred...
...What follows is the story of how I began Adas Israel's singles program, how it grew to gigantic proportions and why a synagogue singles program is so important to the future of Judaism...
...For Pesach, the seniors were on their own...
...One woman wrote that I wouldn't see her or her three friends at singles activities anymore, because my program was responsible for all four of their marriages during that past year...
...A committee of 15 prepared a seder for 100 seniors—people who otherwise, we finally realized, would not have had a seder...
...on the contrary, it was a respectable thing to do, and attending was always worthwhile, because the events were intellectually profitable even if not socially successful for everyone...
...Many of these people * See Annette Lantos' account in "My Fight for Raoul Wallenberg," MOMENT, October 1987...
...Synagogues are family-oriented, child-oriented...
...With such a huge group of participants, we next decided to organize home Shabbat dinners...
...I've been away from Washington for three years...
...It occurred regularly, once a month, at the singles service at Adas Israel Synagogue, a Conservative congregation in Washington, D.C., where I served as associate rabbi for nine years...
...When we offered single memberships at reduced rates, more than 350 people joined...
...The singles met for a pot-luck Shabbat dinner at one of the volunteers' homes...
...the next year, a 92-year-old man...
...As many as 600 attended our Sunday brunch series...
...Of course, they are Jewish...
...Pat caught my eye at services...
...I know of more than a hundred...
...Not so with singles...
...Once more the response was positive, even enthusiastic...
...There are many such examples of the fresh perspectives, and the time and energy to back them up, that singles bring to a synagogue...
...The cadence is sufficiently spirited that even those who can't read the Hebrew or don't know the melodies are soon humming along...
...Jewish singles seemed to be everywhere but there...
...They mingle with everyone, they meet everyone, and—no surprise—they choose a marriage partner from among all these "everyones...
...As the two continue to draw closer together, years of indifference and alienation can be replaced by a powerful, mutually beneficial embrace...
...Our first service was on October 28, 1977, in the living room of young married congregants...
...When I came to Washington, 30 years old and single, I naturally observed the relationship—or lack thereof—between singles and synagogue...
...In 1984, Rabbi Dov Elkins, then interim rabbi at Har Zion in Philadelphia, invited me to speak about singles programming to a small gathering of his single congregants...
...We were married in 1986...
...Almost all of the Jewish singles I have talked with—and there have been thousands—say they would much prefer to marry a Jew...
...It took a single person to perceive the need...
...And singles continued to pour into the synagogue...
...How many single people availed themselves of these activities is difficult to estimate...
...The seder for seniors soon became an annual event...
...I felt so hesitant about bringing singles into the synagogue that I thought it would be better to start in a home...
Vol. 13 • October 1988 • No. 7
