Quotes About Synagogue

I was a very religious child - I went to synagogue at least once, sometimes twice, a day. And I remember my religiousness as good - I think religion is good for children, especially educated children, because it allows for imagination, a whole imaginative world apart from the practical world.

The challenge facing the synagogue is not an increase in the cost of membership. The challenge facing the synagogue is a decreasing cost benefit felt by its members.

their feet. And that vote may help them march away from the synagogue if the synagogue doesn't find effective ways to engage them.

Some synagogues are simply calling themselves community institutions rather than membership institutions that require payment of dues to become a member. These synagogues suggest that all locals are members of the synagogue and therefore welcome to use its services or the services of its professional staff. Like online services that are free, these congregations would charge only for upgrades or premium services, such as personal or family counseling by the rabbi or the education of children.

To emphasize what is required for this proposed change—which is quite substantial—I like to say that I believe the synagogue needs to turn itself inside out. In other words, it has to become an institution that serves the entire local Jewish community—and, in some cases, secularists too—rather than functioning solely as an institution that serves only its members. When synagogues turn themselves inside out, all Jews and all those in Jewish families in the

Synagogue leaders have yet to realize that the synagogue has once again become essentially a house of prayer. Many of the alternative synagogue structures that are emerging—primarily led by young people—are built solely around prayer services. Instead of accepting this

default position, synagogues need to take what they do best—if they can indeed do them better than any other institution in the Jewish landscape—and locate their "brand" in the broader community. Synagogues need to be open to those issues that are engaging people in contexts outside the synagogues. For example, there is a growing interest in food justice issues, particularly among millennials, yet few synagogues have built their programs around this issue.

If we turn the synagogue inside out, the synagogue would serve a far broader audience, one that is not restricted by the traditional notion of synagogue membership. Synagogues can reach out and serve a population larger than their current membership if they are willing to emphasize those things that the synagogue does well and that are within its purview, while refraining from those things that are irrelevant to the synagogue and its work. In too many situations

While the notion is undoubtedly controversial, I argue that when a synagogue turns itself inside out, it can provide for life-cycle events and education for everyone without making a distinction as to who is a member and who is a nonmember. This also allows the synagogue to reclaim the functions that it gave away to day schools, JCCs, and others. In reality, four life-cycle events have theoretically been under the

Turning the synagogue inside out, into a community institution, means that it has to become a recognizable presence. The building used to be the vehicle to make its presence known. Now the building is taken for granted, even if people are able to discern what takes place inside it. This model depends on a different approach. By turning inside out, the synagogue will make its presence known in two ways: by implementing Public Space Judaism

The most brazen humiliation ever inflicted upon God and mankind, justifying all the curses of the synagogue, is to be found in the 'sive' of the formula Deus sive Natura.

once brought a frog home, hoping to keep him as a pet. Not a large frog, a one-handed frog, quiet and well mannered. My mother made me release him, then cleanse myself in the immersion pool (the mikveh) at the synagogue. Still she wouldn't let me in the house until after sunset because I was unclean.

This is the cathedral. Neo-Gothic. They had midnight Mass there last Christmas, but they held it at noon because, of course, no one went out at night at that time unless they were suicidal. On its left you see the synagogue and the mosque. On the right the Orthodox church. All the places where none of us go to worship, situated within a very convenient hundred meters of one another.

in the synagogue of my heart... I myself jail and the jailed, I go wounded, bite-marked

I'm in this effort to unify my life and to live day to day in a disciplined way, to be real at all times, not just in front of people, or not just in a synagogue.

The style of God venerated in the church, mosque, or synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe.

The shnorrer was no fool, please note, no simpleton. He often had read a good deal, could quote from the Talmud, and was quick on the verbal draw. Shnorrers were "regulars" in the synagogue and, between prayers, took part in long discussions of theology with their benefactors. The status points involved here are too delicate for Newtonian physics, or Parsonian sociology,* to handle. (Certain Hindu and Oriental groups recognize the beggar in the same way.)

And why did the women have to sit upstairs in the synagogue? They were prettier and smarter than the men. Those hirsute zealots who wrapped themselves in prayer shawls on the premier level, nodding up and down like bobbleheads and kissing a string up to some imaginary power who, if he did exist, despite all their begging and flattery, rewarded them with diabetes and acid reflux.

My mother was a modern woman with a limited interest in religion. When the sun set and the fast of the Day of Atonement ended, she shot from the synagogue like a rocket to dance the Charleston.

She was not so swept away that she could not see the high comedy of this spiritual seduction: a Litvinoff daughter, a third-generation atheist, an enemy of all forms of magical thinking, wandering into synagogue one day and finding her inner Jew. But there it was. Something had happened to her, something she could not ignore or deny. And there was a sense in which its unlikelihood, its horrible inconvenience, was precisely what made it so compelling.

what sanctities any space as a synagogue is a natter of what happens there, not where or what it is.

One positive command he gave us: You shall love and honor your emperor. In every congregation a prayer must be said for the czar's health, or the chief of police would close the synagogue.

I'd forgotten it was these people I was coming back to: these views, that synagogue full of small, cramped minds, grown twisted through lack of sunlight.

Some will tell you all you need is religion. They are wrong. You can go to church, mosque or synagogue ten times a day, pray hard and read the Scriptures as often as possible, give generous alms, and visit holy cites weekly. None of that can stop demons from rising in you, if you harbor jealousy or evil intentions toward your neighbour or fellow human.