If You Build It

Last Shabbat I finally visited the one shul in town I'd never seen before, Seattle's Emanuel Congregation. Ironically, it's also the synagogue in town that I've always found the most interesting in its configuration. Emanuel is one of the original two shuls that split off from the mainline Orthodox establishment when it moved to the suburbs. While American Orthodoxy has swung to the right, the other split-off (and dear to my heart) Capital Hill Minyan has stayed put about as much as possible, and Emanuel has inched slightly to the left. Today, Emanuel identifies itself as "Modern Orthodox," and its lay-led ArtScroll-sidur non-egalitarian-but-women-give-divrey-Torah service style is in line with that designation as it is applied elsewhere. What is peculiar is the seating arrangement, which is essentially the Boston Synagogue's layout of three sections -- men's, women's, mixed -- with the addition of two mechitzot to keep each section halakhically separate for prayer.

Emanuel is a snug, warm, heimish shul with a lovely sanctuary in its own cute building in a diverse neighborhood with many synagogues. It also has no young members.

The synagogue president talked to me at the kiddush about their little congregation and its future. I was amazed and heartened to hear him say, "We're an old congregation. We hope some young folks will come in here and make it their own. It will change to adapt to their needs, in ways we can't foresee. It has to." I was a member of a similarly progressive-yet-traditional shul in Vancouver that was tremendously promising and exciting, but ended up tearing itself apart for lack of this willingness to evolve with successive generations.

I also talked with the synagogue president's wife. Emanuel Congregation has no web site, and she is responsible for changing that. "I think we should be on the web. Do you have any ideas about how a web site could encourage younger people to participate?" I had to take care not to laugh out loud. Calmly, I told her that it is literally my job to have such ideas.

Ladies and Gentlemen, what we have here is an opportunity. A synagogue is asking to be reinvented for the future. They own a small prayer space, in a strategic location, that is unusually flexible and accessible. It is not a large complex like most synagogues -- it's more like a shteible -- and there is no "movement" institutional affiliation or even the mandate of a rabbi. It can simply be a place to ... well, congregate! So how can we go about embracing (and stewarding) this space as a unique community resource?

(One model that comes to mind initially is the Sixth and I synagogue in DC.)

In particular, since the question has been put to me, what would make a good web site for such a shul? The question is at once technical and philosophical. I am particularly interested in how the web site could be made interactive, such that the "online congregation" not only encourages involvement in the physical congregation but actually shapes it and its programming.