Jewish recording artist and producer Craig Taubman will bookend the public celebration of Synagogue 3000 in Atlanta.
Taubman will lead three different versions of seeker services over Shabbat on March 23 and 24 before holding the monthly Synagogue 3000 leadership training workshop Sunday.
Taubman will return to Atlanta on Sunday, Nov. 4, for Hallelu, a community concert at the Fabulous Fox Theatre at which 2,000 to 3,000 members of the Jewish Atlanta community will join together for song, story and dance.
The key to all of the services is that they are meant to draw synagogue members and nonmembers from throughout Jewish Atlanta, overcoming geographic and denominational boundaries as much as possible.
Each of the services features a lot of songs and a band and is meant to be edgy and different, a point Taubman said is made by the ad. It features a boy straight out of the 1950s and asks, "Haven't been to temple since your Bar Mitzvah? Check us out and see what's new."
"People will meet and greet them when they walk in," Taubman said during a phone interview from his car as he rushed around in preparation for a major music festival in Los Angeles earlier this month. "Each congregation was invited well in advance to be on that committee" to figure out how to get their members to the services.
Synagogue 3000 is reaching out to the vast majority who don't go to synagogue, whether or not they are members.
The services are interactive, Taubman said. "People in the congregation talk and/or sing at the service. The message is not just coming from on high. There has to be an investment upfront to make the service significant," or it won't succeed.
Taubman hopes synagogue members will invite their unaffiliated Jewish friends to come along and have some fun and maybe start talking about what it means to be Jewish.
"The ask is not just in house and incestuous," Taubman said. "The ask has to reach out to the community."
The seeker-service weekend kicks off Friday night, March 24, at 7 p.m. with host Congregation Or Hadash holding Friday Night Live services at Greenfield Hebrew Academy in Sandy Springs.
There will be acoustic and bass guitars, pianos, a lot of singing, and a lot of wordless melodies, Taubman said. It's a spiritual, somewhat free-form service.
One Shabbat Morning, the Saturday service at 10:30 a.m. March 24 at The Temple in midtown, is more grounded in the traditional liturgy, although it still features instrumental music.
The service "respects the liturgy but with new ideas," Taubman said. For example, instead of the traditional seven aliyot during the Torah reading, there is only one.
The services wrap up with 25th Hour at Ahavath Achim Synagogue in Buckhead at 6 p.m. March 24.
Taubman said the inspiration for the service is that "traditionally the community was so in love with Shabbat that they wanted to extend it, so we try to squeeze an extra hour into the day. We call that the 25th Hour."
The service is full of music, storytelling and singing and free of any traditional liturgy. "It's fun," Taubman said. "There's a lot of participation from the community."
There's also likely to be some kind of take-home token, such as a mirror or a flashlight. The actual item is insignificant, Taubman said, but the concept is crucial: "Typically, people are asked to give something. We want to leave you with something."
His hope is that community members will come prepared to contribute their own songs and stories. "The extent to which they invest upfront in the celebration largely determines the success of the service. It can't be just presented. It won't have a lasting impact."
That's true of the whole weekend. The idea is not to deliver three polished services for synagogues to copy, but to provide three different ideas for how to instill more joy and more community involvement in services so that people come back week after week.
Taubman said it's not likely that any synagogue, let alone all of them, would be able to use the exact same service that one of his collaborators, Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, would use with his congregation.
"We're only there for a weekend," Taubman said, so the local follow-up is crucial. The model itself isn't scientific; the idea is just to be good, gracious hosts so that people feel welcome and want to return.
"I don't suggest that we have the answer. It's not science; it's art," Taubman said. "Don't look at it as 'this is the way,' but as one path on a journey. You'll attract many more people."
Reader Comments
Posted: Friday, August 10, 2007
Article comment by:
sandi
To me, it sounds like they are trying to make our Jewish services more like Christian ones. It will make the next generations feel more comfortable in church. :-(
