We learn in the very first verses of Pirkei Avot (1:2): “On three things the world stands: Torah, avodah, and gemilut chassadim” — on learning, prayer worship and acts of lovingkindness. All three are given equal weight as world-builders here; but chesed, lovingkindness, is given more weight in Psalms 89:3, where it says, “The world is built of chesed.” 

And yet, in our contemporary synagogues, Jewish learning and prayer services take significant precedence over chesed — in terms of staffing, coordination and resources. 

Five years ago, when the world shut down to slow the spread of the deadly COVID-19 virus, synagogues shut down, too. We quickly adapted on the educational front: Hebrew school classes, adult learning groups and weekly Torah discussions shifted online as soon as we could figure out how to use Zoom. They produced mixed results sometimes, but they happened nonetheless. 

Prayer services were a harder task. Many of us wondered, What is the synagogue without singing together at prayer services, hearing Torah reading, chats at kiddush lunch, Yom Kippur’s Yizkor service surrounded by friends and family? It took longer, but best practices in live and prerecorded prayer service broadcasting were established: first with prayer leaders standing far apart with their own cameras in empty sanctuaries, then much later with in-person limited seating at a distance, plexiglass barriers, child-free spaces and vaccination policies. 

What about chesed? For the purposes of this article, by contemporary chesed I mean the activation of congregants to take care of each other in times of crisis or transition, most typically caring for the sick, comforting the mourner, supporting new parents and aiding those in financial crisis. This is separate from (although clearly related to) what I might call contemporary tzedek (justice) efforts, which I would define as contributing to those outside of the synagogue community through donations, volunteering and activism.

The pandemic shone a new light on our communities’ acts of chesed and illustrated what is left when you must pause the louder, more public displays of ritual and community. When the 9:30 a.m. Saturday “performance” is canceled, is there something else that we do here? How do we take care of each other and show each other love? Some congregations found they were severely lacking in the realm of acts of kindness, perhaps having only a few (often retired, often female) congregants coordinating and even meeting chesed requests for shiva minyans, sick visits, meals for new parents and emergency financial assistance for congregants. Many congregations, though, regardless if they had an existing chesed committee to activate, realized they had to rethink how they care for each other.

In recent interviews with 10 synagogue clergymembers, professionals and lay leaders in charge of their congregation’s chesed response, most reported to us that their congregations underwent a chesed revival during the pandemic, prompted by the sheer volume of people needing support. The scale of the crisis also made obvious to everyone that we all need help at times, overcoming the embarrassment at asking for help. In fact, most synagogues that were interviewed completely redesigned the way chesed worked during the pandemic. They learned that everyone can pitch in, small gestures go a long way and chesed must be central to synagogue life, not a marginal task for a small group. As one leader reflected, “COVID showed us what it looks like when we truly show up for each other — not just in crisis, but as a way of being.” 

The new pandemic focus on chesed produced significant change. However, we still have far to go.

Although today Jews have the choice whether to participate in Jewish communal life or not, at the beginning of the 20th century, when our community members were overwhelmingly immigrants and often in financial need, Jewish communal institutions clothed, fed, sponsored, buried and wed our earlier generations. Mutual aid societies (landsmanschaften) were established across North America so that Jews could prop each other up, take care of each other and make sure no one had to live a life without dignity, care and basic welfare. 

Today, our communal socioeconomic situation in North America has shifted. Jewish households on average are much better able to care for themselves financially, and we no longer need the same kind of immigration sponsorship and cultural integration. This is not to say that we have eliminated poverty in the Jewish community — quite the contrary — and acts of chesed around financial support remain extremely important. Overall, though, our community has risen in socioeconomic status, which has contributed to the current state in which supporting or belonging to Jewish institutions has become much more optional.

Our institutions themselves have shifted as well. If a century ago, our institutions aimed to alleviate poverty, strengthen the weak and address societal exclusion due to antisemitism, today most of our institutions are crafted — let’s be honest — more as consumer endeavors, with success measured by return customers. Synagogue staff in particular can begin to feel more like event planners than community-builders. A congregational calendar could be filled with entertaining talks and flashy family programs, but the essential function of chesed may be nowhere in sight. Religious life has become much more of a spectator sport, with heavy professionalization of community tasks, especially in larger congregations. Our institutions rely on their members less.

At the same time, we now face a different scarcity — more widespread, and dire all the same: a scarcity of companionship and loving care. Too many feel alone in this world, as described by such leading thinkers as former Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy in his advisory “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation” and professor Robert Putnam in books like Bowling Alone. Recent developments in North American and the Middle East, especially the aftermath of the Oct.7 attacks and the 2024 American election, have increased Jews’ sense of loneliness and the desire to build communities of lovingkindness.

What we need is a sweeping revival of the lost art of Jewish caretaking.

But how might we shift an institutional culture of consumer satisfaction to more covenantal, more demanding and, I would argue, more rewarding systems of lovingkindness delivery?

The key is needing our people more. We must stop doing everything for our congregants and community members and instead spend our time creating pathways for their individualized, intentional involvement. We must focus not on what congregants are owed in exchange for membership, but on what we owe each other as Jews and as humans.

At Clal, we’ve seen the impact this makes in terms of congregants’ sense of belonging and connection in the synagogue setting. Knowing from our previous pilot data that congregants with a high sense of belonging donate more and recommend the synagogue more to others, we’ve now aggregated data from over 30 congregations and almost 5,000 individual congregants who have taken our Congregational Belonging Survey. We found some striking things about the category of belonging we call “being needed.”

First, there was a vast difference between low-belonging respondents and high-belonging respondents in whether they felt they could easily find opportunities to contribute to the synagogue community. Feeling you don’t belong goes hand in hand, it seems, with not seeing ways to personally contribute. Although 81% of respondents with a high sense of belonging reported easily finding volunteering opportunities, only 8% of low-belonging respondents said the same. 

A high sense of belonging is also characterized, according to our data, by using “we” instead of “they” to describe the congregation (77% vs. 8% of low-belonging respondents) and taking it upon yourself to ask fellow congregants about their lives (91% vs. 28% of low-belonging respondents). In other words, taking responsibility or ownership over some of the functioning of synagogue life is correlated with a high sense of belonging. Yet, 33% of respondents (already self-selected to be more engaged congregants because they answered the survey!) have never heard from clergy or synagogue staff inviting them to participate in synagogue life.

We have documented a chesed deficit in congregations: Although the majority of all respondents said they greet fellow community members at events (76%), less than half (44%) of respondents in our Congregational Belonging Survey reported taking action to support a fellow community member who is not a family member or close friend in the last year. Our congregations may be friendly and even welcoming, but they are much less likely to be actively caretaking.

To need our people more with regards to chesed, here are some places to start, taken from our interviews with chesed coordinators:

1. Create a system for identifying who needs support and how much.

The most effective systems combine multiple methods — personal relationships, clergy referrals, open-access forms and proactive outreach. Needs likely fall into three basic categories: short-term (a “one-off” need), long-term (requiring ongoing support and follow-through) and complex (beyond the capability of synagogues). 

2. Clear structures and training are essential for organizing volunteers. 

Three communication models emerged for delegating chesed needs: the broadcast model (sending requests out to a list), the direct-ask model (directly asking a volunteer who is a good match for the need) and the staff-led model (staff members professionally leading the efforts). A combination yielded the best results. Training, onboarding and resourcing volunteers with explicit step-by-step processes were crucial. 

3. Supporting volunteers prevents burnout. 

Public gratitude, emotional and spiritual guidance after tough experiences, and a sense of volunteer community rejuvenate volunteers. Offering varying time commitment levels (including a “just one thing” option for those with time constraints), very specific asks, and clearly defined roles helps with recruitment and thereby prevents burnout.

4. Determine when to involve outside professionals for complex cases. 

Creating a rubric and a trusted referrals list eases the load and ensures congregants get the proper level of care and volunteers aren’t taking on more than they are qualified for.

5. We must teach people how to give and receive help. 

Giving to and receiving care from those outside our families during times of crisis is countercultural — to the point that we need to teach our communities how to do it. Sharing stories of receiving and giving can help normalize this, as can explicitly teaching about the Jewish values underlying it. 

The more congregants volunteer, the more belonging they feel and the more they continue to support the community. The same is true for receiving care: In the context of synagogue chesed, the care is reciprocal. With a continued surge in interest in Jewish communal life, now is the time to both need and care for our people more. In fact, the world stands on it.

Rabbi Julia Appel is the senior director of innovation at Clal – The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.