I love synagogues. I love watching them grow, change, innovate and — most of all — persevere.

In 1917, Mordecai Kaplan wrote that “the synagogue is the principal means of keeping alive the Jewish consciousness.” Citing Kaplan’s work seventy years later, Abraham Karp argued that despite declining membership, the synagogue remained “the preeminent institution in American Jewish life.”But today we act as if this is no longer true.  

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Illustrative. Exterior of a synagogue.

According to the Pew Research Center’s 2021 survey of American Jews, 46% of Jews by religion belong to a synagogue. Many interpret that figure as evidence that synagogues are no longer the central organizing institution of American Jewish life — and are therefore seen in the funding community as a poor investment.

But I’ve always found this statistic misleading because it confuses an absolute number with a comparative one. Investment decisions are never made in a vacuum; they are made by comparing one opportunity to another. By that standard, no institution in Jewish life comes close to the synagogue. 

Synagogues already exist in hundreds of communities across North America, accompanying Jews across every stage of life — from welcoming newborns to burying the dead. Camps, day schools, Hillels, Israel programs and countless other institutions each play indispensable roles, but all serve narrower populations or specific moments in the Jewish lifecycle. None possesses the synagogue’s geographic reach or its capacity to engage Jews over a lifetime.

If nearly half of American Jews by religion still choose synagogues — and no competing institution approaches either their participation or their reach — then synagogues remain our greatest institutional opportunity to strengthen Jewish life.

How often do you hear philanthropists, startup organizations, or Jewish thought leaders argue that doubling down on synagogues is the surest path to a vibrant Jewish future? Instead, our debates often revolve around why camps, day schools, Hillels, or Israel trips deserve greater investment—as though anyone seriously doubts their value. Synagogues, by contrast, rarely receive the same presumption of worth.

If we want to maximize Jewish engagement, we should invest in the institution that already reaches more Jews than any other — and already has the capacity to impact even more.

Maximizers and satisficers

Suppose you love this article so much that you decide to buy me a television as a thank-you gift (thank you in advance!). Some people leave nothing to chance. Before buying a television, they read reviews, compare models, ask friends for recommendations and wait for the perfect sale. Others search Amazon, find one that looks good at a reasonable price, glance at a few reviews and buy it. As long as they can Netflix and chill, they’re good to go.

Neither approach is wrong. In 1955, economist Herbert Simon wrote that traditional economics assumes that people “have knowledge of the relevant aspects of their environment, which, if not absolutely complete, is at least impressively clear and voluminous.” Simon knew this was unrealistic: if people actually evaluated every possible option before deciding, they would rarely decide at all.

Simon called these two approaches “maximizers” and “satisficers.”

I am a maximizer when it comes to Jewish life. My wife and I probably spend somewhere between $100,000 and $150,000 each year to support our family’s Jewish commitments — kosher food, day school, camp and more — and I happily do it. I devote enormous energy to optimizing my Jewish choices. 

Most Jews, however, are not maximizers. They are satisficers. They may spend only a few thousand dollars on Jewish life each year, and their goal is simply to meet basic needs. They care about finding a good synagogue or a good Jewish camp, but they are not seeking expert approval.

This distinction helps explain why synagogues are so often overlooked. Carmel Chiswick argues in Judaism in Transition that the individual Jew decides “how much Judaism contributes to his or her well-being… [and] how much time and effort to devote to Jewish observance.” Leaders can easily confuse the choices they would make with the choices most Jews actually make. The lack of investment in synagogues reflects what happens when we design Jewish institutions around the assumptions of insiders rather than the behaviors of the Jews we hope to reach.

The innovation paradox

This was not always the case.

In the early aughts, synagogues attracted significant investment. Federations employed staff dedicated to synagogue capacity building, while initiatives like Synagogue 2000/3000, Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal (STAR) and the ReImagine Project challenged congregations to rethink what a synagogue could be. At the same time, thought leaders like Ron Wolfson, Isa Aron, Kerry Olitzky, Larry Hoffman and my teacher, Bob Leventhal z”l, were actively raising the bar for synagogue life.

That investment produced two important outcomes. First, participating synagogues became stronger; many congregations still point to that era as transformational. Second, it created the conditions for innovation, as leaders launched independent minyanim and spiritually emergent communities such as Kehilat Hadar, IKAR and Nashuva.

Over time, however, funders drew the wrong conclusion.

Because only a handful of those startups had the voltage to endure, we fell victim to survivorship bias, mistaking the visibility of a few successful alternatives for evidence that synagogues themselves could not innovate. We overlooked the many startups that lacked the voltage to catch fire and underestimated the capacity of synagogues to adapt gradually, but meaningfully.

Today, synagogues no longer receive the kind of investment they did in the early aughts. At the same time, fewer new communities have achieved the momentum we once saw. In seeing the choice between legacy institutions and startups as zero-sum, we ended up weakening both.

Evidence, not assumptions

Ten years into the rabbinate, I got to serve a congregation, the Astoria Center of Israel (ACI). One of the things that drew me to ACI was that it sits in an area of New York where, as one of my mentors likes to say, there are “a lot of Jews and not a lot of Jewish.” According to the 2023 community study conducted by UJA-Federation of New York, northwest Queens — which includes Astoria, Long Island City and Elmhurst — is home to 22,000 Jews. It is also remarkably young: 76% of Jewish residents are under 50, with an average age of just 39.

Our congregation is thriving. We’ve doubled our membership in under five years, and we may yet triple our Hebrew school enrollment over the same period. On many Shabbat mornings, there are more strollers in the lobby than people sitting in the sanctuary — and we love it.

But challenges remain. Our neighborhood has enormous potential for Jewish growth for us and a variety of synagogues and startups, but realizing that potential requires investment. We are not a startup seeking to prove a new model. We are a century-old synagogue that is ready, willing and capable of meeting this moment. The question is whether or not the Jewish organizational world will embrace the opportunity.

Go and see

Not every synagogue should survive indefinitely. Some should sunset, and their resources should be redirected to communities with greater growth potential.

But my favorite principle from the Talmud is “pok chaziI,” “go and see.” When unsure how to answer a question, go and see what people are actually doing, and let that guide your strategy.

For centuries, Jews in North America have been showing us where they are most likely to choose Jewish life. The question is whether we are finally ready to go and see.

Rabbi Joshua Rabin is the author of “Moneyball Judaism” on Substack and rabbi of the Astoria Center of Israel in Queens, N.Y.