Last Call

January 2nd, 2025

A few days ago, I attended the last morning Shabbat service (Shacharit) to be held at my synagogue. The shul will no longer offer religious services, which means that for all practical purposes the synagogue is inactive. The Jewish community at that site may reconstitute itself in some fashion, but the synagogue itself is done. It is part of the past.

The number of people in attendance at the shul yesterday was small. This was no surprise. The number of participants in the synagogue’s religious services has been dwindling for quite some time. This trend has been driven primarily by demographics. There have been very few young people coming to the shul. Most of the population is old, in many cases too old. Being that it is an Orthodox congregation, most members do not drive on the sabbath. People walk to the services. At some point, a person cannot make that walk anymore, and therefore they can’t participate at the synagogue. A number of long-time congregants have passed away in recent years. I can think of at least three funerals that I have attended during the last couple years. If the members of a group are dying, then so is the organization. It’s that simple.

The gabbai at the synagogue (the group leader) kept counting heads to see if there would be enough for a minyan. A minyan, a group of ten Jewish males, is required for there to be a reading of the Torah. The Torah reading is the focal point of the service. It’s a big deal. It’s the big deal. The rest of the service is beautiful but somehow lacking without the Torah reading.

Alas, we were short one Jewish adult male. Nine guys just don’t make the cut. As the gabbai remarked, “Yes, we have ten men here, but one of them is Catholic (me), and we have our rules.” The gabbai gave a brief talk to the group. It just happened to be about minyans and where the rule for them came from. He had done some research on Wikipedia to help him plumb the depths of the Talmud. The origins of the “rule of ten” are buried deep in the Torah and have been debated by the rabbis for centuries. The Talmud makes note of the decisions that came from these discussions, and it also records the dissenting opinions. Some of the dissents assert that to read the Torah, you need ten Jews, but not necessarily ten male Jews. However, tradition goes along with the majority viewpoint, so there has to be ten men.

As a Catholic, the whole affair reminds me of the Church liturgies. Catholics don’t worry about minyans, but we are very concerned with having a priest. Without a priest, a Mass cannot be celebrated, and the congregation cannot share the Eucharist. The Eucharist, like the Torah reading, is the focal point for the service. Everything in the Mass revolves around the sharing of communion. Oddly enough, the priest has to be a man (echoes of the minyan rule), and centuries of tradition based on selective interpretation of Scripture have enforced that regulation.

Are the rules concerning the minyan and the rules concerning priests and the Mass fair? Are they logical? Probably not. However, life in general is neither fair nor logical, so I guess these rules are normal in the human experience. In any case, both Jews and Catholics are burdened with traditions that seem to be set in stone, and we just deal with them.

The thing with a minyan is that, if a synagogue cannot scrounge together ten men once a week, it is a death knell for that community. Likewise, a Catholic parish without a priest might as well close up shop. Jews will go somewhere that has a Torah reading and Catholics will find a church where they can go to Mass. That’s the reality of it.

So, where will we all go? I don’t know. There are other Jewish groups within walking distance of the synagogue: WITS (Wisconsin Institute for Torah Study, Chabad, and Hillel. The remnants of our community will likely disperse to those locations. They will ease into another Jewish congregation.

For myself, the future is less clear. I have spent fifteen years with this particular Jewish community, and it took years for me to be fully accepted. Do I really want to start all over with a new congregation? Jewish communities, especially in the current political environment, are very leery of new people (in particular non-Jews) wandering into their midst. I can try to find a new home, but it will be hard to sell myself.

I grieve for this synagogue. Honestly, I can’t say why I feel this way, but it has been my home. It is one of the few places where I have truly felt like I belonged.

Even if I don’t count for a minyan.