c. 1998 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ At Adas Israel Congregation, a 127-year-old institution that attracts many of this city’s Jewish movers and shakers, worshippers during the upcoming High Holy Days will have five different concurrent prayer services from which to choose.

In the 1,500-seat Smith Sanctuary, a service favored by many longtime members of the Conservative synagogue will feature a cantor’s authoritative chanting of the liturgy and the singing of a professional choir _ some of whose members are non-Jews. Many in the sanctuary crowd will reserve the same wine-colored seats their families have occupied during similar Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services for years, if not generations.

Meanwhile, in a room normally used by the synagogue’s nursery school, some 300 mostly young adults will attend a distinctly different service. This one will be led entirely by lay congregants, will have no choir and in some respects will be closer to an Orthodox service than to the one in Smith Sanctuary _ except women will participate fully.

Elsewhere in the building, a service geared for families with young children, another for those seeking added commentary on the liturgy, and one for those preferring a non-professional choir whose members sit among the worshippers also will be in full swing.

Adas Israel’s variety of simultaneous services is an example of the synagogue as”synaplex”approach that’s currently among the hottest concepts in congregational marketing.

It’s an attempt to satisfy the increasingly diverse spiritual tastes of American Jews by offering a menu of worship services ranging from the most conventional to”healing,””contemporary”and other distinctly experimental liturgies.”The one-size-fits-all approach never really fit all,”said Adas Israel’s Rabbi Avis D. Miller.”The synaplex concept allows people to find the option that’s closest to fitting their individual needs.” The Jewish High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur provide synagogues a choice opportunity to offer the synaplex approach. This year, Rosh Hashanah, which marks the start of the new year according to the Jewish religious calendar, begins at sundown on Sept. 20. The solemn fast day of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, begins at sundown on Sept. 29.

The opportunity lies in the fact that more Jews attend synagogue services during the High Holy Days than at any other time of the year. That means synagogue sanctuaries that are half-empty _ or worse _ most Sabbaths often cannot accommodate the crowds that show up on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, physically necessitating another service.

That has prompted an increasing number of synagogues to explore the synaplex concept in hopes of peaking the interest of infrequent worshippers and enticing them to return, said Rabbi Daniel Freelander, program director for the New York-based Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Reform Judaism’s synagogue umbrella agency.”Congregations take their best shot on the High Holy Days. It’s their time to shine,”he said.

The synaplex phenomenon is most pronounced in Judaism’s Reform and Conservative movements, which between them account for more than 90 percent of all synagogue-going Jews in the United States.

The traditional constraints on liturgical innovations adhered to by Orthodox congregations generally prevent them from offering the range of services now found in non-Orthodox synagogues. Moreover, Orthodox Jews tend not to need inducements to get them to attend synagogue regularly.

Despite that, alternative services are also becoming commonplace in Orthodox synagogues, said Rabbi Raphael Butler, executive vice president of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.”Beginner minyans,”or services, for newly Orthodox Jews;”hashkama”services that begin earlier in order to add study time to the recitation of the liturgy; and Sephardic-style services for Jews who trace their lineage to Spain, North Africa and the Middle East are some of the alternative services Orthodox synagogues are now offering during the High Holy Days and at other times, said the New York-based Butler.

Within non-Orthodox Judaism, few synagogues offer as many alternatives as Adas Israel, which has a building large enough and enough congregants _ 1,850″households”_ to fill all five services offered. Still, interviews with Conservative and Reform leaders indicate that at all but the smallest synagogues, alternative services are now common.”My sense is this is not that unusual anymore. You might say congregants are even beginning to expect choices being available,”said Rabbi Moshe Edelman, an official with United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism in New York.”It’s a ’90s thing,”added Rabbi Harold Schulweis of Valley Beth Shalom, an 1,800-family Conservative congregation in Encino, Calif.”Modernity means choice.” Schulweis predicted the synaplex approach will soon impact synagogue architecture.”We’ll need to build them with more rooms and chapels; smaller rooms that are more conducive to different services,”said Schulweis, who this Rosh Hashanah plans to announce a new addition to his synagogue’s stable of alternative services _ one focusing on”our inner emotional lives.” Temple Beth-El, a Reform congregation in San Antonio, is typical of many synagogues slowly warming to the synaplex concept. Currently, Beth-El only offers an alternative service on one day _ Yom Kippur morning.

While the 1,250-family congregation’s main sanctuary offers a classical Reform service replete with organ, professional choir and cantor, a less formal, more contemporary service featuring greater use of Hebrew takes place in the auditorium. About half the congregation will attend the alternative service, said Beth-El’s Rabbi Barry Block.

Despite the success of the Yom Kippur experiment, Block said he is unsure whether alternative services at other times of the year would draw well.”We’re thinking about it, but we’re not yet ready to move,”he said.

While the term synaplex is new, the concept itself dates to the late 1960s. Young Jews dissatisfied with the conventional service of the day spearheaded what was then a radical idea _ making worship services more user-friendly.

For the most part, that meant democratizing the service by giving lay congregants a greater role. Often it meant injecting social issues into the service. In some cases it meant a return to abandoned traditions.

Allan Sugarman, a one-time Jewish educator who today books personal appearances for soap opera stars, was there at the beginning. His first experience with an alternative service came in Toronto some three decades ago when he was asked to organize a Rosh Hashanah service for university students.”The service was less liturgical and cantorial, but provided more educational instruction,”said Sugarman, who now lives in Morganville, N.J.

In 1968, while working as youth director at Temple Israel in Great Neck, N.Y., Sugarman was struck by the violence at that year’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago.”I remember seeing on TV a policeman beating a demonstrator who was just like me,”Sugarman said.”It was like an epiphany for me. I realized we needed to contemporize the traditional service, and that the best time to try and impart some alternative spirituality was the High Holy Days when the most Jews are in synagogue.” Since 1985, Sugarman has helped produce”contemporary”High Holy Days services based on a loose-leaf prayer book he developed for his current synagogue, the Marlboro Jewish Center in Marlboro, N.J. In addition to traditional prayers, the service draws on the writings of such non-Jews as Walt Whitman, Rod McKuen, Edna St. Vincent Millay and others. It is one of three services offered on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.”Our prayer experience does not have to be based on guilt or nostalgia. We don’t have to do something just because our grandparents did it,”said Sugarman.

Many Jewish leaders credit the synaplex concept with breathing new life into tired liturgies and keeping otherwise disenchanted congregants from drifting away.

However, others say a synagogue’s unity may suffer when congregants separate for worship _ even if they do so under the same roof. For that reason, said Adas Israel’s Miller, it’s important for synagogues to offer other activities that unite congregants.”There’s always social action projects and study groups,”said Miller.”These are things that cut across the davening (prayer) lines and involve all members of all services.” Schulweis, the California rabbi, added another perspective.”Splits, that’s a good danger,”he said.”Better to have a congregation of Jews splintered because they are following varied Jewish interests than a congregation that is unified but frozen in the pews by boredom. A synagogue of frozen `chosen’ does no one any good.”

DEA END RIFKIN