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President's Message
March 2008

The Bad News, The Bad News, And The Good News

One of my normal activities as President is to monitor and participate in a national list-serve for Presidents of synagogues affiliated with the Conservative Movement.

On a normal day, I will spend about 20 minutes reading through the various topics of discussions and requests for information. Topics run the gambit and include discussions about fund-raising, publicity, relations with our governing authority, dues structures, Boards of Directors and By-laws, relations with clergy, etc. Recently, someone brought up the topic of membership and asked participants to provide their synagogueÕs general membership numbers for the past 5-10 years.

The question elicited a torrent of bad membership news. From North to South, East to West, City to Suburban, large to small congregations, Conservative synagogues have been experiencing a constriction of their membership. While the figures varied, participants reported an average decline in membership over the last 5-10 years of about 5-20%.

Approximately 20 volunteer responses on a list-serve is obviously not a scientific poll. However, such anecdotal evidence is consistent with the professional analyses that have been conducted over the past 20 years or so. According to the National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) (www.ujc.org/NJPS), in 1990, the Jewish population of the United States was approximately 5.5 million. Of those 5.5 million Jews, approximately 43% were affiliated with the Conservative Movement.

By the year 2000, the U.S. Jewish population had declined to about 5.2 million. Of those 5.2 million Jews, approximately 33% were affiliated with the Conservative Movement. Other organizations, using different methodologies, vary in their analysis of the population. However, all of the surveys that I have examined show a zero population growth, or worse, among American Jews and a declining Conservative Movement.

There is no way to put a positive spin on the foregoing information. We belong to a rich and beautiful religion whose numbers both in actual terms and as a percentage of the population is declining. Additionally, our particular strand of the Jewish family, the Conservative Movement, is also losing members, in actual terms and as a percentage of the Jewish population.

While it is way beyond me to suggest a solution to these problems in this article, I do have a bit of good news to report to and about our community. For the past 10 years, unlike the vast majority of our sister congregations, our membership has not declined, but has held steady. In fact, of the approximately 20 congregational Presidents who responded on the list-serve to the membership question, only KM and one other synagogue (in Dallas, Texas) responded that it had not lost overall membership.

On the Board of Trustees, we sometimes wring our hands over our inability to break the 300 family membership barrier to which we have been tantalizingly close over the past 5 years.

While we should, and will, continue to work to expand our membership, it does appear, and we should appreciate, that our little KM community is healthy.

Jamie Green
President