Rant #3,573: Money Changes Everything

I hope you had a good weekend.

My family and I celebrated my wife's birthday, and that was the weekend's highlight.

On Saturday, someone on Facebook put up some interesting information about synagogues on Long Island.

This subject always piques my interest, because there seems to be fewer and fewer of these religious facilities around today, and one would probably think that this situation shouldn't exist, because Long Island still has a large Jewish population.

Growing up in Queens, my parents were quick to join the conservative synagogue in Rochdale Village, seeing it grow from a former house to its own large building 

It, and the other synagogues serving Rochdale Village, gave its members a sense of community, and all of them prospered during the early days of that community, roughly 1963 to 1971 or so.

That is where I was bar mitzvahed, and the synagogue had a vibrant membership until in the early 1970s, when Jewish families moved away in droves.

I believe the synagogue was converted to a church sometime in the 1980s. It is in the picture above in an undated photo.

Now, in 2024, one synagogue after another has closed or merged on Long Island, and one has to question why this is. 

Having been synagogue members in Massapequa and Wantagh, I can tell you exactly why all these shuls have closed.

Conservative Judaism is simply not what it once was. When my family moved to Long Island in the early 1970s, the first thing my parents did was join a synagogue ... when they were about to join a local synagogue but found the membership fee was too high--especially after just purchasing a house, we were told to go to the "bar mitzvah mill" around the corner 

That was the precursor of an attitude, and of things to come.

As an adult, with my own family, I, too, joined a synagogue so my son could be bar mitzvahed, but it just wasn't the same.

The sense of community that the synagogue once had was replaced by the sense that money was way more important.

We were constantly barraged with requests for payment of one thing or another, and High Holy Day tickets became such a monetary abomination that we just decided it was too much money to pay for all of us, so we maybe bought a ticket or two and rotated who would go in at what time.

The final straw came when there was a merger between our synagogue in Massapequa with one in Wantagh, which happened right as my son was about to be bar mitzvahed.

We were treated like second-class citizens by the temple in Wantagh, and when we decided that we would hold our own kiddish after the ceremony because what they offered was too highly priced, the commotion this caused was unbelievable.

My son is developmentally disabled, so his Haftorah had to be shaped to what he could handle. 

That was a major imposition for the new combined synagogue, which basically was forced to fit us in at an 8 a.m. service before their regular congregants kids' bar mitzvah services were held that day, making my son's bar mitzvah the very first one held in the newly combined synagogue.

But even getting to that point was a horror show of major proportions.

Again, my son is developmentally disabled, and thus, was thought to be a "problem" from the get go.

During one of my son's bar mitzvah lessons--which I attended because the teacher thought there would be trouble with my son acting up, which was totally unfounded--the synagogue's comptroller burst into the room, telling me that in no uncertain terms, my son's ceremony would be "interrupted" if I did not pay for their kiddish.

I told the comptroller that if they dared to do this, they would face my wrath, and the wrath of others who were attending (yes, I toned this down for your consumption).

Suffice it to say, nothing happened in that regard, my son's bar mitzvah went along perfectly, and I swore on that day that we were done with the synagogue.

Then, after our membership elapsed, they tried to extort money from my family to rejoin by automatically signing us up as members against our will--and charging us an exorbitant price for membership.

This went on for months.

After threatening legal action, they finally dropped us.

This situation was so reprehensible, to the point that we have been unaffiliated without a synagogue since that time, a good 16 years.

And during that time, the Wantagh synagogue has gone through at least one more major merger, perhaps more than that.

Money changes everything.

As the Bible says, once your religion's focus centers on "false idols" like money, the religion ceases to exist.

In this case, the synagogue's focus went from Judaism to money worship, and when that happens, many congregants, like us, won't put up with it.

It is a sad story, but I think thst it has resonated through a few generations now, and Jews don't necessarily feel the need to join their local temples anymore.

There is little to no sense of community provided by these facilities, and you can always find an outside bar or bat mitzvah teacher if you need one.

And today, with anti-Semitism at all-time highs around the world, it is truly sad that synagogues do not serve their original purpose as they once did.

I am sure there are temples that still do this, and do things the right way, but they are larger and have a wide membership base, because for Jews who need to join a synagogue, the local ones, at least on Long Island, are something of a thing of the past.

Sad, but true.

I have "learned" on my own to continue my faith, but it simply isn't the same, and that is no truer than this year, when the first night of Hanukkah falls on Christmas Eve.

Hanukkah, the true and first "Festival of Lights," might get lost in the shuffle, but at least in my family's window, our menorah will burn proud and bright.