NEWS FEATURE: `Friday Night Live’ Draws Young Jews to Their Faith

c. 2000 Religion News Service LOS ANGELES _ “Please put your hands above your head. Let us know that you’re here,” says musical director Craig Taubman to a crowd of young Jewish adults at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Taubman and his band are leading the congregation in the hand-clapping melody of “Romemu,” a Jewish […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

LOS ANGELES _ “Please put your hands above your head. Let us know that you’re here,” says musical director Craig Taubman to a crowd of young Jewish adults at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles.

Taubman and his band are leading the congregation in the hand-clapping melody of “Romemu,” a Jewish song praising God. Inside Sinai’s block-long sanctuary, young adult Jews _ mostly from 25 to 40 years old _ congregate for “Friday Night Live,” a monthly Shabbat service that combines folk and contemporary music with spirituality, dancing and sermons. Every second Friday of the month, the Conservative synagogue draws nearly 2,000 Jews from Los Angeles and the surrounding Ventura, Orange and San Diego counties. Some even fly in from Tucson, Ariz., and San Francisco.


The band breaks into the quick tempo of “Adonai S’fatai,” and a group of people link hands and dance through the aisles. “Everybody who’s dancing grab one person,” says Taubman, his voice barely audible above the music and singing.

Following the service, Sinai Temple becomes a traditional Beit K’nesset, the Hebrew term for “house of gathering.” Young adults participate in a variety of activities, including Israeli folk dancing, a light supper, study and socializing.

But there is something larger happening at Sinai Temple. Friday Night Live is a not-so-subtle attempt to reconnect Jewish Generation X with its lost sense of faith, and to encourage single Jews to find a Jewish mate and stem the rising tide of Jewish intermarriage.

“It’s a happening,” Taubman, 41, later explained of Friday Night Live. Taubman, who plays the guitar for Friday Night Live with his band of five to seven musicians, combines Middle Eastern, klezmer and Hebrew melodies into the liturgy. The group typically welcomes the Shabbat bride with a jazzy New Orleans tempo of “L’cha Dodi.”

“Praying in our community is not a spectator sport. There’s some magical combination of spirit and forces that compels people to come again and again,” Taubman said.

People have been coming to Friday Night Live since 1998, when Taubman and David Wolpe, Sinai’s senior rabbi, first talked about the idea over lunch.

“His vision was (a service) for young adults. He was so passionate about it. He really wanted it to happen,” recalled Taubman.


And happen it did. With the initial support of $10,000 from the Jewish Community Foundation and other private donations, the first Friday Night Live drew nearly 400 people. That number has since doubled several times over, making Friday Night Live the most popular Jewish singles event on the West Coast.

“I knew that young people needed this,” said Wolpe, 41, as he relaxed in his office. “I was 100 percent sure that (Friday Night Live) would succeed because I really believed there was a spiritual hunger.”

Tall and slender, Wolpe is a native of Philadelphia and a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He is also a popular lecturer and prolific writer and has authored five books, including “Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times” (1999). His mixture of quick wit and youthful charisma are the perfect ingredients to draw young Jews to their faith.

“The largest population are come-backers,” Wolpe explained of the young adult Jews who have lost touch with a synagogue community. “I wanted to show them that (attending Shabbat services) is a first step and not a last one.”

That first step is one of Friday Night Live’s main selling points: It’s a great venue for young Jews to meet and hopefully marry other Jews. That’s a primary concern for a religion in which the tradition is passed from the mother to the children.

“Judaism is numerically imperiled and Christianity isn’t,” Wolpe said of the tendency toward Jewish/non-Jewish intermarriage, which worries many of today’s Jewish leaders. Events like Friday Night Live seem to be a deliberate move to counter that trend.


“If we can get marriage out of them, that is a success,” Wolpe said.

For many Jews _ single or married _ Friday Night Live builds on a common faith and encourages them to rediscover their spirituality.

“It’s like an awakening for these people. It lets them know that synagogue doesn’t have to be boring,” said Andrea Corsun. Corsun, 35, a Los Angeles dentist, regularly attends Friday Night Live with her husband, Danny.

“You get an incredible experience from it. If we can go as a married couple and feel good about it, then it’s clearly not (only) a singles scene,” she said.

One of Friday Night Live’s main attractions is Wolpe’s brief, inspirational sermon or “teaching.” Typically, he flavors his talks with references to Jewish tradition and anecdotes about popular culture. (“If you can’t manage to be out of touch with your cell phones and beepers for two hours,” he once said during his sermon, “then you really need to be here.”)

During the service, Wolpe might stroll among the congregants, singing and keeping time with the music. “It’s very rare for a rabbi or cantor to walk and dance in the aisles,” he said.

The community participation, folk music and range of activities at Friday Night Live have prompted some religion scholars to draw a parallel to contemporary Christian churches.


“I do think there is some attempt to mimic what evangelical Christians have done. It (Friday Night Live) is very much a movement from cerebral religion to a more gut-felt religion,” said Wade Clark Roof, who chairs the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Roof is the author of eight books, including the recent “Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion.”

“The diversity of interest groups (meeting after worship) is similar to what you find in many seeker churches,” Roof said. “The notion of options and choice is very deeply rooted in contemporary religion and culture.”

Wolpe agreed. “That (the Christian evangelical movement) has been one of several influences that has helped create this experience,” he said.

But he pointed out that Friday Night Live also attempts to recollect the early adolescent camping experience in the Jewish community.

“We don’t live in a Jewish society. But in camp, we do. It’s a very powerful experience for those who go there,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to recapture: the informality, spontaneity and joy.”

DEA END ALEISS

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