Your Synagogue Does Not Need More Martyrs
The Volunteer Culture Your Community Actually Needs
One of the unexpected gifts of stepping down from my role as senior rabbi and continuing as emeritus while consulting with synagogues has been the chance to see congregational life from a different vantage point. A little more distance. Fewer meetings where everyone is pretending not to notice the passive-aggressive energy radiating off the budget spreadsheet. More opportunities to watch patterns emerge across communities instead of assuming the chaos in front of me was uniquely ours.
And with that distance, I began noticing something uncomfortable.
I had spent years overfunctioning.
Not theatrically. Not resentfully. Often quite lovingly. I folded tables, stacked chairs, solved problems, filled gaps before anyone noticed they existed. Part of this came from conviction. I never believed spiritual leadership should place anyone above the ordinary work of community life. Judaism has never struck me as a tradition particularly interested in protecting clergy from practical labor. There is holiness in setup. Holiness in cleanup. Holiness in bringing donuts for Torah study and feeding a room full of hungry brit mitzvah students who look at you as though you personally invented Hebrew.
And if I am being especially honest, there were times I looked up from carrying folding tables while congregants stood three feet away deep in conversation about the state of the world, entirely unaware that the room was somehow setting itself up by magic.
We even preserve stories of the Kohanim, the Temple priests, competing for the honor of clearing ashes from the altar. Not the glamorous work. Ashes.
Jewish tradition has long understood something we sometimes forget: participation in sacred community matters.
But over time I noticed something else too. Too often, congregants watched while staff and a small circle of board members carried the weight of communal life for them. Not because people were selfish or uncaring. Most synagogue people are, in fact, astonishingly generous.
Many synagogues drift into systems where participation slowly gets replaced by consumption and overfunctioning becomes normalized as leadership.
As Harvard Business Review has noted in broader organizational life, burnout is often less a personal failure than a design failure. Synagogues need to take that seriously.
Because most modestly resourced congregations depend heavily on volunteers, overcommitted staff, and board members. Staff absorb more and more labor. Board members overfunction to keep things afloat. A small circle of reliable congregants becomes responsible for governance, logistics, fundraising, event setup, emotional containment, and remembering the Wi-Fi password.
Many synagogue systems run on panic, goodwill, and one person who knows where the extension cords are.
I know this because, at various points in my rabbinate, I embodied at least two of those things.
Meanwhile everyone wonders why fewer people are stepping forward.
The problem is not that synagogues ask people to participate. The problem is that too many congregations unintentionally create cultures of participation that are chaotic, guilt-driven, structurally unsupported, or overly dependent on a shrinking circle of overcommitted people. And when communal involvement feels that way, people understandably retreat into consumer relationships with synagogue life: “I pay dues. The staff handles it.”
To be fair, I understand the impulse. Synagogues should provide meaningful value: pastoral care, education, lifecycle officiation and ritual creation, justice work, learning, music, support during illness and grief, opportunities for connection, and experiences that help people make meaning out of their lives.
But participation is not merely unpaid labor that helps institutions survive.
At its best, it is one of the primary ways human beings experience belonging. It is how relationships deepen, how ownership develops, how trust forms, how people move from being consumers of Jewish life to co-creators of it.
Parker Palmer once wrote, “We are all in this together.” Meaning and connection are rarely built in isolation. They emerge when people experience themselves as contributors to something larger than themselves.
Brené Brown has spent years reminding us that true belonging is not passive. It requires vulnerability, participation, and mutual investment. Communities become durable when people feel not merely welcomed, but needed.
Adrienne Maree Brown writes, “What we practice at the small scale sets the patterns for the whole system.”
Synagogues should take that seriously.
If congregations consistently practice shared ownership, relational leadership, healthy boundaries, gratitude, and meaningful participation at the small scale, those values begin shaping the larger culture as well.
Not everyone will volunteer in the same way or at the same intensity. Nor should they. Some congregants are caring for aging parents, navigating illness, raising children, struggling financially, overwhelmed, grieving, or simply trying to survive a difficult season of life. Jewish community should make room for that reality too. There are many ways to belong to a synagogue, and healthy congregations understand that people move through different seasons of capacity.
But communities become fragile when too few people experience themselves as responsible for helping shape communal life.
And communities weaken not only when too few people do the work, but when too few people experience themselves as capable of meaningful contribution.
The Leadership Problem Beneath the Participation Problem
Boards become operational volunteers while simultaneously supervising staff. Staff become reluctant managers of volunteers they do not fully oversee. The same handful of highly competent people become the institutional safety net for everything. Because these systems are usually fueled by love and devotion, the dysfunction can masquerade as commitment for a very long time.
Until exhaustion sets in.
Or resentment.
Or territoriality.
Or staff-board conflict rooted less in personality than in unclear organizational lanes.
Sometimes we excuse chaotic, guilt-driven, structurally unsupported systems as simply part of Jewish communal life. We joke about boundary collapse, emotional overinvolvement, disorganization, and last-minute scrambling as though they are inevitable features of synagogue culture.
Jews have survived a lot through humor. We can turn almost anything into a coping mechanism, including committee structure.
But there is a difference between warmth and chaos. A difference between passion and dysfunction. A difference between interdependence and unhealthy overreliance on exhausted people.
Sophisticated, spiritually grounded Jewish community should not confuse dysfunction with authenticity.
A synagogue board should not function primarily as an exhausted substitute staff. Its job is governance, stewardship, leadership development, fundraising, long-term vision, and cultivating the next layer of communal leadership.
That does not mean board members cannot volunteer operationally. Of course they can. But they must understand that they are operating in two distinct roles. A board member helping set up an event is functioning as a volunteer, not exercising governance authority.
One of the most corrosive synagogue dynamics occurs when operational volunteering bleeds into informal staff supervision or decision-making. Staff members can end up feeling managed simultaneously by their direct supervisor, by the board collectively, and by individual board members acting with unofficial authority. That ambiguity creates anxiety, resentment, triangulation, and institutional confusion very quickly.
Healthy congregations clarify these lanes explicitly and revisit them often.
If your synagogue depends on the same 12 people, has no written volunteer roles, and recruits by panic email, you do not have a culture of participation.
You have an emergency response system.
And eventually emergency systems exhaust even the most devoted people.
There is also some tender territory here for all of us.
Many of us derive identity, belonging, usefulness, or emotional safety from being indispensable. Rabbis. Presidents. Founders. Executive directors. Veteran volunteers. Committee chairs. Donors. Consultants who secretly enjoy being the only person who can untangle the governance problem everyone ignored six years ago.
It can feel good to be needed.
Until the system begins depending on exhaustion as a leadership strategy.
I have watched board members answer logistical texts during Kol Nidre, rabbis troubleshoot printer problems minutes before funerals, and exhausted staff members stay behind alone after a “community event” quietly stacking chairs while everyone else heads home feeling spiritually nourished.
None of those people are the problem.
The system is.
Synagogues often invest enormous energy creating meaningful experiences for attendees while investing surprisingly little energy designing meaningful pathways into participation.
That needs to change.
So How Do We Actually Build a Healthier Culture of Participation?
Healthy cultures of participation do not emerge accidentally. They are built intentionally.
And this matters especially now.
At a moment when many people feel isolated, distrustful of institutions, spiritually untethered, and unsure where they matter, synagogues have a profound opportunity. Younger Jews especially are often looking less for passive affiliation and more for meaning, contribution, connection, and agency. They do not simply want to join communities. They want to help shape them.
The first shift is clarifying lanes.
Boards govern. Staff manage. Volunteers animate and expand communal life. Those roles should collaborate closely without collapsing into one another.
One of the least discussed but most common synagogue dysfunctions occurs when board members become informal staff supervisors while simultaneously evaluating staff performance. That ambiguity breeds resentment, triangulation, and confusion for everyone involved, especially rabbis and executive directors trying to lead systems where authority has become blurry.
Healthy congregations resist this drift intentionally. They clarify who supervises staff, who owns operations, who coordinates volunteers, and how accountability flows. Not because hierarchy is sacred, but because clarity creates trust.
The second shift is understanding that someone must own participation and engagement.
In larger congregations, this may be a Director of Engagement, volunteer coordinator, or Director of Community Life. In smaller congregations, it may begin as a hybrid model: an executive director partnering with a lay Volunteer Engagement Chair or engagement team specifically tasked with recruitment, onboarding, appreciation, and leadership cultivation.
But it cannot simply live in the cracks between crises.
Someone needs to think intentionally about recruitment, onboarding, matching people’s gifts with opportunities, leadership development, appreciation, follow-up, and succession planning. Otherwise congregational life becomes reactive and personality-driven.
The third shift is stopping the glorification of overfunctioning.
Healthy synagogues do not build themselves around heroic people, though many of us secretly admire the hero model because it feels efficient, noble, and strangely comforting. One exhausted person who knows how everything works can temporarily hold a community together. Until they burn out, move away, get sick, resign, or finally decide they would like to attend one High Holy Day service without also managing a small logistical air traffic control system in the background.
Healthier congregations build differently. They create written volunteer roles, realistic expectations, rotating leadership, mentorship, training, documentation, and healthy handoffs. They distribute responsibility before crisis forces them to.
The goal is not finding more exhausted saints.
The goal is creating pathways where more people can contribute meaningfully and sustainably.
The fourth shift is making participation easier, more relational, and more accessible.
Too many synagogue volunteer roles are vague, overwhelming, or structured like lifelong emotional hostage situations. People deepen involvement gradually. Healthy congregations create multiple entry points: teaching classes, helping lead services, chanting Torah, hosting holiday gatherings, mentoring bar and bat mitzvah students, organizing meal trains, leading social justice projects, singing in community music ensembles, coordinating shiva support, serving as greeters, supporting elder care initiatives, setup crews with rotating captains, and short-term task teams with clear beginning and end dates.
And contrary to synagogue folklore, mass emails begging for help are usually not the most effective recruitment strategy.
Personal invitations work far better.
People are more likely to participate when they are personally asked, when the role is clear, when the commitment feels manageable, when the work connects to their gifts, and when someone follows up afterward like their contribution mattered.
Because it did.
Participation should not feel like punishment for caring.
People return when they make friends, laugh, feel useful, feel competent, feel appreciated, and experience genuine connection and meaning through the work itself.
That is not soft sociology.
That is durable community design.
Rabbi Ron Wolfson and Rabbi Sid Schwarz, among many others across the Jewish communal world, have argued for years that relationships and shared ownership, not programs alone, are what sustain Jewish life.
They are right.
People stay connected to communities where they feel useful, trusted, and woven into something meaningful. Most people are not looking for more guilt.
They are looking for more meaning.
The Sacred Work of Shared Ownership
The good news is that healthier synagogue culture does not require a megasynagogue budget or a complete institutional reinvention. Most congregations already have the raw materials: caring people, deep values, a desire for connection, and members who genuinely want their lives to matter.
The challenge is building systems worthy of that generosity.
Because the future of synagogue life probably does not depend on finding one more exhausted person willing to drag the community over the finish line fueled by burnt coffee, obligation, and the strange adrenaline produced by emergency committee emails.
It depends on whether we are willing to build communities where more people know they belong because more people know they matter.
Not just as attendees.
Not just as donors.
Not just as the same five reliable volunteers whose names appear on every SignUpGenius like a small Jewish witness protection program.
But as co-creators of Jewish life itself.
What I have come to believe, both as a rabbi and now as a consultant, is that this is never really only about volunteering. It is about whether people experience themselves as participants in communal life or merely consumers of institutional services. It is about whether leadership develops new leaders or unconsciously rewards exhaustion. It is about whether belonging is treated as something we receive passively or something we help create together.
People stay where they discover they matter.
Where their gifts are used wisely.
Where contribution deepens relationship instead of depleting it.
And maybe that is part of the deeper spiritual task before us now: not simply keeping synagogues alive through force of will, but building communities where participation feels meaningful enough, human enough, and joyful enough that people actually want to help carry the sacred weight together.
People stay where they help carry what they love.
For Reflection:
5 Questions Worth Asking
Who currently carries the invisible labor of our congregation?
Where are we confusing overfunctioning with commitment?
If a new member wanted to contribute meaningfully, would they know how?
Do our systems create belonging, or merely extract labor from the most dependable people?
What would change if we treated engagement and participation as sacred community infrastructure rather than emergency staffing?