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How one of North America’s largest Conservative congregations added 900 new members in 8 months
This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.
TORONTO (JTA) — At a time of declining synagogue affiliation rates and following a pandemic slump, one of North America’s largest Conservative congregations gained 900 new members in just eight months.
Launched in July 2022, an initiative called the Generations Membership Program attracted young families to Beth Tzedec Congregation here by removing membership dues for anyone under the age of 40.
The success of the no-dues model surprised leaders of the synagogue, whose next challenge is to strengthen the connections between the new members and the congregation.
“We were all surprised by how much uptake there was,” said Yacov Fruchter, the synagogue’s director of Community Building and Spiritual Engagement, Yacov Fruchter.
With over 4,000 members, Beth Tzedec is one of the largest Conservative congregations in North America. However, over the past decade, Beth Tzedec has suffered from a decline that has affected the Conservative movement, once North American Judaism’s largest denomination. In 1971, 832 congregations identified with the movement, a number which dropped to 562 by 2020. The number of Conservative Jews also dropped from 1.6 million at its peak to a half million by 2020, according to data from the 2020 Pew Research Center survey of U.S. Jews.
The decline of the Conservative movement left Beth Tzedec struggling to attract new members while old families fell out of touch with the congregation. “Ten years ago, our membership was at 2,400 households, but I think that number was inflated,” said Rabbi Steven Wernick, its senior rabbi. “Into the pandemic, we saw membership drop to 1,700-1,800 paying units,” or families. That’s a decline of approximately 25% over the 2010s.
As director of education, Daniel Silverman oversees Beth Tzedec’s congregational school as well as bar/bat mitzvah educational programs. Silverman said that it was difficult to attract and maintain younger congregants due to shifting cultural perspectives and financial stresses that have worsened over recent years.
“It was hard to help people understand that synagogue was worth their time when we put up a relatively high [financial] barrier,” said Silverman. “People of this generation are not going to be inclined to join and pay money to join a synagogue in the way that their parents and grandparents were.”
Beth Tzedec’s membership dues are adjusted for each family unit depending on how much the family can pay. That doesn’t mean that membership is cheap, however. For the highest-earning members of the congregation, dues can be up to $6,000 annually per family.
Ariel Weinberg, 17, belongs to Beth Tzedec and participated in Silverman’s bat mitzvah educational program. When she becomes an adult, she said she would be happy to pay a portion of her salary for synagogue membership but wants her experience to be more than simply attending for the High Holidays.
“That’s a lot of money to put forth every month when I only use it twice per year,” Weinberg said.
Voluntary dues programs like Beth Tzedec’s have been growing in recent years. Synagogues adopting the model cite research showing that potential members see belonging to a synagogue as less of an obligation and instead want to be shown what a synagogue has to offer, as Rabbis Kerry Olitzky and Avi Olitzky argued in their 2015 book on membership models.
Wernick said that the way younger generations view synagogue membership is fundamentally different from previous generations.
“The traditional synagogue membership model was pay first and engage later. So what we decided to do was, engage first, and then we’ll talk about money later,” Wernick said.
Boosting membership on paper is one thing; creating active, engaged members who show up for worship and take part in programming is another. To demonstrate Beth Tzedec’s commitment to engaging the new cohort, the shul recently hired an engagement specialist and the board is also in the process of hiring a new cantor or rabbi. Leadership has also committed to meeting one-on-one for a “coffee date” with each new member of the congregation to strengthen new connections.
“The goal is to make a place as large as Beth Tzedec feel small and personal,” said Silverman.
Leadership’s attempts to better connect with congregants have already resonated well with new members. After Rebbecca Starkman and her family joined Beth Tzedec in September 2022, her husband met with Wernick as part of the “coffee date” initiative.
“He really, really enjoyed it,” said Starkman. “It also made him feel connected, connected and comfortable.”
When Wernick became Beth Tzedec’s chief rabbi in 2019, he set out to address Beth Tzedec’s membership woes. As the former CEO of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the congregational arm of Conservative Judaism, he used his expertise to devise a plan that would reverse the previous trend in Beth Tzedec’s affiliation.
“What I attempted to do at USCJ was to help synagogues reinvent themselves for the 21st century,” Wernick said.
Part of that idea, said Beth Tzedec’s president, Patti Rotman, meant rethinking the congregation’s membership model. “It couldn’t just be transactional. It had to be transformational,” Rotman said.
Prior to the implementation of the Generations program, Beth Tzedec had attempted strategies to improve engagement. Previously, membership for families under the age of 25 was set at only $50 per year. The congregation was able to support this program as membership dues only accounted for 30% of operating income, the rest coming from other sources.
According to Wernick, as of 2022, only 5% of Beth Tzedec’s operating income came from families under 40. As such, the switch to no-fee membership for the under-40 cohort did not cause a significant financial impact.
“So you already had a circumstance where those over 40 were already paying for those under 40,” Wernick said.
In the months prior to the implementation of the Generations Membership Program, Beth Tzedec undertook a significant amount of research into synagogue engagement in Toronto. Based on the 2018 Environics Survey of Jews in Canada, they learned that 70% of Jewish Canadians belonged to a congregation, more than double the percentage in the U.S.
“If there’s 200,000 Jews in the GTA [Greater Toronto Area], then 30% are not affiliated,” said Wernick, “and then if you break it down by how many people are in their 20s and 30s, we’re talking about 16,000 Jews.” Out of the 16,000, Wernick estimates that approximately 30% grew up as part of the Conservative movement, while 30% grew up unaffiliated.
Geographic research told Wernick that prior to July 2022, there were around 500 households in the vicinity of Beth Tzedec in need of a shul.
Rabbi Steven Wernick, senior rabbi of Beth Tzedec in Toronto, previously served as CEO of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. (Courtesy of USCJ)
Beth Tzedec was able to focus its social media campaigns on neighborhoods with the greatest concentration of young and unaffiliated Jews in the vicinity.
“We targeted the unaffiliated, we targeted the previously affiliated to Beth Tzedec, but who had dropped off for more than three years, and we targeted based on geography,” as well as the study by Environics and information from UJA-Federation of Greater Toronto.
Even with the sophisticated marketing campaign, Wernick said that the synagogue expected it would only gain around 20-50 new households per year.
“Just because you give it away for free doesn’t mean that people are going to come,” said Wernick.
By the end of the first day of advertising, 50 new families had signed up.
“We are well over 420 new households,” Wernick said. Seventy-five percent of the uptake are brand-new members while the remainder are former Beth Tzedec members who had fallen out of the fold for more than three years.
The 420 household figure represents mainly families, as well as couples and individuals. Beth Tzedec President, Patti Rotman, estimates that approximately 900 new individual members became part of the synagogue in the eight months since the program was inaugurated.
When it comes to reinvigorating community life, gaining new members is not the only task at hand.
The membership drive “is only mile one of a marathon,” said Silverman.
“The most difficult part is, how do you then keep people connected?” said Fruchter. “You have to have the capacity to develop the relationships that you are starting.”
As self-identified Modern Orthodox Jews, Rebecca Starkman and her family attend synagogue regularly. Because her primary congregation only meets every other week, Starkman had been attending Beth Tzedec for years prior to joining under the Generations program.
“I had been attending loosely since since 2015,” said Starkman. “We had always been members at this other congregation but had not joined Beth Tzedec until this past September.”
Starkman said that it was the financial barrier that had been preventing her and her family from officially joining Beth Tzedec.
“We didn’t feel like we had enough finances to pay membership at two organizations,” said Starkman. “The program definitely gave us the motivation to make the leap to being part of the shul.”
Starkman said that she knows of other families who were also in her situation, attending Beth Tzedec services without becoming official members due to the financial barrier.
“There are three other families who did the same thing we did,” said Starkman. However, one family was over 40 and still could not join the congregation under the program. Nonetheless, for families who are lucky enough to be covered, Starkman said that the program is definitely a motivating factor to join Beth Tzedec.
Weinberg said that the Generations program will also improve diversity within the congregation.
“Our mandate really is to build a stronger Jewish future with youth and young professional engagement as our priority. And to go with that,” said Rotman, “we are also at the forefront of equity and inclusion.”
According to Rotman, Beth Tzedec maintains a vigorous diversity and inclusion committee dedicated to ensuring that the synagogue is an inclusive environment for everyone.
Given the local renaissance that Beth Tzedec has undergone, Rotman stresses the importance of bringing down barriers as the best way for synagogues to engage the current generation of Jews.
“Our goal is to inspire and enable Jews to live meaningful Jewish lives and the best way [to do so] for the under-40 cohort is to remove the barrier to membership,” Rotman said.
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The post How one of North America’s largest Conservative congregations added 900 new members in 8 months appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘This isn’t the Gov. Newsom that we know’: One week after apartheid remark, calls to reconsider remain unheeded
One week after California Gov. Gavin Newsom caused a stir by using the term “apartheid” to describe Israel, Jewish leaders in the state and beyond — have tried in vain to get him to walk back his statement.
Those seeking answers include allies of the term-limited governor, a likely presidential candidate, who have defended his record and even the comment itself.
Newsom said March 3 on a podcast that Israel had been talked about “appropriately as sort of an apartheid state,” and suggested that a time may come when the U.S. should reconsider its military aid to Israel.
Some Jewish leaders have said the apartheid comment had been taken out of context, and representatives of Jewish groups who met with the governor’s staff following Newsom’s remark called the conversation constructive. But Newsom has not backtracked in public appearances since then, leaving those leaders split on whether a serious contender for the 2028 Democratic nomination — long seen as a champion of Jewish causes — is plotting a new course on the national stage.
Newsom’s clarification two days later — noting that he was referencing a Thomas Friedman column in the New York Times about the direction Israel was headed — offered them little succor.
“It’s out of step,” said David Bocarsly, executive director of Jewish California, a group that represents more than 30 Jewish community organizations in the state. “This isn’t the Governor Newsom that we know.”
Newsom’s office did not respond to an inquiry.
‘Sort of an apartheid state’
Newsom made the remark in a live taping of Pod Save America, a podcast hosted by former Obama administration staffers Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor. The duo, who are among the Democratic mainstream’s most vocal Israel critics, asked Newsom whether he thought the time had come to reevaluate American military support for the country.
In an extended response, Newsom brought up Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The issue of Bibi is interesting, because he’s got his own domestic issues,” Newsom said. “He’s trying to stay out of jail. He’s got an election coming up. He’s potentially on the ropes. He’s got folks, the hard line, that want to annex the West—the West Bank. I mean, Friedman and others are talking about it appropriately as a sort of an apartheid state.”
As to whether the United States should consider rethinking military support for Israel down the road, Newsom replied, “I don’t think you have a choice but that consideration.”
Newsom’s use of the term and apparent willingness to break from pro-Israel orthodoxy sent heads spinning. Jewish Insider described the interview as a “hard left” shift. A column in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles assailed Newsom for “finger in the wind politics.” And secular outlets like Politico and The Guardian reported that Newsom had likened Israel to an apartheid state.
Even organizations that have historically enjoyed a collaborative relationship with Newsom publicly condemned the remarks. Jewish California, whose member groups include the state’s local Jewish federations, took to Instagram to call them “inflammatory.”
Newsom said in a subsequent live appearance March 5 that he was referencing Friedman’s recent assertion that Israel annexing the West Bank without giving Palestinians equal rights would create an apartheid system.
“I was specifically referring to a Tom Friedman column last week, where Tom used that word, ‘apartheid,’ as it relates to the direction Bibi is going, particularly on the annexation of the West Bank,” he said. “I’m very angry with what he is doing.”
The clarification wasn’t strong enough for the Jewish California coalition. Bocarsly told The Jewish News of Northern California last week the groups hoped to see a definitive public statement from the governor that he continues to support funding for Israel’s defense and that he “doesn’t believe that a thriving, pluralistic and democratic society, as it is in its current state, is an apartheid state.”
Tye Gregory, chief executive of the JCRC Bay Area — a Jewish California member group — added to the outlet that “we need to hear directly from the governor.”
The coalition left its conversation with Newsom officials believing such a statement was forthcoming, but Bocarsly said his optimism was fading.
“It’s been several days, and we haven’t seen the clarification that we had hoped,” Bocarsly said. “And we’re still waiting.”
A loaded word
Some international and Israeli human rights organizations say Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the treatment of Palestinians in the territory already constitutes apartheid.
The term was originally used to describe the system of institutionalized segregation in South Africa that granted the minority white population official higher status, denied nonwhites the right to vote and enforced a range of other forms of economic, political and social domination. Those applying the apartheid term to Israel point to the Israeli citizenship, voting rights, freedom of movement and legal protections granted in the West Bank to Israeli residents but not Palestinians in the territory.
But many Jews say that any charge of apartheid — whether referring to the present or a hypothetical future — oversimplifies the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is used as a cudgel to delegitimize the Jewish state, where within its boundaries Israeli Arabs can vote and travel freely.
Israel annexing the West Bank — a stated goal of far-right ministers in the Netanyahu coalition like Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich — would replace the premise of Palestinian sovereignty in the territory, which is officially governed by the Palestinian Authority, and enshrine the two-tier system. Such a step, Friedman wrote in a Feb. 17 column, would amount to apartheid.
“It’s been several days, and we haven’t seen the clarification that we had hoped. And we’re still waiting.”
David BocarslyExecutive Director, Jewish California
Bocarsly believed that Newsom’s reference to apartheid had been misinterpreted — even after the governor clarified his views — as describing Israel today, rather than a future scenario.
Nevertheless, he said, by invoking the term “apartheid” at all the governor had played into an effort among Israel’s detractors to make use of terms like “apartheid” and “genocide” to describe the Jewish state’s actions a litmus test for elected leaders.
Only a month earlier, Democratic State Senator Scott Wiener — then the co-chair of California Legislative Jewish Caucus — called Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide, after first declining to during a congressional candidate debate and getting jeers in response.
“For someone as close to our community as Gavin Newsom is, I think it was disappointing and painful for a lot of people to see that he was falling into this test,” Bocarsly said. “We want to know that when it comes down to it, that he is willing to avoid criticizing Israel in that way.”
Halie Soifer, chief executive of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said Newsom’s initial comments had been taken out of context, and she was satisfied with his later clarification. Instead, she objected more to Newsom’s suggestion that the U.S. might eventually withhold military aid to Israel. The JDCA rejects withholding or conditioning such aid in its platform.
Still, while the “apartheid” phrase got the most attention, Soifer suggested it was just as revealing when — in the same podcast appearance — Newsom had described Israel’s rightward turn under Netanyahu as “heartbreaking.”
“It’s indicating his emotions are actually in this but also disagreement with the policies of the current Israeli government,” Soifer said. “And that is a view that polling has consistently shown is held by the vast majority of American Jewish voters.”
But she acknowledged that further backtracking would help, noting that she had listened to the section of the podcast multiple times to get a clear idea of his intent.
“I don’t think the average person is doing that,” Soifer said in an interview, “and he shouldn’t assume that either.”
The governor you know
The comments seemed to break with Newsom’s track record of verbal and legislative support for Jewish life both in the state and in Israel.
During his seven years in the governor’s office, he has funded the largest nonprofit security grant program in the nation, signed a landmark bill aimed at addressing antisemitism in public education and poured some $50 million into Holocaust survivor assistance programs. He also visited Israel to meet with Oct. 7 survivors less than two weeks after the attacks.
That made Newsom’s failure to hedge in a more fulsome way all the more confounding for his Jewish allies.
Gregg Solkovits, president of Democrats for Israel Los Angeles, a Democratic party club, thought the governor had been intentionally vague — and was intentionally waiting out the Jewish criticism — to “protect his left flank” as a future presidential candidate.
“He knows that in the upcoming election, there will be Bernie-supportive candidates who are going to be running for the nomination, and he will be attacked for being too pro-Israel, which he has been consistently,” Solkovits said. “Would I wish that he had not taken that approach entirely? Of course. I also understand he’s running for president.”
Soifer offered that Newsom might just be waiting for the right opportunity.
“He doesn’t actually legislate on this particular issue, so perhaps he feels he doesn’t need to clarify,” she said. “But I think it would be helpful for him to clarify that, especially if he’s seeking an opportunity at some point in the future to weigh in on such decisions.”
The post ‘This isn’t the Gov. Newsom that we know’: One week after apartheid remark, calls to reconsider remain unheeded appeared first on The Forward.
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Norway Police Apprehend 3 Suspects in US Embassy Bombing
Police vehicles outside the US embassy, after a loud bang was reported at the site, in Oslo, Norway, March 8, 2026. Photo: Javad Parsa/NTB/via REUTERS
Norwegian police said on Wednesday they had apprehended three brothers suspected of carrying out Sunday’s bombing at the US embassy in Oslo, in an attack investigators have branded an act of terrorism.
The powerful early-morning blast from an improvised explosive device (IED) damaged the entrance to the embassy‘s consular section but caused no injuries, Norwegian authorities have said.
The three suspects, all in their 20s, are Norwegian citizens with a family background from Iraq, police said.
“They are suspected of a terror bombing,” Police Attorney Christian Hatlo told reporters.
“We believe they detonated a powerful bomb at the U.S. embassy with the intention of taking lives or causing significant damage,” Hatlo said, adding that none of the suspects had so far been interrogated.
One of the men was believed to have planted the bomb while the two others were believed to have taken part in the plot, Hatlo said.
The brothers, who were not named, had not previously been subject to police investigations, he added.
A lawyer representing one of the three men said he had only briefly met with his client and that it was too early to say how the suspect would plead.
Lawyers representing the two others did not immediately respond to requests for comment when contacted by Reuters.
“Although it is early in the investigation, it is important that the police have achieved what they characterize as a breakthrough in the case,” Norway‘s Minister of Justice and Public Security Astri Aas-Hansen said in a statement.
Images of one of the suspects released by police on Monday showed a hooded person, whose face was not visible, wearing dark clothes and carrying a bag or rucksack.
Investigators on Monday said one hypothesis was that the incident was “an act of terrorism” linked to the war in the Middle East, but that other possible motives were also being explored.
Police are now investigating whether the bombing was done on behalf of a foreign state, Hatlo said, reiterating that they were also looking into other possible motives.
Europe has been on alert for possible attacks as the US and Israel conduct air strikes on Iran and Iran strikes Israel and US targets in the Middle East.
On Monday, a synagogue in the Belgian city of Liege was damaged by a blast that authorities called an antisemitic attack. It was not clear who was behind it.
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Belgium’s Jewish Community Sounds Alarm on Rising Antisemitism After Liège Synagogue Attack
Police secure the site of a synagogue damaged by an explosion early on Monday, in Liege, Belgium, March 9, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Just days after a synagogue in Liège, Belgium was struck in an apparent antisemitic bombing, the local Jewish community is sounding the alarm over a surge in hostility and targeted violence against Jews across the country.
In an interview with the local news outlet La Première on Tuesday, the president of the Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium (CCOJB), Yves Oschinsky, called on government authorities to deploy soldiers to protect Jewish sites and institutions if police protection proves insufficient.
Following the attack on a synagogue in Liège, a city in the country’s eastern region, early Monday morning, Oschinsky warned that the Jewish community faces a far greater threat than authorities publicly acknowledge, emphasizing that Jewish institutions remain at heightened risk.
He also slammed the government for failing to appoint a national coordinator to fight antisemitism, while urging political parties and officials to take urgent, concrete action to protect the Jewish community.
Like most countries across the Western world, Belgium has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
According to the Belgian Interfederal Center for Equal Opportunities and the Fight against Racism and Discrimination (Unia), which tracks antisemitism nationwide, 192 reports of antisemitism and Holocaust denial were filed in 2025, following a record 270 cases in 2024 — marking two consecutive years well previous years.
Before the Oct. 7 atrocities, only 31 antisemitic cases had been reported in Belgium in 2022.
On Tuesday, the Brussels-based Jonathas Institute released a new report warning that antisemitic prejudices remain widespread and deeply entrenched in Belgium.
“The results are clear: the study highlights that the population of Brussels continues to hold many antisemitic stereotypes ‘inherited from the past’ of a religious or political nature,” the institute said in a statement.
The newly released report found that 40 percent of respondents in Brussels agreed with the claim that Jews control the financial and banking sectors, while one in four blamed Jews for various economic crises.
According to the study, these stereotypes are “sometimes expressed as obvious truths” without overt hostility, a pattern the report warns makes them especially prone to being trivialized, particularly online.
More than one in five Belgians believe Jews are “not Belgians like the others,” while 21 percent label Jews an “unassimilable race.”
“The attack on the synagogue in Liège confirms that it is no longer just antisemitic speech that has been unleashed, but antisemitic acts as well. This aggressive antisemitism continues to rise,” the institute said.
The survey also found that 70 percent of respondents believe Jews form a “close-knit or closed community.”
In relation to the war in Gaza, 39 percent of Belgians claim that “Jews are doing to Palestinians what the Nazis did to them.” This view is particularly common among 18- to 35-year-olds, who are more likely to compare Israel’s actions to those of the Nazis.
Within far-right circles, 69 percent believe Jews exploit the Holocaust, while 72 percent say Jews use antisemitism for their own interests.
Based on these findings, the Jonathas Institute urged authorities and policymakers to strengthen historical education, improve digital literacy, and remain vigilant against narratives that normalize or justify hostility toward Jews, warning that such discourse can ultimately spark real-world violence.
The institute also calls for formalizing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, aiming to better distinguish “legitimate criticism of Israel” from “forms of anti-Zionism that revive antisemitic patterns.”
IHRA — an intergovernmental organization comprising dozens of countries including the US and Israel — adopted the “working definition” of antisemitism in 2016. Since then, the definition has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum, and it is now used by hundreds of governing institutions, including the US State Department, European Union, and United Nations.
According to the definition, antisemitism “is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere. Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.