For Beth Sholom Congregation in Elkins Park, creating and maintaining a multigenerational community is intentional.
While the synagogue has many families whose membership dates back multiple generations, it was a generous donation 10 years ago that brought the idea front of mind.
During a major capital campaign around 2016, the congregation received funds to start a new initiative that offers up to 40% tuition reimbursement for preschool families. To qualify, families had to commit to attending eight events at the congregation.
The year the initiative first began, the preschool had around 40 children in attendance. Today, the preschool is now close to 100 children, more than doubling in the last 10 years.
“What we found is that over time — with a little interruption for the pandemic — we were really able to start to build this really vibrant, vital community of young families who just really loved being together, and were making their friendships together,” said Beth Sholom Rabbi David Glanzberg-Krainin.
But despite programming for preschool families increasing, as well as their attendance at other synagogue events, there was still something missing.
“My oldest graduated from the preschool, and we had such a great experience and great programming,” said Danielle Otero, Beth Sholom’s executive director.
Otero was on the board at the time and saw a need within the congregation for families of children in kindergarten or first grade. So, the synagogue created programming to continue to build relationships between parents and then, Otero said, “it grew into this whole bigger effort that eventually has become intergenerational.”
The congregation’s Friday night services always started at 6 p.m., but once young families started to attend more, the synagogue started offering dinner and a shorter, more accessible service for younger children.
“Our Shabbat services on any night is never more than an hour anyhow,” said Glanzberg-Krainin. “But when we know we have a lot of little kids that are going to be there, people who come on Friday nights are not upset if we end up doing a shorter service because we know with little kids, we want to make sure that they get to eat and that they’re not going to be out too late.”
Otero added, “I know of preschool families where their parents don’t live nearby, or they don’t have parents who are still with them, and it’s wonderful for them to feel like their kids have a million grandparents in the synagogue when they show up for a Friday night and they have other people in a different generation looking out for them.”
The congregation has also invested in new staff positions and new events to help build these different relationships. In 2021, the synagogue hired a director of family engagement, who works with the director of member engagement and director of congregational life.
“Our committees themselves are starting to look a little different,” Otero said. “By making our committees themselves more diverse, it’s helping us to create more diverse programming.”
This year, the congregation’s annual fundraiser will focus on the intergenerational relationships being built. It will be hosting an interactive game show called “Who Knows One.” The goal of the game is to show how connected congregants really are to each other. “It’s basically a game of Jewish geography and Jewish relationships,” Otero added.
The synagogue also made a major change to its High Holiday services last year. Families were invited to come to the main service with their children. In the back of the room, they set up a “Lending Library” where children could grab quiet fidgets, books, or whatever they might need to sit in the service.
“It was great to see the older generation smiling,” Otero said. “If a kid did make a peep or a baby started crying, nobody was getting upset. Everybody was just happy to see that there were children in the service.”
More recently, the congregation started a new group for older congregants as well, encouraging them to build relationships with each other. Glanzberg-Krainin said he has seen these different cohorts grow and come together across generations to “feel like they’re part of this bigger family.”