De-Accessioning Congregational Property: Synagogue Buildings in 21st Century America

• In Event: De-Cluttering: Making Room for Jewish Life in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

In recent decades, two major factors have lead to an overabundance of Jewish communally owned property in the United States. First, the post-World War II boom in synagogue building was followed by a continued decline in synagogue affiliation. Second, affiliated Jews living in small, scattered Jewish communities have tended to consolidate in more centralized locales . As congregations shrink and even disappear, the buildings they once inhabited have become too large in some instances, or have totally lost their intended function in others. Drawing on a number of cases (some studied ethnographically, others through on-line and print media), this paper explores various directions congregations take towards the project of de-accessioning and re-purposing their immovable property (buildings) and semi-immovable property (such as stained glass windows, wall murals and Torah Arks). Attention is given to the anxieties associated with unburdening property that stem from (1) a mingling of communal identity and their objects (2) twenty-first century fears around the viability of transmitting Judaism orally and mimetically (3) new technologies that make preservation of material culture possible, hence forcing questions about the moral responsibility to do so and finally (4) the prominence of triumphant messages about "survival" that persist in the wake of the Holocaust.

Author

• Alanna Esther Cooper, Case Western Reserve University