Overcoming Challenges: Band & Bar Brings Folks to Shabbat

nobody@vox.com(Amp It Up!) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 19:33:25 -0700

I am not Jewish, and perhaps that's why I was amazed to find an article in my Easter paper about a local temple adding a few not-particularly-religious incentives to their Friday ritual: a band and a bar. They call it Schmooz'N Shabbat, and it happens once a month. This Friday, there's an extra hour of partying they're calling Kegs & Kahillah.

If you've ever attended a Christian church, this will probably seem very foreign to you. YET. This temple has figured out a way to encourage young Jews to attend services and then congregate, which is what the temple is all about. Since attendance by a younger audience had been declining, the temple came up with this strategy. Their answer is a bit out of the ordinary, but has been effective, with about 150 people attending both the services and the Schmooz portion of the evening.

Here's what the temple figured out: if you do the same thing over and over again, you're likely to create the same results.

Let's say that you have a challenge facing you right now. Could you spend 15 minutes imagining wacky answers to the problem, things that you wouldn't "normally" do? And then....if one of those answers appealed to you...could you do it?

When you compare the risk of doing the same old thing over and over again—that is, that you'll end up in the same place you are now—versus the risk of trying something completely new and different—which risk has more downside? Just asking.....

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