Made out of people

Economics of Religion

I suppose this isn't really what I'm meant to be thinking about during Yom Kippur, the Jewish Days of Repentance. And yet standing in the back row of a synagogue, listening to a rabbi talk in Danish¹

That said, I actually did get a lot out of the service. Simply being in a synagogue, hearing the words I grew up with, brings me to a very thoughtful headspace

So we're long past the days when churches could simply demand an off-the-top tax from the king, or could send out its troops² to raise a little money³. With the exceptions of plans like land investment (as practiced by the Catholic church) and spin-off copy companies, most religious groups are stuck with donations.

I know most about Chrisitanity and Judaism--I'd love to hear notes on how other groups manage this.

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While Christians can afford to pass a plate around, Jews--rather inconveniently--set up prohibitions on carrying or using money on the days when donations are most likely to be of help--the well-attended Saturday Sabbath services and the extremely-well-attended High Holiday (that is, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) services.

Now, the shocking moment of truth is that most places of worship are built to be filled once or twice a year. Christians mostly don't show up except on Christmas and Easter; most Jews show up only on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. So you need to optimize your donation system for those days.

There are two dominant models for this, as far as I understand. Both of them are trying to build a system that is progressive (that is, gets the largest donations from those who can spare the most), that gains financial stability for the holiday, and finds some way to handle people who are transient in one way or another.

The American model, which I grew up with, is to sell memberships. Membership in the synagogue entitles you to the warm fuzzy feeling of being a member plus--crucially--entree to the High Holiday service. No membership? No entree. Membership is usually priced as a proportion of income, or is graded to income. For travellers and visitors, tickets can be arranged on the fly, a day or two early, usually accompanied by a small donation. Once you have the ticket, you can enter and wander about within the synagogue, picking the seats of your preference⁴.

In contrast, the European model sells seats. Anyone can get in, but the seats are numbered and claimed in advance. Nominally, of course, the seats are reserved for the year, and so come (in at least some synagogues) with storage areas. The Copenhagen synagogue actually had locking (!) drawers in front of each seat, so that members could leave their various prayer garments conveniently close⁵. If you don't have a seat, you can try to claim a seat--but someone else might show up. Which leaves you (or me, in this case) in the Standing Room Only section in back.

How does it stay progressive? Assign a level of prestige to the seats. (Remember that lyric
in Fiddler on the Roof about Tevye, as a rich man, getting a "seat on the Eastern wall"? Eastern seats are closer to Jerusalem, closer to the center of the action, and thus more prestigious. Arguably holier. Definitely more expensive. The good seats would be some combination of auctioned and inherited, ensuring that the well-heeled get their chance to both be generous and let their generosity be publically known.

Under the American model, incidently, it becomes important for the synagogue to own a number of copies of the prayer books: you don't expect people to carry them in, and you can't find a safe place to store them, which means that even occasional visitors can have a copy of the prayer service.

Under the European model, you remind people to buy a book and lock it at their seat.

Which is why I spent the service standing up, without a book. And why those times when I sat down, I would find myself politely invited to find a different seat. As a local, I can imagine the positive side of the European model: you sit with your friends, you have your paraphenalia in place. As a visitor, though, it rather hurt.

Incidently, I assume--but don't know--that women's seats are allocated the same way as men's seats. In this synagogue, incidently, the women's section was far above the men's: they sat in side-balconies 30 feet up. Nominally, this is to keep the genders from getting distracted by each other. In practice, couples worked out finger-signs for basic important sentences like "let's go chat with the Rabinowitz's in 5 minutes in the courtyard," and leaned down over the boundary to chat.

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¹ I understood nothing of the Rabbi's speech except the words "Napster," "download", and "computer." Apparently, it had something to do with asking people to bravely step outside of normalcy, to do the socially unpopular--that is, for kids to not steal music. Apparently, it instead started lots of irrelevant side conversations about the morality of music sharing, the RIAA, America's role in enforcing copyright regimes, Denmark's aquiescence to American copyright rules, and the small Danish hometown of Lars Ulrich.

² I certainly miss the Vatican Army. Don't you?

³ Or, failing that, a little hell. Western medieval militaries weren't known for their great discipline.

⁴ Roughly. There's always someone whose seat you shouldn't take. Just like high school. Except there's no fear that The Teacher will forget your name.

⁵ Then it had little hooks next to the locks to leave the keys, because many people refuse to carry keys with them on the holidays.

September 26, 2004 05:01 PM | TrackBack | in Other