Shul Planning Guide—Part 14—More On Media

To pick up where we left off in our last post, Rabbi Buchwald continues:

“How can one impact a large number of people to change their stereotypical attitude towards Orthodoxy? We had tremendous siyata
diShmaya. Natalie Gittleson wrote an
article, which ended up appearing in the Sunday Times Magazine. The headline was absolutely fantastic:
“American Jews Re-Discover Orthodoxy.”
If I had written the headline, it wouldn’t have been that good. “American Jews Re-Discover Orthodoxy” in
major bold in a Sunday Times Magazine!
And Gut git gaholfen, because there was a mistake in the article
and they had to print a correction the following week on the front page of the
Sunday Times. So even if you
didn’t see the article, and all you saw was the headline the following week,
again a geshtalt. American Jews
Are Re-Discovering Orthodoxy! It was a
nice, wonderful, long article, you couldn’t imagine… They showed a picture of a multi-millionaire
investment banker and a Nobel prize-winning scientist and the producer of Kate
and Alley walking with his children to shul. That’s all you need. The impact is gevaldig, massive; it
changes the stereotype for hundreds of thousands of American Jews, just because
we worked on publicity. I didn’t do it,
it was Hakadosh Baruch Hu, siyata dishmaya; it wasn’t me.

“A couple of years later, I harbored another dream – that if New York Magazine, the yuppy magazine would write an article…Gut git gaholfen. A woman started coming to my class who was an
editor who writes cover stories for New York Magazine –
unbelievable! One day she comes to me
and says, ‘all your classes are so good, I want to transcribe them and write a
book about your classes.’ So I said,
‘Don’t write a book. How about a story
in New York Magazine?’ So she
comes back to me and she says, ‘I spoke to the editors of New York Magazine
and they’re not interested.’ She was a
regular writer and editor of New
York Magazine. Nothing, what can you do?

“Six months later, a woman comes to me and tells me that she wants to write an article about this synagogue. Okay. She’s a freelancer. Why?
‘I live on 72^nd
Street near West End Avenue and I see all these
yuppy-types walking every Saturday to this place. I tried to track them down, why are they all
walking here? I see these hordes of
young people in front of Lincoln
Square. And
I can’t believe it – it’s an Orthodox synagogue. So I want to write a story about it,’ she
says. I asked her who she plans on
writing it for. She says, ‘I don’t know,
maybe New York Magazine.’ ‘Have
you ever written for New York Magazine before?’ She says no.
I said, ‘I don’t think your chances of getting this thing published in New
York Magazine are that great, because we had this editor who came to
classes and is deeply involved..’ She ignores
what I said, writes the article and sells it to New York Magazine. She gets it as a cover story. It was unbelievable! “The New Orthodox.” On the front page there was a picture of an
investment banker and a film maker. They
called them Fruppies – frum yuppies.
It was unbelievable! The whole
story was about how the Upper West Side of Manhattan is discovering Orthodoxy.

“And then ABC News followed up on it and that’s a whole parshah in and of itself. They insisted that the story run during the sweeps week, when they do the Nielson ratings.
Why then? Because the executives
in Chicago
decided that it needs to be during sweeps week, since it’s a ‘sexy topic.’ The return of Jews to Orthodoxy is a ‘sexy
topic,’ which will increase their ratings in and enable them to sell
advertising at a higher rate. Who ever
heard of something like this? It’s
unbelievable! You’re telling me that this
isn’t siyata diShmaya, that the Almighty isn’t there pushing buttons and
having people think that Orthodoxy is sexy!
That people in America
are interested in orthodoxy because they think it’s going to increase viewing?!

“I can’t over-emphasize PR. You should be self-effacing, no question, but you should realize that you’re marketing Hakadosh
Baruch Hu and Torah. You shouldn’t feel guilty and uncomfortable over the
fact that you’re getting this type of publicity—because it works. The impact of changing stereotypes is
unbelievable, and if you spent $10,000,000, you couldn’t get the value of American
Jews Re-Discover Orthodoxy. You
couldn’t, even for $10,000,000. You
couldn’t do it.”