Shul Planning Guide—Part 17—Why Is the Beginners Service So Effective?

In Rabbi Buchwald's own words:

"What’s the effectiveness of the Beginners Service? Why is the Beginner Service so effective that we had literal statistics at Lincoln Square
Synagogue that if a person goes eight times in a row—that’s all you need, two
months—if people go eight times in a row, two out of three of them will become shomer
mitzvos? Why? Because, the minyan becomes a
surrogate family.

“After a while, I decided to limit our beginner's minyan to 50 people. If there are 25 people waiting in the hall, then there will be 25 people
waiting in the hall. And so you say, "Buchwald,
there are 25 people that want to become shomer Shabbos, shomer mitzvos, and
they are just waiting out there. They
can’t get in." I’m sorry it will
not be effective if there are 75 people there.
It’s barely effective if there are 50 people there; you have to know
everyone intimately. You have to know
their names, you have to know what their business is, you have to know them,
you have to be in touch with them, in order for it to be effective. Why?
Because what I’m really doing is molding an extended family. We have meals together, once-a-month each
person is invited to the Rabbi’s house for meals, I farm them out to former
beginners and to other members of the family.
They’re being hosted every week they'll give us, we get together during
the week for conversations, we do social events, we go out and do certain
things together. And really I’m becoming
a surrogate father and mother and we’re becoming the surrogate family. That’s why, statistically, the fallout rate
for baalei teshuva is very, very small among those who marry, and very,
very substantial for those who don’t marry.
In other words, I would say that the fallout rate for baalei teshuva
for those who marry is less than 5 %.
Once they become frum and they marry, you clinched them. If they don’t marry between 5 and 10 years, I
would say the fallout rate is up to 50%, if not more. Because, you can’t sing zemiros at a
table alone, you can’t, it doesn’t work.
Judaism is very family oriented, it’s very community oriented. And that’s really what we have to work on; we
need to create communities that are welcoming to baalei teshuvah. It’s not enough for you to have a one to one
relationship with them. They have to
have a community, their own chevra.

“And frankly, I feel that it’s immoral to do outreach without doing follow up. And one of the reasons that my life changed so dramatically is because early on in my life I used to do these seminars for
Torah Leadership Seminars, under the auspices of Yeshiva University. We would fly to Australia,
South Africa, New Zealand,
etc., doing outreach programs all over the world. And I saw that when we left Australia, New
Zealand, and South Africa, there was nothing
left behind. To give these young people
a heady experience that Torah is so wonderful and then to drop them, I felt was
immoral. So for the next fifteen years of
my life, I devoted my life singly and exclusively to follow up, by developing
an adult education program at Lincoln Square Synagogue which was basically all
follow up and not outreach.”