How we can be more welcoming and inclusive during the High Holidays

Asked and Answered

The topic of this edition of Pride & Prejudice is how we can be more welcoming and inclusive during the High Holidays (and beyond). With that in mind, we asked and you answered:

Question 1: What’s one thing you can do to ensure traditionally marginalized members in your Jewish community feel comfortable and welcome to attend synagogue, be a part of your community, and engage with others?

Responses:

Generation Z
We need to do more than just welcome people at the door. We should actively bring theminto all the aspects of the community. It is by no means an easy task, but finding ways to invite them to other events or just have conversations with people on the board in the synagogue would be a great start. Really making an effort to make them feel comfortable will let people see what the community is like and that our community contains all kinds of different voices.

Millennials
The first thing I think about is language — the words we use and whether they’re actually opening the door or quietly closing it. Something as simple as ‘are you new here?’ sounds friendly but can actually signal you’re an outsider and I can tell. So, I try to just introduce myself as if the other person belongs here as much as I do — because they do. I also think about who we focus on our communal stories.

If every example in the sermon assumes a two-parent, Hebrew-school-educated, heterosexual family, then a lot of people are doing the math and concluding this isn’t for them.

Beyond the individual interaction, I think our communities need to be intentional about visible symbols of welcome — whether that’s language on the website, who’s leading services, or whether the rabbi ever mentions that Jewish families look a lot of different ways. People notice when they’re included and they notice even faster when they’re not.

Question 2: A significant part of raising children is teaching them about the Jewish Holidays, our shared values and their heritage. What are your memories of High Holidays when you were young? (Be honest. Your memories may be less about what your parents wanted you to believe and more about your young, naive approach to the experiences.)

Responses:

Generation Z
My memories of High Holidays changed a lot during each year when I was younger. It started by being in the main praying area for a little bit then given the greenlight by my parents to hang out with my friends in the synagogue hallways. As I got older and closer to Bar Mitzvah, I paid more attention to the prayers as well as learning what the holidays meant and what I was reading on the pages. I also read some torah portions during Yom Kippur which involved me more with the service.

Millennials

If I’m being completely honest — and this question asked for honesty — I spent most of my childhood High Holiday services waiting for them to be over. I didn’t connect with the Hebrew. The English translation felt archaic. The sermons were about things that felt very far from my life.

I remember the distinct anxiety of not knowing when to sit and when to stand and not wanting to look like I didn’t know. I remember feeling like there was a spiritual experience happening around me that I was somehow not receiving. And I remember feeling guilty about that, like there was something wrong with me. What I didn’t expect was that the images would stay.

My grandmother was crying during Kol Nidre. My grandfather’s tallis. The particular way the canton held a note until the whole room went still. I didn’t understand any of it then. I think I’m still working on understanding it now. That’s what those memories were for.

Question 3: How welcoming are the security precautions we typically see today at and around our synagogues? Do you feel more or less secure when you encounter these security measures?

Responses:

Millennials

My relationship with security at synagogue is complicated in a way that’s hard to explain quickly. On one level, I understand why it’s there. I know what happened in Pittsburgh. I know the threat is real. I’m not naive about antisemitism — if anything, October 7, and everything that followed has made me more aware of it than I’ve ever been.

But when I walk up to my synagogue and see the guards, what I feel is not safety. What I feel is something closer to rage — not at the shul, not at the guards, but at the fact that this is the world we’re raising children in. I feel the weight of having to explain to my kids why we can’t just walk in.

I feel the gap between what synagogue is supposed to be — a place of peace, of gathering, of openness — and what the world has forced it to become. The security is right. The need for it is tragedy.

Question 4: The Pew Research Center reported in 2023 that “about a quarter of U.S. adults regularly watch religious services online.” We know the number of Jewish households attending High Holiday services online virtually is growing. Are our synagogues not as welcoming as they might be? Are we less inclined to connect socially with our peers? What are your thoughts about this new reality?

Responses:

Generation Z
Everyone has their own reasons for attending services online or in person. During and after COVID it seems to have given families a way to stay connected to the holiday but not attend in person. My first Fall away at college, I watched the online service of my home synagogue because I wasn’t connected to my school’s culture yet. And at that point, adjusting to being away, it helped me stay connected with home. Like I said, everyone has their own reasons.

Millennials

COVID did something that I wasn’t expecting, it forced me to engage with High Holiday services differently. When I watched it from home, I couldn’t check my phone as easily. I didn’t feel the social anxiety of not knowing when to stand. I wasn’t distracted by what the person next to me was doing. And I realized — uncomfortably — that I was actually following the service more closely than I ever had in person. I don’t think that means online is better.

I think it means that in-person services have layers of social complexity that some people, including me, find genuinely distracting. The question of whether people are attending online because synagogues aren’t welcoming is partly right, but it’s also more specific than that. For some of us, the social dynamics of the room are themselves a barrier to spiritual focus. That’s not the synagogue’s fault. But it might be something worth designing around.

Question 5: High Holiday services are the highest attended services at your synagogue, right? What should the sermon, or other congregants, or the service itself do to encourage more engagement at religious services, programs and events throughout the year? Knowing that a healthy lifestyle should prioritize in-person interaction with others, what do you think would make gathering at the synagogue more welcoming and inclusive?

Responses:

Millennials

If I’m thinking about what would genuinely draw me into a synagogue community beyond the High Holidays, it’s not programming. It’s not a better app or a nicer social hall. It’s whether I feel like a contributor or an attendee.

Because the model I grew up with — where the rabbi and cantor do the service and the congregation watches and responds on cue — positions us as an audience. And audiences don’t build community. Participants do. So, what I want is for someone to ask me to bring something to the community — a skill, a perspective, a question I’m sitting with — and mean it.

I want to be in a room where my absence would be noticed not because they’re tracking attendance, but because I actually add something when I’m there. That kind of engagement isn’t built at High Holidays. It’s built slowly, through real relationships, in smaller settings. High Holidays can open the door. But someone has to be standing behind it waiting to actually welcome you in.

“Asked and Answered” published in Pride and Prejudice, Fall 2026: Rosh Hashanah Edition.