dsg@mhuxi.UUCP (David S. Green) (12/05/84)
From Ken Wolman Bell Communications Research Now On System whuxi!ktw (Il Ghetto Nuovo di Belcuore) RE: The Bingo Trap, Fundraising, and Shul Money I read with interest Toby Robison's comments about bingo as a synagogue fundraising method, mainly because I am on the Board of Trustees of a synagogue (Conservative) which derives a significant portion ($45-50,000) of its annual budget from running a twice-weekly bingo game which members may work in lieu of paying $125 additional dues. Most if not all the players are gentiles, none of whom appear to be in a high-income bracket, and most of whom seem utterly obsessed with the game to the exclusion of all else. The first time I worked a bingo game, I leaned over to the captain and whispered "This is the Poor Man's Atlantic City!" The importance of bingo to the shul can be glimpsed in this unfortunate and totally true story: Last year, it turned out that one of our bingo nights fell on the first night of Shavuot. Even though several people in a position to know were aware of the date, they opted to run the game rather than risk alienating a large percentage of the players who probably could care less that we're Jews, but would only know they'd been deprived of their Wednesday night entertainment. When this was brought to the rabbi's attention (well after the fact), he got the people in charge of bingo to make sure that where a yom tov/bingo conflict exists, yom tov wins, and that the nights are switched with another group using the rented hall (we use the Boy's Club rather than our own premises). The point of this story is that such thinking and behavior typify, I fear, the badly distorted priorities of many congregations. The moral problems in supporting someone's possible gambling "habit" aside (and I am quite aware that they represent a rather large "aside"), what is increasingly difficult for me personally (and for some other people in the shul) is the extent to which bingo has become the synagogue's obsession, not merely the players'; and the extent to which it reflects the congregation's attitude toward--perhaps even fixation on--money as an end unto itself, as well as in terms of the priorities which govern how it is handled and how it is spent. For instance, we have an officer who once took the rabbi to task over his intention to purchase a few sets of tefillin for use by the Heh class pre-Bar Mitzvah boys. He objected to spending $60 a pair. Anyone who knows tefillin at all knows that at $60 a set they are likely to be barely kosher at best, and certainly no example of hiddur mitzvah! (Imagine if the rabbi had bought "or echod". . . .) Ours is not a wealthy congregation, but it is growing; the dues are high, and for most of us, it is a struggle to pay them. But we are presently engaged in trying to raise $900,000 from our own membership for a twofold purpose: sanctuary beautification and additional classroom and meeting room space. The former is a "nice to have" which has become an obsession among certain Board members; the latter--the classrooms--is absolutely critical, but has had to be defended every inch of the way (the fight is not nearly over). Appearance takes precedence over education; no problem is seen in dealing with overcrowding in our afternoon school by reducing the number of days from three to two; no contradiction is glimpsed in the fact that we are willing to substitute cosmetics for education, and may in fact be creating a "beautiful" sanctuary in which far too many of our children will never worship because we never taught them how. Admittedly, bingo itself occasionally goes too far; but bingo is not the issue, merely a symptom of a mental and spiritual attitude in which the "bottom line" substitutes for a correct focus on the primary purposes of any synagogue of whatever "denomination": religion and religious education. We need the game because we need the money; but the tragedy that is overtaking us is that we are printing our religious and educational lives on dollar bills.