Belonging matters: Why I’m returning to synagogue life

I am doing it because the older I get, the more convinced I become that human beings need a home base.

American Jews are stepping away from synagogue life. This is not new.

For years now, many people have drifted away from formal Jewish institutions for reasons that are both practical and personal. Membership dues are expensive. Schedules are packed. Some feel disconnected from organized religion altogether. Others believe Jewish identity can thrive perfectly well without buildings, clergy, or official membership.

And in many ways, they are right. Jewish life today is portable. We carry it in podcasts, Instagram accounts, Substacks, group chats, summer camps and occasional holiday dinners. You can feel deeply Jewish without ever walking into a sanctuary.

For a while, I understood that instinct.

And yet, lately, I’ve found myself moving in the opposite direction.

I am rejoining a synagogue.

Not because I suddenly became more religiously observant. Not because it is trendy. Frankly, it is probably the least trendy thing I could do.

I am doing it because the older I get, the more convinced I become that human beings need a home base. And because Jewish children, especially, need tribes.

Someday, when my own kids are old enough, I know they will have a youth group like BBYO as a Jewish community to help shape them. But I’ve realized I need something, too. Adulthood needs community just as much as childhood does.

Over the last two-and-a-half years, many Jews have experienced something unsettling. Antisemitism no longer feels like an abstract chapter in history books or something confined to extremist corners of society. It appears casually now. In social media comment sections. On college campuses. In conversations that once would have felt unimaginable in mainstream American life.

There is something uniquely disorienting about scrolling through your phone and encountering people debating your humanity, your legitimacy, or your right to exist. It chips away at you slowly.

And it makes you ask a deeper question: Where do I actually belong?

Not online. Not theoretically. In real life.

Years ago, when I was the director of a local supplemental Jewish education program, a third grade boy told us he did not want to be Jewish anymore.

It was December.

He felt different at school. Othered during the Christmas season. Tired of being the kid outside the dominant culture. At 8 years old, he already understood what it meant to feel separate.

Thankfully, his parents did not let that moment define him.

They kept bringing him. They kept building Jewish life around him even when it would have been easier not to. He stayed connected to the community long enough to grow into his identity instead of running from it.

Years later, he became a high school madrich in that same program. Confident. Proud. Grounded. The kind of Jewish teenager younger kids looked up to.

I think about him often now.

Identity is fragile when children are young, and it must be cultivated deliberately. It is strengthened through repetition, relationships, memory, ritual and community. Through seeing other people who are like you. Through having somewhere to go when the world feels confusing.

A synagogue cannot solve antisemitism.

But it can offer something powerful in response to it: belonging.

And honestly, this is bigger than Judaism.

Modern life has convinced many of us that independence is the highest form of adulthood. We move frequently. We curate friendships digitally. We substitute convenience for commitment. We consume community instead of building it.

But humans were never meant to live untethered.

We need places where people notice when we are missing. Places where our children grow up around adults who know their names. Places that exist not just for moments of crisis or holidays, but year-round.

A tribe.

Not perfect people. Not ideological uniformity. Not agreement on everything.

Just a shared sense that we are responsible for one another.

That is what I want my children to inherit.

Not simply Jewish literacy, but Jewish rootedness.

I want them to know that Judaism is not only something you practice privately or defend online. It is something you live among other people. Something that holds you up when the world feels unstable.

So yes, I am rejoining a synagogue.

Not because I believe institutions are flawless.

But because I no longer believe that trying to do life entirely on our own is sustainable either.

Now I only need to figure out which one. PJC

Liron Lipinsky Salitrik is a Jewish educator and communal professional and suburban mom of two.