How a Shul Rewrote Its Story: Yosef Kirschner

Yosef Kirschner’s understanding of the start-up world made him a tremendous asset as a shul leader. Courtesy of Yosef Kirschner

In 2010, a majority of congregants broke away from Golf Manor Synagogue in Cincinnati, Ohio. Shabbat minyan attendance plummeted from over one hundred to barely twenty, leaving a small and devoted but aging core membership. The shul cycled through various turnaround efforts, but nothing seemed to stick.

Today, Golf Manor tells a different story. The shul now counts more than one hundred families, with about eighty attending on a typical Shabbat morning. Roughly 35 percent of its members are under forty.

How did they do it?

Most congregants credit Rabbi Yosef Alt, a dynamic personality who gained community-building experience when he was a member of the Atlanta Scholars Kollel before accepting his first pulpit role at Golf Manor in 2018. Cognizant of the need to recruit youthful leaders, he tapped twenty-five-year-old Yosef Kirschner, a gregarious “people person,” to join the Board of Directors in 2019. Kirschner, newly married, had grown up in Cincinnati attending the shul, and had returned to his hometown to work as an engineer in a medical device start-up.

“Yosef has been involved in a number of start-ups,” says Rabbi Alt. “His positive energy and understanding of business structures and human resources in the start-up world made him a tremendous asset for our shul, which was in a start-up phase when he was onboarding,” he says. “When he joined the shul board, that was a pivotal point for our shul. His leadership has been fantastic.”

The invitation came as a surprise to Kirschner. “Growing up, I never saw myself as a leader and never sought out leadership positions,” he said. Nevertheless, he agreed to take on the role, and despite his limited experience as a shul lay leader, he managed to win over the shul leadership. And after only a few months of serving on the board, Kirschner became chairman of the Board of Directors.

“I came with a mindset of I’m here to learn as well as to contribute. The other board members had more experience and history; I tried to build the culture that we are partners,” says Kirschner, who has three young children with his wife, Elka.

After a few years of soul searching, we realized our biggest strength was not to fit in any box but to welcome everyone. This helped us absorb new people into the shul.

“My situation was unique. While I was very young, there was a big trust factor because people at the shul had known me virtually all my life.”

“Recruiting young leadership is a challenge for many shuls,” explains Rabbi Adir Posy, OU national director of the Department of Synagogue Initiatives. “Younger members are balancing careers and family life, leaving limited time for volunteer commitments.”

Golf Manor was fortunate. Kirschner was able to step up. At the time, juggling his responsibilities, he often felt like he was working at two start-ups: his day job at the medical device company and Golf Manor. “In both places, you have to make everyone feel like a stakeholder,” Kirschner says, “and find ways for everyone to feel they have something meaningful to contribute.”

As they worked to reimagine the shul, Rabbi Alt and Kirschner turned to Rabbi Posy, who consults with more than 250 shuls a year in his OU role. Rabbi Posy flew from Los Angeles to Cincinnati to help Golf Manor develop a clearer strategy, establish stronger governance and rebuild its lay leadership structure. “There was a palpable sense of pride in what the shul was—and what it could become,” he recalls.

Shul Reboot Step 1: Solidifying an Identity

Cincinnati’s Jewish community dates back to 1817, making it one of the country’s oldest. In recent years, however, a growing number of Orthodox Jews have been drawn to the area—especially during Covid—attracted by affordable housing, generous school vouchers and the relaxed, welcoming vibe of a classic “out-of-town” community.

Today, Cincinnati boasts two day schools, separate high schools for boys and girls, a kollel, a mikveh and a range of kosher restaurants. Housing remains affordable, kosher food is readily available at major chains like Trader Joe’s and Kroger.

“There’s a big family-community feel here, but also a strong infrastructure compared to other similarly sized communities,” says Rabbi Alt. While the pace of growth has slowed, each summer brings a fresh influx of families relocating to Cincinnati—creating a housing shortage in the Jewish community.

Hoping to appeal to the growing number of younger Jews moving to Cincinnati, Kirschner made rebranding the shul one of his first priorities, overseeing the creation of a new website and logo. Still, the shul—one of a handful in the area—strove to define its identity.

“For a long time, we struggled to find ourselves. Our constituency didn’t fit into a box. We were strategizing, asking, ‘who do we want to be?’ We couldn’t even settle on our hashkafah, and we had to figure ourselves out so that we could create a vision. After a few years of soul searching, we realized our biggest strength was not to fit in any box but to welcome everyone. This helped us absorb new people into the shul. It’s one of our core tenets, that we’re all growing together.”

Shul Reboot Step 2: Identify and Fulfill Community Needs

Ironically, Covid presented Golf Manor with opportunities to grow. Boasting the largest sanctuary and building in the community, the shul, with its large main building and smaller second building with classrooms, invited the local kollel to host Shabbat services in the social hall, large enough for social distancing recommendations. The main Shabbat minyan had dwindled, so adding the kollel hashkamah minyan made the shul feel “more alive, especially with families and children,” says Kirschner. “We’d have thirty or forty people in the building instead of fifteen.” Giving up the social hall was sometimes logistically challenging when the shul had an event, but it infused the building with energy. There was a kiddush and a shiur afterward, and community members began coming to shul events. It turned out to be a winning strategy.

The invitation came as a surprise to Kirschner. “Growing up, I never saw myself as a leader and never sought out leadership positions.”

The kollel minyan drew not only kollel families but other community members due to its appealing 8:20 start time, social distancing spacing and faster-paced davening. After Covid, the kollel stopped organizing the minyan, so Golf Manor hired the minyan’s unofficial rabbi, Rabbi Dovid Tzvi Meissner, as its associate rabbi. He has continued to lead this minyan and offer expanded learning opportunities, boosting shul membership. Rabbi Alt and Kirschner agree that adopting the kollel minyan under Golf Manor’s roof was a turning point. “It familiarized people with Golf Manor,” says Kirschner. “It built vibrancy. It helped build community.”

Filling the shul space with activity from other pockets of the community continued to upgrade Golf Manor’s profile. The shul rented space to a Jewish Montessori program and the boys’ high school for about three years, bringing a welcome injection of youth to the campus and “attracting community members who might not otherwise have visited,” says Kirschner. The boys’ high school had a beit midrash program that drew additional people to learn with the students. Not only did this arrangement show Golf Manor as a community-minded organization, but the rental income supported additional programming that would otherwise have been unaffordable.

Additionally, the shul began organizing larger-scale events, positioning itself as a broader community resource. Among its early initiatives was a community-wide hachnasat sefer Torah, marked by an elegantly catered dinner. It was also the first local shul to host a simchat beit hashoevah, a celebration that has since become a rotating event among neighborhood synagogues. Other offerings included a Chanukah party—complete with hired entertainment and co-sponsored by neighboring shuls—and a Mother’s Day brunch, both open to the entire community free of charge. Rabbi Alt and Kirschner deliberately sought to identify and respond to unmet communal needs, helping reposition the shul in the local landscape. Their efforts introduced programs such as a Shabbaton for older singles and a lunch-and-learn series tailored to seniors.

“We try to think about the pulse of the community’s needs,” says Kirschner.

Unexpectedly, Kirschner’s role at Golf Manor has boosted his career. “I learned what I could do, gained confidence and started to use the same skills at work, facilitating meetings, working with different stakeholders, trying to align people in a direction. Failures and successes go hand in hand, and learning from them boosted me into a real leadership role in the company.” Kirschner is now the technical lead at his company, overseeing about a quarter of the staff.

During a Shabbat kiddush about a year ago, Kirschner looked around the social hall filled with kids running around, fathers sharing a few l’chaims, and young mothers catching up about their week. He went over to Rabbi Alt and said, “Look, shep some nachas. The ‘stroller parking lot’ is full.”

Judy Gruen is an award-winning columnist and author of the memoirs Bylines and Blessings and The Skeptic and the Rabbi. She is also a book editor and writing coach.