If you’ve ever moved and had to search for a new shul to call home, or even become a practicing Jew after years of inactivity, then you know how uncomfortable it can be to take that first step and seek out a shul with which to affiliate. Will you mesh with the new group? Will your religious views or lifestyles clash? What if you’re treated differently because you just don’t know as much about Judaism as you’d like to? These concerns are valid for unaffiliated Jews — and Jews on the periphery of their communities or those who are intermarried — and they’re a large part of why outreach is so important to every shul.

Through outreach, once-unaffiliated Jews come to find comfort in communal Judaism and grow in their religious and cultural knowledge. Like Abraham and Sarah’s tent, the walls of the Jewish community should be open on all four sides to anyone who approaches. This idea spurred the Big Tent Judaism Coalition, an organized approach to Jewish community created through the Jewish Outreach Institute in October 2007.

According to JOI’s Web site, www.joi.org/ bigtent, only 35 percent of American Jews are affiliated with a synagogue at any given time.

Of those, even fewer participate regularly. For a religious group whose hopes for growth hinge on the next generation of Jews staying active and involved, these numbers are grim. That’s why those at JOI, including Associate Executive Director Paul Golin, felt they needed to do something to increase the effectiveness of Jewish outreach when they began the Coalition.

“We felt [the Coalition] was the missing piece of advocacy that was needed within the organized Jewish community,” Golin says. “It serves as a platform across denominations and institutional organizations to say we agree on certain principles.” The principles may seem obvious to any outreach professional, but when combined, they form the core of the Big Tent Judaism approach.

Briefly, they include: Welcoming all newcomers; celebrating diversity; offering “free samples”; deepening Jewish engagement; providing quality “customer service”; lowering barriers to participation; increasing points of access; creating partnerships; enlisting active members for outreach; and bettering best practices.

The coalition is free to join and includes all synagogues and other Jewish communal organizations who strive to fulfill the Coalition’s 10 principles of Big Tent Judaism to create a more connected, unified Jewish community through partnership, communication and advocacy. The Coalition also provides Jewish professionals and lay leaders with skills and sensitivities they need to be more welcoming to unaffiliated Jews and become a unified voice across denominations and organizations.

Unlike the last century, when the Big Question was how to be Jewish and so much of organized communal Judaism was created, the issue this century is getting the Jewish population to be a part of that community.

“I think the biggest challenge for the Jewish community in the 21st century is answering the question, ‘Why be Jewish?’” Golin says. “These days we’re not giving compelling reasons, especially in the context of the Jewish community. You have a lot of folks who feel strongly Jewish but don’t feel they have to express that in the community, so why should folks do it? The most celebrated holidays of the Jewish calendar are Chanukah and Passover because you don’t need a community — they’re family holidays. For the High Holy Days, it’s an amazing opportunity to connect with folks who are only in shul a few times a year, but rather than showing them the value of connecting with the organized community, we bore them to tears.” Getting interfaith couples and families, unaffiliated and non-practicing Jews and Jews-by-choice excited about community involvement, about being active members of a shul, is what the Coalition strives to do. But striving and actualizing are not the same. At two years old this month, the Coalition is still relatively new, and as a young organization that spreads primarily through networking, it is still working to get its name on the map.

“We’re still in the stage where we’re recruiting organizations to join,” Golin says. “It’s a challenging economy, and we face the same challenges all Jewish communal Jewish organizations face. We launched without any direct support for Big Tent Judaism, but we felt it was a really important thing that had to be out there.” Currently, the Coalition has 300 members who have committed to follow its 10 principles, including branches of the United Jewish Federation and Jewish Family Service, Jewish Community Centers, synagogues and smaller groups. In San Diego, of about 60 Jewish congregations in San Diego County, only four (Temple Beth Sholom of Chula Vista, Congregation Beth El of La Jolla, Temple Adat Shalom of Poway and Congregation Beth Am of Carmel Valley) have joined the Coalition. (California as a whole boasts 38 organizations.)

Four is a good start, but it’s certainly not ideal. If only a third of all Jewish households nationally are engaged in communal life, something’s not working right, and Big Tent Judaism might hold the answer. But convincing Jewish organizations that it’s a worthy program is a challenge.

One issue — that many congregations already employ different outreach resources through other organizations — may be keeping them from exploring what Big Tent Judaism has to offer.

Sharon Stanford, who coordinates outreach at Poway’s Adat Shalom, signed her temple up for the Coalition in April 2008, but she says they had previously used outreach resources from the Union for Reform Judaism, which already has an established set of outreach-oriented idea books. Perhaps, Stanford says, Big Tent Judaism is best for young shuls that haven’t done a formal outreach program before. In fact, Big Tent Judaism’s resources are as helpful, though perhaps not as extensive, as those of more established programs.

According to Golin, Coalition members receive numerous useful resources, including “All Are Welcome” decals to post near entrances, free outreach consultation, national networking, free quarterly professional training conference calls, wallet cards of Jewish terminology for newcomers and other tools.

Alyssa Goldberg, membership director at Congregation Beth El, says outreach professionals at Beth El have taken advantage of the listserv, conference calls and terminology cards, but involvement hasn’t gone beyond that. Lackluster participation seems to be the trend among all four local Coalition synagogues. Perhaps it’s just because the Coalition is still so new. Says Goldberg, “We haven’t been that involved in the past, but I think it can be good for us.” And it can be good for them, according to Golin.

“I believe all synagogues in the Big Tent Judaism Coalition, and even the non-synagogue organizations, recognize that we as a community have to do more,” he says. “The principles of Big Tent Judaism are intended to help remove the unnecessary barriers we’ve erected that keep many people from participating in communal life.”