“Amichai Lau-Lavie’s Lab/Shul will lead Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services in a 1,000-seat college theater in lower Manhattan — with liturgy projected on the walls and accompanied by musicians David Broza, Neshama Carlebach and Shira Kline.

These new pop-up options — similar to the “mushroom synagogues” populating the Lower East Side a century ago — are creating tension with some synagogue leaders, who see the efforts as siphoning off a population that they, too, are trying to attract and bring in to year-round, dues-paying congregational engagement.

And while it may appear to be a new phenomenon, it actually goes back a century.

Hundreds of independent High Holy Day services happened in Yiddish theaters, social halls and bars in Manhattan between 1901 and 1934, according to Rabbi Dan Judson, who works as the director of professional development and placement at Hebrew College, a rabbinical seminary in Boston. He is also the faculty expert on synagogue finances at the Union for Reform Judaism.”

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