Local places of worship worry about longevity

By NICOLE FORMISANO nformisano@liherald.com

Sunlight filtered through 3,000 pieces of stained glass. A hint of rainbows danced on the wall, promising a breathtaking show when the sun soon set. The depicted animals and symbols came alive with the golden hour.

And not a soul was there to see it.

“In its heyday, at this time of day, this would all be bustling,” said Ira Litkofsky, the office financial manager of Shaaray Shalom in West Hempstead. “We were once the premier synagogue in the community.”

Litkofsky said that before the ‘80s, the congregation had over 1,000 families. Today, it has 132 people. It’s not even enough for them to run their Hebrew school.

“I love this synagogue, I grew up here, I was Bar Mitzvahed here,” Litkofsky said. “It’s very emotional for me.”

Shaaray Shalom is not the only place of worship facing this problem. Our Lady of Lourdes in Malverne has been seeing a gradual decline over many years, but saw a drop-off of a couple hundred members after Covid-19 hit, according to Reverend James Stachacz. Geralyn Carpenter, the administrator of St. James United Methodist Church in Lynbrook, said that 20 years ago the church would see 75-100 attend service every Sunday. These days, they get around 50-60 — and that’s double the numbers they were seeing before the introduction of their new pastor.

“It’s a challenge right now in any religion to keep our doors open,” Reverend Stachacz said.

There is no single, simple reason for the significant decrease in congregants across religions. In Shaaray Shalom’s case, Litkofsky said that the increased assimilation into American life over generations has led to some Jewish people becoming more secular. For Our Lady of Lourdes, Stachacz said that people have become used to watching mass live-streamed since Covid. For St. James

United, Carpenter said that religion is just not the staple in families that it was a few decades ago. But there was one thing each of the three houses of worship agreed on: they desperately need more young people.

“We do not have enough young people, period,” Carpenter said. “It’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever had to tell anybody.”

“We can’t attract young Jewish families,” Litofsky said.

“We offered different programs, like movie nights, trying to encourage people,” Stachacz said. “You can offer people something, but you can’t force them.”

While the character of the younger generation is sometimes called into question — words like apathy and laziness are often used — people involved in places of worship see that it can’t simply be chalked up to young people not wanting to wake up early on the weekends for service. There is a principled, ideological component — many young people are not joining houses of worship for differences in philosophy.

“This generation has more of a sense of individual, or private spirituality,” Stachacz said. And Our Lady of Lourdes is not the only institution to notice this trend.

“Kids don’t think you need to go to this building to pray,” Litkofsky said. “A

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