My shul is too crowded. There are no seats for our sons, or for our guests, and it's near impossible to walk from your seat to the door without disturbing someone. This weekend I and a few like-minded friends tossed around some ideas for thinning the herd:
- Lock the doors at 9:15
- Start davening at 8, instead of 9
- Take out the tables.
- Cancel the weekly kiddush
- Ban alcohol
- Introduce a learning seder after davening
- Crack down on talking, with extreme malics
- Limit entrance only to men who've been to the mikva that morning.
The very sad thing is the first seven ideas would work, without question, but the last would probably fail. Most of the kiddush loving, latecoming, talk-aholics are very careful to dunk before shul.
As you can see, it's not doing them much good.