sh'liach k'hilah: partial course list

[cellio]

We received email Friday afternoon that includes a partial course list for the upcoming session of the Sh'liach K'hilah program. It includes:

• Daily text study (first day says psalms; rest unspecified)
• Working with the elderly (this could go in all sorts of interesting directions...)
• Systems: how to implement change (ding ding ding! And looks like a good instructor, too)
• Process of self-evaluation (? - same instructor as previous)
• Two sessions simply entitled "worship"
• Festival and high-holy-day liturgies (2 classes)
• How to write a eulogy (the first year included how to conduct a funeral, but didn't go into much detail about eulogies)
• Homiletics (2 sessions)

There are a bunch of slots that haven't yet been specified.

The schedule includes an hour and a half daily of "work time". I wonder if our comments last year about the unrelenting schedule were heard and heeded, or if the nature of the second year is that it requires more of this explicitly (research projects or the like).

Should be interesting!

Comments

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

I am curious about the session on eulogies. They're so touchy, and unless you know the deceased well, they're hard to get right. and what do you do if you don't know the deceased at all?

The rabbis who presided over the funerals for both my maternal grandfather and my father had never met the man they were talking about, or anyone else in the family. and in both cases I thought they did an exceedingly poor job.

(at my father's funeral it was even worse because, among other things, my paternal grandmother included some outrageous lies in the information she'd given the rabbi--but it wasn't his fault; how could he know? )

[cellio]

I'm sorry your family got such poor results. I've only heard one eulogy so far (for the CEO of my company, a few weeks ago) and the rabbi did an excellent job even though he didn't know the man well. (I assume he knew him at least a little, as the family is one of the ones that shows up a few times more than just the high holy days and their son was bar mitzvah three years ago.) Anyway, the eulogy contained information that could only have come from the family, not casual observation, and it was put together very well.

I assume we'll be learning a mix of interviewing techniques (got a little of that last year) and the mechanics of how to put it together. I assume there's a broad pattern they all follow; having heard only one I have insufficient data to derive it myself.