Sunday

[cellio]

Today (Sunday, as I write this) was the first day of the Sh'liach K'hilah program. This year is going to be somewhat different from last year, we learned: they explained that last year was classroom learning (those might not have been the words they used) and this year would be workshops and application. Not entirely; there are certainly classes designed to impart knowledge to us in a more structured form. But, to give a flavor of what they mean, we have the following assignments:

• In groups of three, lead a shacharit or ma'ariv service (this happened last year too)
• In groups of three, conduct a half-hour text study (on a topic of our choosing)
• Write and present for critique a d'var torah (5-7 minutes)
• Write and present a eulogy, interviewing a classmate for the source material (we are to choose non-recent deaths)

The schedule includes an hour and a half per day (through Friday) of "work time" to give us a fighting chance of doing this with everything else that'll be going on. That's reassuring. :-)

My groups

I am in the first group to lead services, which we will do Tuesday morning. (Until then the staff is leading.) We huddled tonight to choose a siddur and a general approach, and gave ourselves the homework of analyzing the service and thinking about what specifically we want to include (including decisions about language, melodies, etc). This gives us tomorrow to put it together.

If it were just me, of course, I could go in there tomorrow morning and lead. But that's not the point; one of the things we're here to learn is working effectively with other people, in our case under a tight deadline. The other two people in my group seem to be easy-going, calm, and competent (a good combination!), so I think we'll be fine. We'll see what happens tomorrow. (I've made my detailed notes; now to see what they came up with.)

They were kind enough to balance the groups time-wise; becasue I'm in the first service group I don't have to lead a text study until Friday. Whew. I'd much rather have that order than the reverse, too; text study is going to require a lot more preparation, in general and for me in particular because I have almost no experience leading that. My group met briefly today (on the way to a class) and we threw out three very different ideas of topics. We'll choose one soon (maybe tomorrow) and start to refine it.

If I had known that this year would include this sort of project, I would have brought more of my reference library! Throwing more books into the car would have been trivial, after all. Yes, there's a library on campus that we can use during those work times (it's not open late at night), but I do some of my best work after 10PM and I don't have most of the tools that would be handy. Oh well. I have a tanach, a chumash (Eitz Chayim), and a tikkun that it turns out I won't need. (Siddurim are easy to come by so I didn't bother with that.) They dropped us a hint about bringing resources for writing a d'var torah (hence my choices), but not the rest.

I interviewed a classmate for the eulogy assignment, but I probably won't write anything until Tuesday. In retrospect maybe I should have waited, but I know how busy things are going to get and I took good notes, so it should be ok.

Today's classes

At the orientation they asked us to introduce ourselves and say one valuable thing we took away last year and one thing we hope to learn this year. I said that last year I took away a sense of the "big picture" of leading services -- that it's not just about the words in the siddur but about flow, high and low points of intensity, music and a d'var torah that fits in with all that (or vice-versa), interaction among the participants, and so on. I definitely think I have a better sense of the finer points than I did before last year's program. For what I hope to take away this year, I said not just personal growth but also clues about enabling others in the congregation to do more, whether it's formal (e.g. training lay torah readers) or informal (stimulating good torah study).

The first class was on how to write a eulogy, which was substantially about data collection (interviewing the family). We talked about some difficult situations (e.g. what if the deceased was really a louse?) and I learned some helpful turns of phrase. (I also liked the rabbi's characterization that a eulogy should be "honest, mostly". :-) ) We didn't talk much about the actual writing (such as how to structure it).

Today's other class was the first part of a worship class. We saw a short video that included excerpts from three very different congregations' services and talked about the decisions they made and the effects they seemed to have. Tomorrow, in part 2, we'll talk about more nuts and bolts, the rabbi said.

Key phrase for making changes in worship: evolution, not revolution.

Other stuff

When they cancelled the first-year program this year (which would have been last week) I sent email saying I would be coming Sunday morning instead of Friday, and updated the group calendar. When I got here this morning I learned that the organizers had been worried about me because I hadn't shown up Friday. Oops. I wonder what happened. (We'd had the entire conversation by email.)

We have the same cook as last year. She's good. :-)

Net connectivity is a little better this year than last; I was able to get access after ma'ariv tonight, while last year that door was locked by then.

Addendum: as I was writing this one of the other members of my text-study group stopped by. We spent an hour or so brainstorming topics (recognizing that our third person wasn't there so this is just talking, not planning). The other two have a lot of teaching experience (I think they're both professionals), so it might make sense for more of the teaching to fall to me so I learn how to do it (with coaching, of course). The flip side of that, though, is that I think that means I get a bigger vote on the topic; teaching itself is a challenge for me, so if I'm taking point it should at least be a topic I'm comfortable with. On the other hand, we have until Friday.

Comments

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

I've always been fond of the notion that a eulogy should follow the pattern of Orson Scott Card's Speaker For The Dead

In fact... http://www.schuldy.org/eulogy.html

[cellio]

Nicely done!

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It was heartfelt, and very difficult to write. I found I could not deliver it, so I handed the typewritten text to the officiant.

I can no longer read it without crying.

[cellio]

I found I could not deliver it, so I handed the typewritten text to the officiant.

I gather that's fairly common. One of the practical tips we were given was: if there are outside eulogies (i.e. ones other than the one you're giving), always (1) make them write it in advance (no extemporanous speaking!) and (2) ask them if they'd like you to deliver it. On (2), apparently sometimes people feel bad about asking someone else to do it -- but that's part of why an outside officiant is there.

Actually, (2) is an argument that can be used for (1). ("Mr. Goldstein, we want to make sure to do honor to your mother, and you may find you have difficulty speaking at the funeral. If you type it up for me, I can make sure your words are not lost if that happens.")

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Also good for preventing what happened at one funeral I attended. (My ex-wife's grandmother - my daughter is named for her.) My ex's rather literally insane brother got up and told stories about he'd tortured Grandma to make her think she was senile....