Melton program
Sep. 19th, 2006 08:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioThe Melton program consists of four courses in two years. Courses are (academic-)year-long, so we have two each week (one night, back to back).
The second course in year one is very good so far; it's a theology class. It's calibrated low on raw content, but the teacher (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mabfan, the one we've talked about) is excellent and the class discussions tend to be good.
The first class, on the other hand... is a practices course (practical applications), and they assume no prior background, nad I haven't learned anything yet, and a look at the syllabus doesn't give me great feelings about that changing. Last night's subject was "symbols", and we talked about t'fillin, tzitzit, and mezuzah -- source texts and how to do them. Next week is the first of two sessions on kashrut, followed by one on the siddur, one on b'rachot, and two on Shabbat. When they said "no prior background required" they really meant it; I think they'd be better off at least mandating "intro to Judaism" or its equivalent. (There's a city-wide intro course.)
A class on basic observances still has the potential to be interesting, given a good instructor. (There's always stuff to learn, after all.) It's not that there's anything wrong with this instructor, really, other than that I think she's used to teaching kids and I sometimes feel talked-down-to. But she's probably not the instructor to make this material come alive for me.
I'm considering finding out what the year-two students are doing in their first session and seeing if I can do that. Failing that, I'll have to decide whether the apparently-small potential to learn something is worth the cost of my time, or whether it would be inexcusably rude to bring a book to read during class. This isn't just a series of lectures, which complicates things -- each class coheres as a community over the two years, so I'd definitely be messing that up and probably coming across as snooty or something. Which isn't my intent.
The second course in year one is very good so far; it's a theology class. It's calibrated low on raw content, but the teacher (
mabfan, the one we've talked about) is excellent and the class discussions tend to be good.The first class, on the other hand... is a practices course (practical applications), and they assume no prior background, nad I haven't learned anything yet, and a look at the syllabus doesn't give me great feelings about that changing. Last night's subject was "symbols", and we talked about t'fillin, tzitzit, and mezuzah -- source texts and how to do them. Next week is the first of two sessions on kashrut, followed by one on the siddur, one on b'rachot, and two on Shabbat. When they said "no prior background required" they really meant it; I think they'd be better off at least mandating "intro to Judaism" or its equivalent. (There's a city-wide intro course.)
A class on basic observances still has the potential to be interesting, given a good instructor. (There's always stuff to learn, after all.) It's not that there's anything wrong with this instructor, really, other than that I think she's used to teaching kids and I sometimes feel talked-down-to. But she's probably not the instructor to make this material come alive for me.
I'm considering finding out what the year-two students are doing in their first session and seeing if I can do that. Failing that, I'll have to decide whether the apparently-small potential to learn something is worth the cost of my time, or whether it would be inexcusably rude to bring a book to read during class. This isn't just a series of lectures, which complicates things -- each class coheres as a community over the two years, so I'd definitely be messing that up and probably coming across as snooty or something. Which isn't my intent.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-19 01:36 pm (UTC)(Though your post could equally well mean that both corses are basic in terms of content: one teacher still makes it interesting for you, the other doesn't).
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-19 11:41 pm (UTC)Some subjects just lend themselves to mixed-background discussions better than others. For example, in the theology class we talked about different views of God in the two creation stories -- the transcendent God of chapter one who forms everything out of nothing and creates man to master it, and the immanent God of chapter two who creates man out of dust, breathes life into his nostrils, and sets him to tend the earth. Did I already know all of that? Well, sure. Was it still an interesting conversation? You bet!
On the other hand, if you already know how to hang a mezuzah, there's not much to be gotten out of a discussion of how to hang a mezuzah, at least if you don't talk about the dispute between Hillel and Shammai, or about mystical overlays, or about other public proclamations we make, or something like that.