(no subject)
Nov. 1st, 2001 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioI met with my rabbi this morning. We talked about a bunch of things. I told him I really miss the regular meetings that we had back when I was studying with him.
He asked what I've been learning lately and I told him about the online mishna class (from the Masorti folks in Israel) and the miscellaneous other stuff (parsha commentaries and the like), and that it's been pretty self-directed and haphazard. He asked what I want to learn and my broad answer is "most things"; I realized during the course of the conversation that what I *really* want is a study partner, and the specific topics of study are less important than the process of learning how to learn, so to speak. He knows that I've had a long-standing interest in liturgy, so we talked about that for a while.
I mentioned the study-partner thing, thinking that maybe he could suggest someone else in the congregation who I could team up with, and he said he'd be happy to study with me. Wow! This would be order of once or twice a month; I'm supposed to call his secretary, schedule something, and tell her what we're going to study. :-) (He lent me a book on liturgical history, so we'll start there.)
We also talked about my desire to be more involved in leading services. (I didn't quite have the guts to say "hey, how about getting rid of the paid soloists and letting some of us do that music instead?") He said I'm already on his short list for people to call with little notice when things come up and he appreciates that I'm willing to help. Then he asked how my Torah-reading is. I said "unskilled now but I want to change that", and told him that I've been trying to learn trope from a book. He's putting together a small group of people -- some adults, some post-b'nei-mitzvah teenagers -- who want to do this again, and he'll teach us and assign portions with a few months' notice. I said to definitely count me in. He's going to start this in January, he said.
We ran out of time (I thought I had a longer slot than I did), so I had to cram in the "oh by the way I've been leading services over at Tree occasionally; hope you don't mind" bit at the end, when I had hoped to not just spring it on him. He didn't seem to have a problem with this, which is good.
He asked what I've been learning lately and I told him about the online mishna class (from the Masorti folks in Israel) and the miscellaneous other stuff (parsha commentaries and the like), and that it's been pretty self-directed and haphazard. He asked what I want to learn and my broad answer is "most things"; I realized during the course of the conversation that what I *really* want is a study partner, and the specific topics of study are less important than the process of learning how to learn, so to speak. He knows that I've had a long-standing interest in liturgy, so we talked about that for a while.
I mentioned the study-partner thing, thinking that maybe he could suggest someone else in the congregation who I could team up with, and he said he'd be happy to study with me. Wow! This would be order of once or twice a month; I'm supposed to call his secretary, schedule something, and tell her what we're going to study. :-) (He lent me a book on liturgical history, so we'll start there.)
We also talked about my desire to be more involved in leading services. (I didn't quite have the guts to say "hey, how about getting rid of the paid soloists and letting some of us do that music instead?") He said I'm already on his short list for people to call with little notice when things come up and he appreciates that I'm willing to help. Then he asked how my Torah-reading is. I said "unskilled now but I want to change that", and told him that I've been trying to learn trope from a book. He's putting together a small group of people -- some adults, some post-b'nei-mitzvah teenagers -- who want to do this again, and he'll teach us and assign portions with a few months' notice. I said to definitely count me in. He's going to start this in January, he said.
We ran out of time (I thought I had a longer slot than I did), so I had to cram in the "oh by the way I've been leading services over at Tree occasionally; hope you don't mind" bit at the end, when I had hoped to not just spring it on him. He didn't seem to have a problem with this, which is good.
(no subject)
Date: 2001-11-02 05:30 am (UTC)I think it's awesome that you can just go in, talk about a study partner, and have a rabbi say "OK, I'll study with you" (I mean, in a perfect world, that would happen to anyone who tried it, but this is not a perfect world.)
I reiterate. You are so cool.
(no subject)
Date: 2001-11-02 06:30 am (UTC)My rabbi is very cool (and knowledgable). And I'm not just a random congregant, which helps; we've spent a lot of time together arguing theology and philosophy and stuff. (Heh. When I first showed up, I was pretty dubious about his movement (think denomination), and he still talked to me. :-) ) Breaking in was kind of tough because I'm so damn introverted (I really am a very poor conversationalist, especially in *starting* conversations), but once I was in things really took off. And he almost immediately deemed me an advanced student and started teaching me stuff that the other conversion candidates never really got into, AFAIK. When I "graduated" I knew I was going to miss that; I'm really glad I can get some of it back.
Our congregation has close to 850 families now. I don't know what that is in actual people, exactly, but three years ago my tickets for high holy days were number 1703 and we've grown since then, so it's got to be close to 2000 by now. If every one of us asked for an hour of his time per *year*, that alone would be a full-time job. So I didn't feel I could ask for this. But I'm absolutely thrilled that he offered!