Entries tagged with rabbinic career

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interviewed by figmo

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Friday and Shabbat (written Saturday night)

I mis-characterized this program before. (To be fair, so did one of the organizers.) I had said that last year was focused on information and this year was focused on practical skills. But that's not correct; we learned a lot about practical skills last year and we certainly had some classes this year that were not directly tied into skills we will use. No, a better characterization, I think, is that last year was about learning how and this year was about doing and being evaluated.

So, for example, when I saw two sessions about homiletics (think "preaching", but it's broader than that) on the schedule, I got excited. I thought these would be classes where we'd get a lot of practical instruction. I think the view of the program organizers is that we got that last year; what these sessions actually were were student presentations for critique. That's valuable (I certainly learned from mine), but I was also hoping for some more structured learning in this area. We barely scratched the surface of the topic last year and hadn't come together for any sort of "what have we learned about this in the last year in our own congregations?" discussion before we went off and did it. So there was a chunk missing.

The text studies were a little better in that regard, but here too I had different expectations based on the advance schedule. I saw daily text study and said "woo hoo! we're going to get down and dirty with our sources for a whole week with rabbis who can guide us!". I was practically salivating. This turned out to be the student-led sessions (after the first day). Now these were generally very good and it was certainly a valuable experience for all of us; I'm not dissing student-led study. But again, it violated my expectations. Here, unlike with homiletics, they did first give us one faculty-led text study (as a model) and a class about text study (specifically, learning styles), so they gave us more of the tools we needed before we went off and did it ourselves. I wanted that with homiletics too. Pretty much everything I know about homiletics comes from observing other people (most specifically my rabbi); I think I've figured out some things that way, but before doing it for critique it would have been valuable to formally look at some of those techniques.

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Thursday

Today was a mixed day. Most of the classes were quite good; one was not (and I want my hour and a half back). My group's text study is tomorrow morning and there has definitely been tension within the group as different styles and goals have clashed, but I hope things will be better tomorrow and that if there are any lingering issues we'll be able to talk about them.

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The feel of this year's program is somewhat different from last year. I don't know how much of that is me, how much is this particular group of people, and how much is the program itself. I was talking with a classmate tonight who's also feeling it.

I've sometimes described Level 1 as "open brain, insert knowledge, shake until blended". It was overwhelming but exhilerating. I didn't get much sleep but I rode that wave for a week and it was grand. Yes, of course there were problems, but the overall feeling was still "wow". This year is positive -- don't get me wrong! -- but the balance of content is different and I'm having more trouble catching that wave.

They gave us an hour and a half a day (well, less any transit time) to work on assignments; one of the problems last year was not having enough time to work on the services, so that was good. But they gave us a second group assignment and two individual assignments that occupied that work time and then some, so it feels like I'm learning less. Yes, if we punt on one or both of the individual assignments the world will not end, and they encouraged us to do so if we need to, but I'm here to learn as much as I can.

Yes, the work time is being spent learning practical skills (as side-effects of the assignments), but I think I'm learning them more slowly than if I were being guided by a teacher, so the density of learning is lower this year -- same amount of time, less overall learning. I don't know what they could reasonably do about that, mind. Maybe, just as the service groups have assigned advisors, the text-study groups should have had advisors too. That might have eliminated some of the disconnects in my group. Yes, we're all adults and we can ask for help when we need it, but having someone there who spots the landmine before we saunter up to it and say "ooh, what's this shiny thing?" might be helpful.

I should stress again that I've taken a lot of good classes this week. I do not at all regret coming; I just hoped for a slightly different experience than I'm getting.

Mind, some of it is certainly me. More specifically, this week has done a lot to convince me that I would never hack it in rabbinic school, at least at HUC, and while I wasn't planning to try to go to rabbinic school any time soon, it hurts to see that thought dashed. I wanted the decision against it to be my decision, dammit. This is, obviously, not an issue that the organizers of the program could or should address. My baggage, my problem. And I didn't realize it would even be a factor, so I didn't pack the right things in that baggage.

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Tuesday

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rabbinic career

rabbinic transitions

An observation from perhaps too little data (so further data welcome): if a rabbi leaves his congregation and is seeking other employment, then it seems that one of the following things is true: (1) his next job is not with a congregation; (2) he's helping to found a new congregation; (3) he's leaving town. It appears that trying to move to another established congregation in the same city is awkward in several ways and thus rarely done.

Just something for someone thinking about the rabbinate to keep in mind: congregational life implies nomadic life.

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short takes

Puppy shoots man who was trying to kill him. Good job, Fido! Talk about the underdog winning the day. (Pity he wasn't able to save three of his litter-mates.)

I found this pleasantly surprising: Orthodox Union writes in favor of embryotic stem-cell research (a while ago, but I didn't know before). With precautions, of course, but I find nothing to disagree with in their letter.

Note to anyone who thinks the previous two paragraphs indicate I undervalue human life: make sure you're ready to drink from the fire hose before pushing that button.

innerbitch_rss reports a rumored team-up between NetFlix and TiVo, so that you don't even have to get off the couch to go to the mailbox any more. That'd work. :-)

lefkowitzga gave me a copy a Craig Taubman CD with lots of new music for the (Friday-night) Shabbat service. I have now identified the "Hashkiveinu" that I first heard this summer at HUC and fell in love with. Boy is it an earworm, though! For a song that's supposed to be a bedtime prayer, it hangs on a little too firmly. :-) I recognized some of the other melodies too; I just had not heard attribution for them previously. It's a good collection. Thanks, Gail!

HUC now requires two years of college-level Hebrew (or reasonable facsimile) as a condition of admission (up from one a year ago). Really, I was just looking for the catalog of distance-learning courses (not found, by the way), and the section on the rabbinic program attacked me and made me look. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. (Just to be perfectly clear: Hebrew proficiency would be the least of my challenges...)