cellio | Entries tagged with shliach k'hilah

LJ tags are spiffy but not as fully-featured as I'd like, and I probably haven't figured out the best way to use them yet. So this entry is something of a cross-reference; if you got here via one of the tags on this entry you might also be interested in some of the others. I'll try to update this entry over time, and eventually will create similar entries for other tag families.

Judaism: education is a catch-all bucket. Sometimes things start here and then spin off into their own tags.

Sh'liach K'hilah (LJ swallows the first apostrophe for some reason) is (was) the Reform movement's para-rabbinic program. I attended in 2004 and 2005.

Open Beit Midrash (obm) at Hebrew College. I attended in 2007. I also have a more-general Hebrew College tag that includes entries about a program called Ta Sh'ma that I attended in 2006. One of these days I might give those their own tag.

Melton = Florence Melton Program, an international two-year program of which I completed the first year in 2006-2007. (My class session got cancelled the following year. Someday I will probably return, if the scheduling works.)

Study with my rabbi is for entries related to my one-on-one study. Midrash overlaps that, covering my midrash study in particular.

NHC is a tag for the chavurah program I attended in August 2008.

Kallah is a tag for the ALEPH kallah that I'm attending in 2009.

Shalom Hartman is a tag for the Shalom Hartman Institute, a program I considered in 2008 and 2009. I'll get there some year, I expect...

I led services Friday night at my synagogue. (In this congregation, for a lay person, this is a big deal.) It went really well!

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Last summer (2005, I mean) I completed the Reform movement's para-rabbinic program, called Sh'liach K'hilah. The main part of the program is two summer sessions (not in the same year). At the end of last year's session, a bunch of us asked for a third year of the program because we felt there was still a lot to learn that would work well in that format. The organizer said something to the effect of "every clss asks for that; we're not going to run it".

I went home and said "I can do that (with help)", and sent off mail to the organizer a week later. She said "please wait until after the [fall] holidays", which I did, and then she left HUC, pretty much putting an end to that at the time. Further, the program was not held in 2006 (and the first year was not offered in 2005), so they could rethink the program. It's coming back in revised form next summer, though not in Cincinnati.

There is a mailing list for all participants in the program (in any year). In the last week or so, the list has gotten several posts saying "what about a third year?" and "hey, I'd go!". So last night I posted to the list:

( my email )

This morning I already had half a dozen messages saying variants on "you go, girl", and even a couple offers of unspecified help. It seems quite likely that there's sufficient interest. (I wouldn't want to go over about 20 people, but a key question is whether that's enough for financial viability. It was for the SK classes, but was that subsidized?)

I strongly suspect that the organizers lurk on the mailing list. If so, I think having them see this discussion before we go to them formally will help; it'll show that we aren't just whining and asking them to do something for us, but that we're ready to do the parts that we can ourselves.

I don't know if this will actually go anywhere; I think having access to the HUC campus in Cincinnati is key. But who knows -- I might be running a follow-on program next summer.

The folks in charge of the Sh'liach K'hilah (para-rabbinic) program sent around a questionnaire to graduates. They're considering unspecified changes to the program, which is currently in abeyance (sigh). I'm going to share my answers to the non-demographic questions, which have to do with what we found rewarding and under-represented and how we're using what we learned.

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I recently attended a study session about which I want to record some "meta" (structural) notes before I forget. In a lot of ways it reminded me of what our group attempted, but didn't do nearly as well, in the Sh'liach K'hilah program last summer.

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The Sh'liach K'hilah program (that's the para-rabbinic program I've mentioned) has winter weekend sessions in between the summer ones. They're on specialized topics and once you're in the program you can attend any of them. (You're not limited to the ones during your years.) Last year the winter session was in LA and I reluctantly decided I couldn't go. This year's was scheduled for Cincinnati and I was looking forward to it.

Unfortunately, we just got the news that we didn't meet minimum enrollment, so it won't be held. Dang!

We also got the news recently that the person who's been running the program is taking another position (in another city). Our loss is someone else's gain, but it's disappointing because she's done such a good job with the program. I hope her replacement is half as good.

I fear that this may doom my aspirations for the "unofficial third year" that I began to talk with her about after this summer's session. (We started to talk before the holidays but she was too busy then.) I just wrote to her about this (asking if her successor is known yet); we'll see what happens. I was really hoping we'd be able to get people together for another week-long session, this time centered more around text study, at HUC where they have the library to support that.

Ok, I've just sent my "could someone, like me for instance, run SK 3 at HUC next summer?" query to the program organizer. Now we wait. (It's something like autocratting an event or running a con, right? I think I've got a few clues there.)

My proposal -- for which there seemed to be real momentum that I didn't create myself -- is for a week focusing more on text study. We've learned a lot of good practical skills in the last two years; now let's get a bit deeper into sources. I envision a mix of class types: (1) rabbi-led text study, (2) student-led text study for which assignments would be made in advance (signing up for the program means you commit to taach for an hour, or 45 minutes, or whatever), and (3) rabbi-led courses on related practical skills such as Hebrew, navigating the various types of sources, library skills, understanding talmudic reasoning, teaching, etc. Oh, and (4) lighter stuff to break all of this up (like that luach game did this year).

I met with my rabbi today and we talked about the Sh'liach K'hilah program. We talked a lot about writing eulogies because I mentioned it early (new content from last year) and because I said I didn't think I did a very good job with mine. He gave me a lot of good advice there, some of it much more general than eulogies.

We talked a little about delivery, especially when working with a set text (not notes). It's fine -- even not uncommon -- to go ahead and write in stage directions to address your weaknesses -- "slow down", "breathe", "look up", etc. Color highlighting can mark phrases that ought to be emmphasized or places where you specifically want to pause. No one else will see your copy; do whatever works.

I mentioned the challenge of the text-study assignment (I characterized it as "working with people you don't know at all, with different backgrounds, to produce something quickly"), but we didn't really get into it. Another time, maybe. Or maybe I've learned all I can from that experience already.

We talked about next steps within the congregation. He's still a little unsure of how to handle Friday-night services; he said he'd be happy to have me read torah, so maybe I'll start with that. We talked about kabbalat shabbat with no resolution; I said that there's only one Shabbat in the next several months I'll be away and he has but to name a date. We got interrupted while we were talking about this and didn't get to finish, so I'll follow up.

I did not get a chance to ask about further study (much); I haven't asked his opinion about Melton, Drisha, Hebrew College, and others. I'd like to hear his thoughts on those. Next meeting, then.

I did ask (on the way out the door) about Hebrew. He mentioned a publisher called EKS as a good source. I mentioned courses at Pitt; he thinks they start with modern and then go to biblical and you can't just jump into biblical there. But, he said, you really have to learn the two together anyway; you can't do just biblical and be effective. So he thinks a two-pronged approach would work: learn modern at JEI and biblical with him, replacing our talmud study with Hebrew study. The next round of courses at JEI should start in September, so I'll see what they have to offer. The course I took there several years ago didn't work for me, but it's been several years and maybe that style of teaching will work better now.

Edit: Ok, I thought EKS sounded vaguely familiar. I actually have one of their books. A friend and I started to work through it a while back. Time to pull it out again.

Last week during the Sh'liach K'hilah program I gave a d'var torah. I spoke from notes rather than fully writing it out in advance. Now I'm writing down very approximately what I said from those notes.

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Sunday morning we had a low-key service and then a wrap-up session where we talked about taking what we'd done there back to our congregations. It was a mellow day. Then we turned in our evaluation forms and keys, said our goodbyes, and left.

The drive home took me five hours, with three quick stops. (I've discovered that my steering wheel vibrates just a little; I found I needed to rest my hands. I wonder what that means.) Sunday drivers seem to be more annoying than Friday drivers, but whatever. I was glad to have music and AC in the car. :-)

At the final session one of the other students asked the group how many would be interested in a program next year focused on text study. About a dozen hands went up, which I find gratifying. I feared that there were only four or five of us, which wouldn't be critical mass. (It would be if we were all in the same city or at least region, but not spread out over the country like we are.) And there'd be no reason not to open it up to previous classes too, up to whatever size limit makes sense, so we could do this. A couple people volunteered to host it, but I still want to see if we can do it at HUC. For one thing, it's a compromise for everyone. But more importantly, how can you do serious text study without the resources of a good library? Their library is very good.

So I plan to ask Rachel (the main organizer) if "we're not doing it" means "we aren't doing the work" or "not here". If they'd let us use the site, I think others of us can arrange for there to be a program of study for the people who come. Heck, I could organize something like this, assuming they're willing to put us in touch with student rabbis and maybe even some faculty. Obviously we'd have to talk a lot about money, but since the actual organization would be by volunteers (mostly) and the faculty shouldn't be more expensive than this year (we'd probably use more students and fewer faculty), it ought to be possible to do it for no more than what we paid this yaer -- unless HUC subsidized the program. Ok, that's another thing to ask about.

I'm also going to look into Melton and Drisha and Hebrew College and other ideas, and I'll see what my rabbi thinks would make sense (since he knows me well). Everything's wide open at this point.

I need to work on Hebrew if I'm going to go much farther, I think. I haven't been able to coax much useful information out of University of Pittsburgh's web site. They offer Hebrew courses (that much I can tell); I can't tell whether Biblical Hebrew is an entry point or if they have you take modern first. And they don't have a fall schedule up, nor fees. I'll have to check back later.

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.

( classes and stuff )

( next steps )

This is unlikely to be interesting to anyone else unless you happen to have a recent draft of Mishkan T'filah lying around, but probably not even then. This is for my records, as someday I do hope to own this siddur and maybe the page numbers will even still be relevant. :-) And I think my rabbi may be interested.

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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.

I left the dorm at 7:45AM and returned at 11:30PM. Urg. A good "urg", but "urg" nonetheless.

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I got a low-battery warning partway through composing this in a classroom, so I'm going to fire this off now and write more from the comfort of an electrical outlet (sans net connection). Heh -- I thought a laptop would be good for more than an hour or so. I guess tomorrow I'll carry the power cord.

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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. :-)

( more about today )

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!

My Google-fu is weak tonight, it seems.

Given that there won't be anyone around HUC for the Shabbat before the Sh'liach K'hilah session, I'm considering staying in a hotel Friday and Saturday nights. I figure that'll be more comfortable and I should be able to get internet access Saturday night. I have a target synagogue I want to be near.

My local contact (thanks!) has given me the names of some nearby hotels that largely lack web sites. I could, of course, pick up the phone and ask questions, but that's so 20th-century.

The goals: proximity; internet access in the room; non-skanky; inexpensive; either a fridge or free breakfast so I can eat Saturday.

Google Maps will let me search for hotels near a target and even gave me a different list when I added "internet" to the query, but I haven't figured out how to represent "inexpensive" in such a way that it produces results, and I didn't even try to encode the rest. Plain old Google isn't helping me much either.

How would you construct that sort of query?

I just got email from someone I've been corresponding with about the Sh'liach K'hilah program. She applied for this year and was accepted, but now they say they did not get enough students to hold the program. Ack! Last year there were 29 of us (too many IMO) and this year they didn't get enough? Ebb and flow, I guess, but still... I wonder how many "enough" is. I hope it's just a fluke and not a sign that they've exhausted the pool of interested people.

So much for my plans to hang out with the level-1 students during the overlapping Shabbat; I guess I'll have to make other plans now, as there likely won't be anyone at HUC to hold services that week. (That was the case last year; I arrived early and was one of very few people on campus. Since level 2 immediately follows level 1 (but you can't do both in one year), I was looking forward to not having that happen again.)

(Err, just to clarify: level 2 is not affected; we're still on for this year.)

Apropos of nothing: The Turnpike Prank (link from chaiya). Very funny!

This made me giggle: "You might think of a prophet as the kind of person you would not want as your next-door neighbor... always checking your trash for recyclables, reminding you when you're mowing the lawn that Leviticus commands you not to cut all the way to the corner of your field, kvetching about your driving on Shabbat, etc. " - Rabbi David Komerofsky in a course I'm taking on the prophets.

(Aside #1: consistent with that logic test that's going around, you don't get to reverse it and argue that because you dig through my trash you're a prophet. And if you do dig through my trash, please clean up the mess. It's bad enough when the raccoons or whatever get into it...)

(Aside #2: Actually, I don't think leaving the corners of your fields would apply to lawn-mowing; it's about harvesting. But I'll grant him the rhetorical device. :-) )

The course is part of the sh'liach k'hilah program, and is internet-based. They offered two courses this spring, one on five of the prophets and another on Zionism. I'm really astonishingly weak on the prophets (and I suspect I'm not alone among Reform Jews), and it's hard for me to muster much enthusiasm for the other course, so this seemed clear. We'll be focusing on Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, and Micah, a good group for social-justice lessons. This week's mailing was largely introductory, but there should be more to discuss next week.

Apropos of nothing: tangerinpenguin, I was surprised to see your boss in my office today.

Overheard Thursday morning after services, from someone who comes very occasionally: "Wow, who's the new cantor?" I'll take that as a compliment. :-)

Back when I was first discussing the Sh'liach K'hilah program with friends, someone wondered if the Conservative movement has anything similar. Someone on a mailing list today mentioned the IMUN program, which seems related. Based on the sample syllabus they give, IMUN is much more focused on liturgy and related skills, while the Sh'liach K'hilah program is more focused on the full spectrum of tasks that might fall to a rabbinic assistant.

HUC is offering two short internet courses to folks in the Sh'liach K'hilah program. I signed up for the one on the prophets, partly because the rabbi is an excellent teacher and partly because this is one of the truck-sized gaps in my knowledge. :-) (I gave the one on Zionism a pass.)

( course description )

By the way, in the end I decided against going to the weekend session in LA in February. Some other time, perhaps. (I'm kind of hoping the next one is in New York or Cincinnati.)

I'm rethinking the trip to LA. The Sh'liach K'hilah program is important to me, but the cost of this particular session is winding up higher than I expected (perhaps higher than the summer session), which is leading me to do the cost-benefit analysis.

The cost of the session is $500, which includes the hotel for Friday and Saturday nights. (We just got this figure.) I would have to fly there (add transport to/from airports), and because it's in LA I'd need to fly out Thursday evening (so there's another night of accommodations). My choices on Sunday are to miss a bit of the final session or take a red-eye back, and the red-eye has a layover (not a direct flight). I'd consider it without the layover, especially as that would give me Sunday afternoon to potential spend with friends in LA. (I've got some of those.)

I spent $1000 (plus 1.5 tanks of gas :-) ) for the week-long session in Cincinnati, and that had tons of classes crammed into it. For a comparable amount, at the winter session I'd be getting 8.5 class hours and Shabbat. I'm sure it would be rewarding (Cincinnati was fantastic), but I'm not sure it's $120/hour of rewarding.

( schedule )

I'm still thinking about it. Not going won't endanger my standing in the program; it'll just be a disappointment. On the other hand, the education per dollar is looking a bit off. If it were in Cincinnati and thus half the price, I'd definitely go.

I think I'll look harder for a direct red-eye and investigate the time-with-friends-Sunday-afternoon option.

Monica

tag crossroads: jewish education

Friday night's service

Sh'liach K'hilah continuation?

Sh'liach K'hilah program (survey)

meta: conducting torah study (etc)

Sh'liach K'hilah news

Sh'liach K'hilah year 3?

meeting with my rabbi

Sh'lach L'cha: the wood-gatherer

post-HUC thoughts

Friday and Shabbat (written Saturday night)

our service (Wednesday shacharit)

Thursday

Wednesday

Tuesday

Monday part 2

Monday (part 1)

Sunday

sh'liach k'hilah: partial course list

poor Google-fu

feast and famine

prophets

two quickies (Jewish stuff)

[Sh'liach K'hilah] internet course

trip to LA [Sh'liach K'hilah]

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