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 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.

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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 )

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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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• 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)

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!