This week was my congregation's annual shabbaton. We take over a cabin in the "suburbs" of Zelienople and have a grand time. This year was the largest I've seen at 42 people, and all of them seemed to be engaged in it. It was great.

When nobody feels pressure (got to get upstairs to the bar mitzvah, got to beat the lunch guests home, whatever), we can relax and just take our time with services. I don't get that very often and I treasure it. We had kabbalat shabbat out on the porch in the fading sun (plus there were porch lights). Saturday morning after the service we had an energetic discussion of part of the parsha (Tazria [1]), interrupted only by our need to walk up to the main building for lunch (but it continued later in smaller pockets).

Speaking of which: ( Read more... )

Friday night we had a study session around the second chapter of Pirke Avot (teachings of the fathers, where a lot of the sayings we "all know" come from). We broke into pairs or trios to study for a while and then each group shared something it learned. We've used this study method before and I find it works well; it's harder to do in-depth study with 42 people all together, but by doing it this way I learned things both from my group and the larger group.

Saturday afternoon we tried something new. My rabbi asked a few of us to prepare chugim, short sessions to run concurrently, so people could learn what they want. I taught (well, lead a study of) a section of talmud -- how various rabbis concluded their individual prayer at the end of the t'filah. (B'rachot 16b-17a, for anyone following along at home.) I approached this from the prayer context, not the talmud context -- we have this fixed text that we say every service and then we're supposed to say our own prayer, but maybe not everybody is comfortable doing that. The idea was to present a range of things that are recorded in our tradition; maybe people would get some new ideas.

I had not realized, and did not think to ask at the beginning, that no one there other than me had actually studied any talmud before -- maybe they'd seen material that came from the talmud, but they'd never looked at a page of talmud before. I, not knowing this, gave only the scantest of introductions to talmud itself (here's what the full page looks like, here's where we are, here's an interlinear translation to follow 'cause nobody here including me is going to read the Aramaic straight from the page). When I learned at the end that this was new to everybody, part of me wondered if I should have given more of an intro -- but I think not, on reflection. I helped a group of people just dive in to something that many consider intimidating; I think that probably left them all feeling better, and more confident, than a "talmud 101 using this text as an example" class would have been. I am becoming a big fan of the "just do it" school of teaching.

( footnote )

The morning minyan has a particular person who always leads Hallel when it's included in the service (certain holiday seasons plus Rosh Chodesh, the first day(s) of every month). I lead the service on Thursdays, but if it's a Hallel day I turn it over to him at that point. A couple months ago he said "you need to start doing this"; I replied that I didn't want to usurp his role; he replied that I would do it next time. (Ok.) "Next time" is this Thursday, Rosh Chodesh Nissan. So I just ran through it; I'm comfortable with most of it, am unsure what melody to use in one place, and just plain don't know the melody he uses in one short place, but the world won't end if I just read that (and maybe I can get a quickie refresher before the service starts). Now, to see how this plan survives contact with the minyan. :-)

Err, yes, that does mean that Pesach is just over two weeks away. I'm looking forward to a seder with friends and singing. I should decide soon if I'm going to try to do something for the second night. (I don't hold it to be necessary, but it would be a learning opportunity. Hmm.)

Last week I co-led a workshop at my synagogue on a topic in prayer (the sh'ma and its blessings). Turnout was small and I felt kind of off the whole time, even though we prepared and I practiced. (The other person is a professional educator; I have no idea if she practiced, but if she didn't it didn't show.) I've received positive feedback from people who were there, but I still have the sense that I don't really know how to facilitate a discussion or teach an intimate class, though I'm a fine participant in either. (I don't know that I know how to present a lecture either, but I think I'd be on firmer ground -- but that's not what was called for here.) I'm not sure what to do about this -- the obvious answers being to teach more or teach less. (I'm leaning toward the latter but feeling like a bit of a coward for that leaning.)

Learning talmud with my rabbi and midrash with another of our rabbis continues to be quite nifty and engaging. For all that I can be nervous in a classroom (particularly if someone with superior knowledge is present), I really enjoy and hold my own in one-on-one study with people whose knowledge is vastly superior to mine. I wonder why that works like that. Sure, a lot of the comfort in one case comes from having studied with my rabbi (in various capacities) for more than ten years (!), but the other one is much newer so it's not just that. (I also wonder at what point I have the obligation to be the person with superior knowledge for someone else in a one-on-one setting.)

Wednesday night I taught a last-minute class on liturgy at my synagogue. (A different person had been scheduled to teach a different topic but got sick; in exchange for pulling a class out of nowhere in one evening I got to pick the topic. :-) ) I've been thinking of trying to arrange something like this in the spring, perhaps one evening per major chunk of the service (amidah, kriat sh'ma, etc). The way I envision the class, we'd do some text study with lots of commentaries rather than this being a lecture. In the I-don't-have-time-to-prepare-materials version, this was a short lecture on the structure of the overall service followed by a somewhat-rambling discussion.

After my opening comments I had proposed breaking up into a few smaller groups so people could focus on the parts they were most interested in; most people didn't have specific interests so we stayed together. (There were ten of us, so that's feasible in a way that wouldn't have been had the class been well-advertised and popular.) One attendee wanted to discuss the r'tzei (one prayer in the amidah), so we started there. I asked someone to read it, asked the group to name themes in just that one paragraph (there are several), and then we talked about each of those in turn, going down a few side paths along the way. Then I suggested that -- since ours is a congregation where weekday prayer is largely unfamiliar -- we step through the weekday intermediate blessings, where we ask for things like wisdom, foregiveness, rain for our crops, and so on. I think this opened some eyes; these are broad communal petitions, not individual ones. One student requested a follow-on class on the Sh'ma and its blessings and some others suggested that they would be interested in that too.

I thought the class went ok; I am not a particularly proficient teacher and I think that showed, but the students also knew that this was a last-minute offering and were being forgiving. Three people told me later that they had really enjoyed it, which I hadn't been able to read in all of their faces during the class, so I guess that's a good sign. One of the three, who is an experienced teacher and the person who requested the session on the Sh'ma, asked about working together on it, which I will certainly take her up on.

I had brought, but did not use in class, the few volumes I own of My People's Prayer Book by Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman. These are excellent; they go through the liturgy in detail, with a range of commentaries, presented well. I plan to use these in future classes on this topic. (I also plan, someday, to buy the volumes I don't yet have.)

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.

( Read more... )

This Shabbat was very good in a number of ways.

( Friday, featuring halacha of organ donation )

Saturday the 20s/30s group held an afternoon gathering -- a combination of study, socializing, getting to know each other, prayer, and singing. It was really nifty. (I was joking with the organizer Friday night about how I'm participating as much as I can with that group now, because in September I become inelligible. We joked about "happy 40th birthday -- now scram". :-) )

( prayer, golden calves, and various discussions )

Thursday night at the board meeting the organizer asked me if I could lead havdalah, as both rabbis would have to leave before then. (It went something like this: "Do you know the havdalah service?" "Sure, I do it every week." "Great, could you do it for us this week?") Friday night she asked me if I could also lead bentching, the grace after meals (the afternoon included the customary third meal of Shabbat). Both of these went well (got compliments, even), and I learned that in the case of music, sometimes chutzpah can substitute for knowledge. Specifically, I had forgotten the melody to part of the bentching, so I just made something up on the fly and people sang along. I know they hadn't heard the melody before, because I hadn't heard the melody before either. :-)

Some of the people there weren't familiar with havdalah, so I ended up giving a little talk about the symbolism before we did it. So ok, I can stand up in front of a small group of sympathetic friends and lecture, but I'm still very uncomfortable teaching classes more formally. Weird.

The afternoon shared many elements with our morning minyan's annual Shabbaton (retreat for all of Shabbat, not just the afternoon). That's coming up again in May, and I'm really looking forward to it.

I realized this morning that this spring I'm chanting Torah twice, and neither is at my synagogue. I have to pester my rabbi again about getting a shot at that. (I'm chanting a little for that women's service I mentioned a few days ago, and I just got permission to chant my "birthday" portion on a Thursday at Tree of Life again this year. Last year I did the first two aliyot; my goal for this year is to be able to do all three. For this portion, the third is a little longer than the first two put together.)