Adventures in Motherhood

location: Home

mood: embarrassed

At least once a month, I co-lead (read: lead music) Friday night services at a local area synagogue.  I love working with the rabbi of the congregation, and the congregants are very warm and laid back.  In general, I enjoy co-leading services, especially at this particular congregation.

As long as I can remember though, I have felt an inadequacy in a key skill for a clergyperson-in-training.  Small talk.  Oh, I work at it.  I am polite and politic.  I try to say the appropriate response when someone talks to me.  And yet, I feel that I fail at small talk every time.

Last Friday was a special Shabbat service - Shabbat Shirah.  It commemorates the Song of the Sea (see Exod. 15) when the Israelites leave Egypt and cross the Sea of Reeds.  Many congregations, including the one I am writing about, use this Shabbat as an opportunity to introduce new music or at least increase the amount of music in a service.  With the primary cantorial soloist, I sang a bunch of new music, including performing a "sermon of song" (read: rabbi did not give a sermon).  And of course, after the service, congregants approached me and the other soloist to express their appreciation of the service.

Congregant: Such a lovely service!
Me: Thanks.  I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Congregant: Do you study music?
Me: Not exactly.  I'm in cantorial school.
Congregant: Oh.  What is that?
Me: (give standard description of cantorial school and location of my school)
Congregant: That sounds intense.
Me: Sometimes it is.
Congregant: Oh.  Do you enjoy it?
Me (thinking but not saying- not really, but this person expects me to enjoy it.  really, I want to be done with school and get a job being a cantor.  School is too theoretical and idealistic, not practical, emotionally draining...etc. before finally responding): Sometimes.
Congregant (looks confused): Oh.  Well, it was a lovely service.
Me: Thanks (thinking: we've come full circle, yes?).
Congregant: Um, excuse me as I ... (voice trails away)

Later in the evening, an older gentleman approached me -
Gentleman: I was just speaking to your husband and discovered I know both your father-in-law and your uncle-in-law.
Me: Really?  It's a small world.
Gentleman: Yes, especially in Jewish circles.
Me: So, you know Elliot then?
Gentleman: Yes of course. (looks very proud)
Me: Funny, so do I. (I grin, thinking that I might get a chuckle from his approaching wife.  No such luck.)
Gentleman: So your husband tells me you're in cantorial school.
Me: Yes, I am.  (I try not to sigh)
Wife: Hello, my name is ABCD (anonymity is good)
Me: Nice to meet you.
Wife: You have a lovely voice.
Me: Thank you.
Wife: Did I hear you are in cantorial school?
Me: Yes.
Conversation about where cantorial school is and such ensues.  My awkwardness is obvious again, leading to the inevitable.
Gentleman: Well, have a good evening.  It was a lovely service. (wife nods enthusiastically).

At this point in the post-service socializing, I see that the other cantorial soloist is laughing and schmoozing with several people, who also are smiling and chatting energetically.  I look for my husband, who is showing off BW and talking with various maternal types.  I head for this safe place, figuring I can make conversation about kids and such.  My presence is barely acknowledged, though BW is very happy to see me.

I know there are seminars and probably other forms of therapy to help me with this small talk thing.  It's funny, not in a laughing "ha ha" sort of way, but I feel like I'm well-informed of current events and other topics which might make for good small talk.  I try to be light and have a good sense of humor, or at least show that someone else has a sense of humor.  I even manage to ask people what they do for a living and try to understand.  Yet, my attempts at small talk always end awkwardly, leaving me feeling as though I may have said something wrong or missed saying something important.  I'm not sure how the other person feels, but the person usually looks uncomfortable.

For me, small talk hardly feels small at all.

location: Home

mood: pensive

Today (Jan. 14) was the last day of the fall semester of Prozdor.  Prozdor is a Hebrew high school program (7th-11th grades), and this is my first year teaching for them.  This term I taught 2 sections of modern ethics and a section of 8th grade bible core.  I had the pleasure of meeting 43 middle and high school students and learning from them at least as much as I tried to teach them.  I will miss my fall semester students although I am looking forward to the new semester (2 new courses, many new students, a second chance at bible core).  What did I learn?

I learned I have the potential to be a good teacher.  Given the right combination of content, students, and environment, I know I can engage students in the learning process.  I was reminded that I also have the potential to be a bad teacher, or at least that I can turn students off from a given topic.  My instincts about what matters to middle and high school students were validated to some degree.  Yet, I learned that I still need to learn more about balancing my role as an authority and my role as a "friend/confidante."  I can't always be the older sibling, especially as I get older.  I learned that, regardless of other pressing interests (sports, dance, music, etc.), students do care about their heritage and religious traditions, though they may not want to study those topics in a traditional way.  I learned that students want to be engaged and excited about learning, even when they act like they don't want to be.  Perhaps those students appearing most cynical or most resistant to learning are those who want to be engaged most again?

In my ethics courses, I facilitated discussions and moderated debates on a wide variety of topics.  We discussed and/or debated rebuking, tattoos, war ethics, death penalty, end of life issues, and genetic screening.  I'd like to think that I helped students form or solidify their opinions on these topics.  It's more important to me that I encouraged them to think, to organize their thoughts, and to learn how to present different points of view.  I hope I succeeded in encouraging them to think.

Teaching a section of 8th grade bible core was challenging due to my expectations of the curriculum.  I suspect my students had similar expectations.  I had hoped for a survey of cool stories, maybe ones not typically covered in the pre-bar/bat mitzvah studies.  Maybe my students expected something similar.  Instead, bible core is intended to introduce students to different ways of reading biblical texts beyond the 'simple' stories.  It is intended to introduce students to the ideas of recurrent themes and social commentary found in the text as well as to the tradition of biblical commentary (i.e., rabbinic commentaries on biblical text).  I started the term with the commentary unit and found that it flopped for my students.  They weren't familiar with the texts being used, the context, and the idea of biblical commentary as a whole.  They weren't receptive to learning this information either.  By the time we had plodded through this unit, it didn't matter that biblical parables and the drama found in many stories captured their attention.  I fear that I may have turned more kids away from bible than onto to bible.  I have ideas for next term (reordering curriculum, different spin on some of the material, etc.), but I have to meet with some of the program administration first and don't know whether my ideas are in line with theirs.  *sigh*

In the next week, I have to submit grades for all of my students.  I never have had to grade students in a Jewish setting before, so this should be another learning experience for me.  Besides submitting grades, I also have to prepare my first few weeks of lesson plans for the spring term.  The preparation involves expanding the curricula I recently submitted to the administrative powers, so it shouldn't be too tough but I will do better to set low expectations and think that it will be very difficult.

Beyond the short-term preparations for this coming Sunday, I have started to think about my courses for the next academic year.  Of course, I am assuming that I will be rehired next year, and that alone may be presumptuous.  Nevertheless, here are some ideas I have since I'm not permitted to repeat my ethics and current events courses next year (all need jazzier titles):

1. Life cycle events - Take a look at rituals related to birth, death, coming of age, weddings, and anything else which would require a change of insurance. ;)

2. Naughty stories of the Bible - I want to teach the sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll of the Bible.  Stories of spying, political intrigue, infidelity, violence, and so on.  Stories that would make good movies (hmm... maybe that's why Steinbeck wrote East of Eden.)

3. Famous biblical quotes - this was an idea from my friend Josh, who should teach the course since it was his idea and probably is better qualified (rabbinical student - spends more time with text).  Anyway, the idea is to teach 2 quotes for each class session.  Look at the quote in English and Hebrew.  Look at the context (i.e., when and why is it said).  Does this context match how it is used today?

4. Who is a Jew anyway/Jewhoo - I'm not entirely comfortable dealing with this topic, but again my teaching mentor Josh thinks I'm somehow inherently qualified to teach it.  He thinks I can and should talk about conversion and what makes someone Jewish.  Not sure that I could do this course in a professional way, let alone feel good about it.  Maybe it's just too personal.

5. Jews around the world/You don't need to be from Eastern Europe to be a Jew/Non-Ashkenazi Judaism - I'd like to plant a seed in the next generation that not all Jewish communities are likely the predominant American-Jewish community or the Israeli-Jewish community.  Unfortunately, I don't have any expertise on this subject and would need to spend a fair amount of time researching it.  Not sure that I have time or energy to do that.

6. Cantillation in some shape or form - I don't think teaching chant is of interest to students, but maybe teaching the idea of trop as interpretation (i.e., make my thesis more interesting) would be.

Somehow I'm not as interested in teaching what I'm currently studying (cantorial whatnot - Jewish music, actual nusach/davenning, famous cantors, etc.).  Not sure if that's a bad sign, but I'm going to avoid thinking about that for the time being.

If you have any thoughts on my potential courses (numbered 1-6 above), please send me comments or e-mail.  In the meantime, I'm going to let the fact that I have nearly 65 new students coming to me next Sunday.