Back Up On The Horse

This weekend my rabbi and our rabbinic intern are taking the middle school students up to Detroit for a retreat, which means we will be rabbi-less for Friday and Saturday services. Friday night a rabbinic student will be handling things, but Saturday morning I get to lead Torah study and services, which I haven’t done since the summer. I also haven’t read Torah since July, so between using a prayerbook that I’ve never lead from (Mishkan T’filah) and being a bit rusty with my Torah skills, it should be an interesting morning. I met briefly with my rabbi last night to roll the Torah to its spot and to chat briefly about Saturday. He said that if I want to do a Gates of Gray service that would be perfectly okay. Which is tempting, mostly because it is a prayerbook I know like the back of my hand and service prep would be minimal. But, we’ve been using MT for a few months now and I have really begun to appreciate the different choices and different translations/interpretations (see my last post for a specific example). I don’t really want to step back into Gates of Gray just for ease of use. So, I have a lot of work to do to get ready for Saturday morning. Here is my list:

• Practice Torah reading! I’ve been working with the voweled side of my Tikkun; tonight I need to take stab at no vowels.
• Read the Torah portion and go through the commentaries I have at home (Etz Hayim and Rashi) and check for some online/modern commentaries. I wish I had thought to bring home the Rabbi’s Sforno or Ramban last night. Oh, well. I can borrow them on Friday night after services.
• Take a tour through MT with a stack of Post-Its to lay out the service. Maybe practice a few melodies (I am not a fan of leading any of the singing, but I’ll do it; I’m okay with the chanting of the blessings, the Barechu, and the chatzi kaddish; I’ll probably choose some of the shorter versions).
• Prepare a sheet for Saturday morning of items to discuss. I’m not sure if I am going to prepare any kind of a hand-out. What I will most likely do is have everyone take a different Torah commentary and just get through what we get through. I’m a fan of the multiple-commentary-route because I think it helps people feel more participatory. I’m less a fan of “this is what I found interesting and I am now going to teach you for the next hour and we’re not going to really deviate from that.” Sometimes that is okay, but I think it takes a lot away from Torah study if you aren’t encouraging others to direct the course of the discussion.

It’s a pretty big list for 3 nights; I wish I had gotten started a little earlier, but no use fretting over that now. I need to be a busy little bee and resist the temptations of my Battlestar Galactica DVDs...

On another note, Hebrew class went pretty well last night. I'd been quite frustrated after the last couple of classes, feeling like a fairly ineffectual teacher. The differences in behavior and learning styles of the class I had last year and the class I have this year are enormous and I need to keep re-inventing how I approach these lessons. Last week was a necessarily dry class to go over the special rules and exceptions to what they had been learning so that on Sunday we could begin in our new book which introduces actual prayers. I realized this going in, but I didn't want to spend more than one class period on the rules, so it WAS a lot to get through. But last night one of the parents came up to me afterwards and told me that their child thought that "Hebrew would be boring tonight." Now, I can understand wanting to bring this to my attention if it is a concern. What really got me is that they said it within earshot of a number of other parents, students, and other temple members who had been there for adult Hebrew. I was a little annoyed about that, but whatever. I think last night's class was fun; we moved forward in the lesson, we played a game, and we reinforced some reading and listening skills.