Friday and Shabbat (written Saturday night)
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.
Text study
My group's text-study session was Friday morning. The assignment was for a group of three people to prepare a lesson on, well, pretty much anything. The schedule said "text study" but they explained that it could be much broader; the point was to learn about planning and presenting material moreso than the material itself. (Though we'd be critiqued on both, so we couldn't just spew nonsense. Not that I would.)
My group had some tension all week; we were not connecting on most levels and communication wasn't as good as it could have been even though we all had the best of intentions. (On one foot: I'm an academic and someone else teaches children back home.) Add to that the general stress of this program and, well, people get frustrated. But the presentation went well -- much better than I would have predicted -- and we talked later in the day (at my prodding) to do a post-mortem on our processes and talk about the things that had gone wrong. I think that was really productive, and everyone's fine now. I may write more about this later using the techniques Rabbi Joseph taught for self-evaluation.
Services
One unfortunate consequence of the text-study scheduling is that we had to leave breakfast early to set up the room and thus missed most of the service evaluations. (Each morning we do a group discussion of the previous two student-run services, that morning and the previous night.) I actually had specific things I wanted to talk about from one of them, and I didn't get the chance. Dang.
One of those things has to do with mourners' kaddish. In a few services here I've seen the leaders ask people to name people they're in sh'loshim for or observing a yahrzeit for, usually in that order. (Sh'loshim is the first 30 days of mourning. Yahrzeit is an anniversary.) I've seen this elsewhere too; this formula must have gotten printed in somebody's "how-to handbook for leading services" or some such. The problem is that it leaves the guy who's in month six of mourning a parent out in the cold, and he either has to identify as something he's not or stay silent. (We mourn parents for a year, not 30 days -- well, more properly, mourn for eleven months.) In my (limited, granted) experience, those people really care about being included. Yahrzeits are often distant in time, but mourning is current or at least recent. The last thing we should be doing is making those people anxious, especially when such a simple solution exists. The phrase I've learned in my congregation is "if you are in mourning or observing a yahrzeit...". There's no reason to be more specific about mourning unless you plan to separately identify all three groups.
Shabbat morning we had a "bat mitzvah" for one of our students. Last year she told us that as a woman (of a slightly older generation) who grew up in an Orthodox home, she had not had the chance to really do anything religious until much later in life. Somewhere in there she mentioned that she had of course not had a bat mitzvah and she'd never done any of the "adult bat mitzvah" programs, and everyone thought she should do it this year. Since we knew the parsha months in advance, she was able to work with a cantor back home to learn to chant the torah and haftarah passages. She and her husband are both in the program, and he also participated in the service. It was lovely to see the community get behind this. And yes, we threw candy and someone got her a fountain pen. :-)
Friday
Friday had just two classes, one on the liturgy for high holy days (very good class; Dr. Sarason is a good speaker, which certainly helps) and the chugim. Friday was the last day for the Hebrew chug. It was a good class, and I'm really impressed by how the student rabbi was able to assemble a class to meet the needs of a fairly diverse group of students. So we did decoding but (1) he managed to teach me some things there that I didn't know (like that you pronounce mapik), and (2) he also did enough translation, which involves looking at the grammar to break words down, to keep me interested. He commented that he really enjoys teaching Hebrew, and I think it shows. Too bad he's not in Pittsburgh. :-) (We have two non-overlapping kinds of classes locally, so far as I can tell: classes that probably meet my needs and classes that don't meet in the middle of the work day. I'm thinking about exploring the flexibility of my employer.)
They gave us a large chunk of time in the afternoon for work time and Shabbat prep. I spent some of it in a group meeting, and way too much of it fighting technology so I could print the eulogy I wrote Thursday night. Fortunately, I did also get to spend some of it just chatting with a classmate.
Shabbat evening was very nice; after services and dinner we had a song session that ran about two hours (which is twice as long as last year's). And we had visitors from last year, including one of the student rabbis (who later got very sick, so we were all worried about her). It was good to see people again and just have time to sit and schmooze!
Homiletics
Saturday afternoon were the homiletics reviews. We were divided up into small groups (we had six people in ours), each with a faculty member to facilitate. Our group had a cantor who did a great job with us. We started with the divrei torah; each of us presented and she gave feedback after each. Fortunately, she did not open it up for discussion after each one; had she done so we probably would have run out of time. After we did that she gave us some general advice on posture and stance, and then we did the eulogies with individual critique again. At the end she opened it up for more general discussion.
I did not write a d'var torah; I practiced a d'var torah and worked from notes only. I did this deliberately; I want to develop that skill because that's really what my shabbat morning minyan calls for, and I thought this would be a good chance to get some coaching on how to do that. I've spoken from notes (with varying degrees of success) for the two minutes or so that's typical in that group; this assignment was for five to seven minutes.
The cantor started out by saying that she always makes her students write out their text. Oops. I did fully write out the eulogy, so I figured that would give me practice in that style of presentation. Unfortunately, I didn't get a lot of feedback on reading something to people while making it look like I'm talking to them. Some people just have that skill, it appears. Better vision no doubt helps; I don't know if there's a font size that would work better for me than the 16-point I use. (The problem is that I don't have a focal distance between about 8-10 inches and distance vision. Unless the print is so ridiculous in size that it's just no managable, I haven't found something I can read from a podium two feet below eye level.)
For the d'var torah, some of my classmates tried to bite off too much. You can't talk about an entire parsha in that amount of time; the cantor's advice was to pick one thing and just focus on it. I already had that particular clue, so I could mentally feel the "whew" when I said I was going to talk about Sh'lach L'cha (the portion with the twelve spies) and then brought up the wood-gatherer. :-) (I had an idea about that a couple months ago that I never devleoped, so this was a good opportunity to do that. Three of the people in this group did this week's portion, so I'm glad I didn't.)
Aside from speaking too quickly (the cantor said), I did reasonably well with my d'var torah. (I failed to time the actual presentation; my practice runs were about six and a half minutes.) I felt that I stumbled in a couple places, but I recovered quickly. During two places where I was talking about text (once torah, once talmud), I knew the material so well that I could look at people and not refer to my notes at all. (Actually, my notes there said things like "tractate sanhedrin" with no specifics, because you shouldn't clutter up notes with stuff you don't need.) Had the format supported it, this is a point where I might have walked around the room a bit.
I got way more "wow" points out of that than I deserved, by the way. I'll have to remember that if it looks like you've memorized talmudic passages people will think you know a lot even if you don't; that can work positively or negatively. (Look, I don't retain minutiae on purpose; my brain just works that way.)
Oh, another observation based on this set of six divrei torah: if you use Hebrew words and do it correctly -- including pronouncing them correctly -- people ascribe more knowledge points to you. Well, so long as you do it in moderation; too much is showing off. (I talked about one word in the Hebrew and some of its cognates.)
(Yes, I hope to write the d'var torah from my notes before too much time passes, as I've done a couple times before.)
During the break after the divrei torah the cantor took me aside and asked what my Jewish background is. I told her and mentioned in passing that I'm kind of a "head-y" person, really interested in text, and that's what helped draw me in. She said something like "yeah, I got that from your d'var torah". :-) She then asked me if I've ever thought about rabbinic school. We talked a bit about that and she said she'd be happy to talk more (I have her email address). She also told me -- and this is the real compliment -- that while she's suggested to a few other people that they look at cantorial school, I'm the first person she's ever suggested rabbinic school to. Wow.
I asked her if she could suggest other learning opportunities, and she suggested the Drisha Institute in Manhattan. She said that normally she would not send a Reform Jew there, but that I'm obviously confident and comfortable in my theology so she doesn't think I'd flounder. She said they have summer programs.
Aside: this cantor teaches a series of courses at HUC called "practical rabbinics". No, you can't take the courses without being enrolled in the program. Dang.
Books
This year's acquisitions include:
Next steps
I've heard a number of people say that they really want an "SK III" next year. The organizer said that every class asks for that, but they're not doing it. We're welcome to organize anything we want. I don't know if it will go anywhere or if we'd get critical mass, but there seems to be strong interest from a few people for a program of (a) text study and (b) supporting skills (Hebrew, research techniques and tools, etc). If we could all come back here next year and do that, that'd be great. While having faculty would be nice, I think we could do a lot with student rabbis alone, if we could get them. We have to push on this a little harder; are the organizers saying "not at HUC" or "not our job to organize"?
Some people have proposed organizing things in their own cities and inviting everyone in. Of course, everyone wants to do it at home. HUC is attractive because we've already all demonstrated a willingness to come to Cincinnati. But hey, I wouldn't object to doing it in my city either... If we can't do a week-long program at HUC the answer might turn out to be various weekend sessions in various places. The partipant from Alaska has already invited us all up for a retreat over a long weekend in January, but flying there is pretty expensive so I'm guessing I won't. That's the real problem with unofficial sites; for any given one many of us will say "too expensive to go there", so we'll never get most of the group together again unless we do it in a location that's somehow "sanctioned" by the movement.
As for personal options, I had previously asked one of the visiting rabbis for advice on what I might do next, education-wise, and he said "Melton program". (This is a two-year adult-ed program. I think it meets one night a week. I'm not sure of the curriculum. We have it in Pittsburgh, so I will check.) The cantor who led my homiletics group suggested Drisha, which I will also investigate. (I believe at least one of my readers has experience with Drisha, so if I'm right and you're still reading this long ramble, I'd love to hear from you.)
I also asked Rachel, one of the organizers of the Sh'liach K'hilah program, about next steps. She had previously mentioned a program called Outreach Fellows as an unofficial "SK 3", but that is probably not a good fit for me. I'm more interested in (1) text study and (2) practical skills I can actually use (they don't have to come from the same program); that program gives me neither, as best I can tell. (And, err, the classes we've had on outreach both years have been very weak in my opinion; if that's an example of what to expect from that program, I'm not biting.)
She didn't have an answer right off but said she would do some looking and I should call her sometime after this program is over. She also said she thinks the Jerusalem campus of HUC offers a three-month program for lay people. That's an amount of time that's starting to approach doable. (I don't have that much vacation time and never will, but sometimes employers will entertain short leaves of absence. My chances of that were probably better before my company got bought, but who knows?) It's something to investigate, and it certainly wouldn't hurt to check the other campuses (you know, the ones where I speak the language) for similar programs. I had previously searched HUC Cincinnati without luck and skimmed HUC New York, but I haven't looked at LA. I think my ideal next step at this point for a non-local program would run up to one month rather than three, with a three-month program maybe being a good next step after that. So maybe Drisha fits that; I must investigate once I'm home. I'm not ruling anything out right now; I'm just thinking out loud about my own needs (including finances).
She said there'll be more net-based courses and I'll certainly take them when appropriate, but I seem to thrive with face-to-face study. That's why I want to be able to come back here next year and study text.
So at this point I have a few leads to pursue and a lot of thinking to do about what kinds of learning would do me the most good. And when I get home I'll discuss all of this with my rabbi, of course.
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.
Text study
My group's text-study session was Friday morning. The assignment was for a group of three people to prepare a lesson on, well, pretty much anything. The schedule said "text study" but they explained that it could be much broader; the point was to learn about planning and presenting material moreso than the material itself. (Though we'd be critiqued on both, so we couldn't just spew nonsense. Not that I would.)
My group had some tension all week; we were not connecting on most levels and communication wasn't as good as it could have been even though we all had the best of intentions. (On one foot: I'm an academic and someone else teaches children back home.) Add to that the general stress of this program and, well, people get frustrated. But the presentation went well -- much better than I would have predicted -- and we talked later in the day (at my prodding) to do a post-mortem on our processes and talk about the things that had gone wrong. I think that was really productive, and everyone's fine now. I may write more about this later using the techniques Rabbi Joseph taught for self-evaluation.
Services
One unfortunate consequence of the text-study scheduling is that we had to leave breakfast early to set up the room and thus missed most of the service evaluations. (Each morning we do a group discussion of the previous two student-run services, that morning and the previous night.) I actually had specific things I wanted to talk about from one of them, and I didn't get the chance. Dang.
One of those things has to do with mourners' kaddish. In a few services here I've seen the leaders ask people to name people they're in sh'loshim for or observing a yahrzeit for, usually in that order. (Sh'loshim is the first 30 days of mourning. Yahrzeit is an anniversary.) I've seen this elsewhere too; this formula must have gotten printed in somebody's "how-to handbook for leading services" or some such. The problem is that it leaves the guy who's in month six of mourning a parent out in the cold, and he either has to identify as something he's not or stay silent. (We mourn parents for a year, not 30 days -- well, more properly, mourn for eleven months.) In my (limited, granted) experience, those people really care about being included. Yahrzeits are often distant in time, but mourning is current or at least recent. The last thing we should be doing is making those people anxious, especially when such a simple solution exists. The phrase I've learned in my congregation is "if you are in mourning or observing a yahrzeit...". There's no reason to be more specific about mourning unless you plan to separately identify all three groups.
Shabbat morning we had a "bat mitzvah" for one of our students. Last year she told us that as a woman (of a slightly older generation) who grew up in an Orthodox home, she had not had the chance to really do anything religious until much later in life. Somewhere in there she mentioned that she had of course not had a bat mitzvah and she'd never done any of the "adult bat mitzvah" programs, and everyone thought she should do it this year. Since we knew the parsha months in advance, she was able to work with a cantor back home to learn to chant the torah and haftarah passages. She and her husband are both in the program, and he also participated in the service. It was lovely to see the community get behind this. And yes, we threw candy and someone got her a fountain pen. :-)
Friday
Friday had just two classes, one on the liturgy for high holy days (very good class; Dr. Sarason is a good speaker, which certainly helps) and the chugim. Friday was the last day for the Hebrew chug. It was a good class, and I'm really impressed by how the student rabbi was able to assemble a class to meet the needs of a fairly diverse group of students. So we did decoding but (1) he managed to teach me some things there that I didn't know (like that you pronounce mapik), and (2) he also did enough translation, which involves looking at the grammar to break words down, to keep me interested. He commented that he really enjoys teaching Hebrew, and I think it shows. Too bad he's not in Pittsburgh. :-) (We have two non-overlapping kinds of classes locally, so far as I can tell: classes that probably meet my needs and classes that don't meet in the middle of the work day. I'm thinking about exploring the flexibility of my employer.)
They gave us a large chunk of time in the afternoon for work time and Shabbat prep. I spent some of it in a group meeting, and way too much of it fighting technology so I could print the eulogy I wrote Thursday night. Fortunately, I did also get to spend some of it just chatting with a classmate.
Shabbat evening was very nice; after services and dinner we had a song session that ran about two hours (which is twice as long as last year's). And we had visitors from last year, including one of the student rabbis (who later got very sick, so we were all worried about her). It was good to see people again and just have time to sit and schmooze!
Homiletics
Saturday afternoon were the homiletics reviews. We were divided up into small groups (we had six people in ours), each with a faculty member to facilitate. Our group had a cantor who did a great job with us. We started with the divrei torah; each of us presented and she gave feedback after each. Fortunately, she did not open it up for discussion after each one; had she done so we probably would have run out of time. After we did that she gave us some general advice on posture and stance, and then we did the eulogies with individual critique again. At the end she opened it up for more general discussion.
I did not write a d'var torah; I practiced a d'var torah and worked from notes only. I did this deliberately; I want to develop that skill because that's really what my shabbat morning minyan calls for, and I thought this would be a good chance to get some coaching on how to do that. I've spoken from notes (with varying degrees of success) for the two minutes or so that's typical in that group; this assignment was for five to seven minutes.
The cantor started out by saying that she always makes her students write out their text. Oops. I did fully write out the eulogy, so I figured that would give me practice in that style of presentation. Unfortunately, I didn't get a lot of feedback on reading something to people while making it look like I'm talking to them. Some people just have that skill, it appears. Better vision no doubt helps; I don't know if there's a font size that would work better for me than the 16-point I use. (The problem is that I don't have a focal distance between about 8-10 inches and distance vision. Unless the print is so ridiculous in size that it's just no managable, I haven't found something I can read from a podium two feet below eye level.)
For the d'var torah, some of my classmates tried to bite off too much. You can't talk about an entire parsha in that amount of time; the cantor's advice was to pick one thing and just focus on it. I already had that particular clue, so I could mentally feel the "whew" when I said I was going to talk about Sh'lach L'cha (the portion with the twelve spies) and then brought up the wood-gatherer. :-) (I had an idea about that a couple months ago that I never devleoped, so this was a good opportunity to do that. Three of the people in this group did this week's portion, so I'm glad I didn't.)
Aside from speaking too quickly (the cantor said), I did reasonably well with my d'var torah. (I failed to time the actual presentation; my practice runs were about six and a half minutes.) I felt that I stumbled in a couple places, but I recovered quickly. During two places where I was talking about text (once torah, once talmud), I knew the material so well that I could look at people and not refer to my notes at all. (Actually, my notes there said things like "tractate sanhedrin" with no specifics, because you shouldn't clutter up notes with stuff you don't need.) Had the format supported it, this is a point where I might have walked around the room a bit.
I got way more "wow" points out of that than I deserved, by the way. I'll have to remember that if it looks like you've memorized talmudic passages people will think you know a lot even if you don't; that can work positively or negatively. (Look, I don't retain minutiae on purpose; my brain just works that way.)
Oh, another observation based on this set of six divrei torah: if you use Hebrew words and do it correctly -- including pronouncing them correctly -- people ascribe more knowledge points to you. Well, so long as you do it in moderation; too much is showing off. (I talked about one word in the Hebrew and some of its cognates.)
(Yes, I hope to write the d'var torah from my notes before too much time passes, as I've done a couple times before.)
During the break after the divrei torah the cantor took me aside and asked what my Jewish background is. I told her and mentioned in passing that I'm kind of a "head-y" person, really interested in text, and that's what helped draw me in. She said something like "yeah, I got that from your d'var torah". :-) She then asked me if I've ever thought about rabbinic school. We talked a bit about that and she said she'd be happy to talk more (I have her email address). She also told me -- and this is the real compliment -- that while she's suggested to a few other people that they look at cantorial school, I'm the first person she's ever suggested rabbinic school to. Wow.
I asked her if she could suggest other learning opportunities, and she suggested the Drisha Institute in Manhattan. She said that normally she would not send a Reform Jew there, but that I'm obviously confident and comfortable in my theology so she doesn't think I'd flounder. She said they have summer programs.
Aside: this cantor teaches a series of courses at HUC called "practical rabbinics". No, you can't take the courses without being enrolled in the program. Dang.
Books
This year's acquisitions include:
- Rabbi's Manual (CCAR). Yes, that's really its name. It includes liturgies and blessings for assorted special occasions, mostly life-cycle but also others.
- Gates of Forgiveness -- sl'lichot, or penitential prayers leading up to Rosh Hashana. I've been wanting it for a while but Amazon charges more to ship it to me (special order) than the book itself costs, so I waited.
- The Art of Cantillation II -- haftarah and megillot. I have the first volume (torah trope) and it's pretty good. (If they included the written music with the lessons and not just in an appendix, it'd rate a "very good" from me. The new one has the same flaw.)
- A book on biblical Hebrew (previously mentioned).
- A Craig Taubman CD that I'll listen to on the way home.
Next steps
I've heard a number of people say that they really want an "SK III" next year. The organizer said that every class asks for that, but they're not doing it. We're welcome to organize anything we want. I don't know if it will go anywhere or if we'd get critical mass, but there seems to be strong interest from a few people for a program of (a) text study and (b) supporting skills (Hebrew, research techniques and tools, etc). If we could all come back here next year and do that, that'd be great. While having faculty would be nice, I think we could do a lot with student rabbis alone, if we could get them. We have to push on this a little harder; are the organizers saying "not at HUC" or "not our job to organize"?
Some people have proposed organizing things in their own cities and inviting everyone in. Of course, everyone wants to do it at home. HUC is attractive because we've already all demonstrated a willingness to come to Cincinnati. But hey, I wouldn't object to doing it in my city either... If we can't do a week-long program at HUC the answer might turn out to be various weekend sessions in various places. The partipant from Alaska has already invited us all up for a retreat over a long weekend in January, but flying there is pretty expensive so I'm guessing I won't. That's the real problem with unofficial sites; for any given one many of us will say "too expensive to go there", so we'll never get most of the group together again unless we do it in a location that's somehow "sanctioned" by the movement.
As for personal options, I had previously asked one of the visiting rabbis for advice on what I might do next, education-wise, and he said "Melton program". (This is a two-year adult-ed program. I think it meets one night a week. I'm not sure of the curriculum. We have it in Pittsburgh, so I will check.) The cantor who led my homiletics group suggested Drisha, which I will also investigate. (I believe at least one of my readers has experience with Drisha, so if I'm right and you're still reading this long ramble, I'd love to hear from you.)
I also asked Rachel, one of the organizers of the Sh'liach K'hilah program, about next steps. She had previously mentioned a program called Outreach Fellows as an unofficial "SK 3", but that is probably not a good fit for me. I'm more interested in (1) text study and (2) practical skills I can actually use (they don't have to come from the same program); that program gives me neither, as best I can tell. (And, err, the classes we've had on outreach both years have been very weak in my opinion; if that's an example of what to expect from that program, I'm not biting.)
She didn't have an answer right off but said she would do some looking and I should call her sometime after this program is over. She also said she thinks the Jerusalem campus of HUC offers a three-month program for lay people. That's an amount of time that's starting to approach doable. (I don't have that much vacation time and never will, but sometimes employers will entertain short leaves of absence. My chances of that were probably better before my company got bought, but who knows?) It's something to investigate, and it certainly wouldn't hurt to check the other campuses (you know, the ones where I speak the language) for similar programs. I had previously searched HUC Cincinnati without luck and skimmed HUC New York, but I haven't looked at LA. I think my ideal next step at this point for a non-local program would run up to one month rather than three, with a three-month program maybe being a good next step after that. So maybe Drisha fits that; I must investigate once I'm home. I'm not ruling anything out right now; I'm just thinking out loud about my own needs (including finances).
She said there'll be more net-based courses and I'll certainly take them when appropriate, but I seem to thrive with face-to-face study. That's why I want to be able to come back here next year and study text.
So at this point I have a few leads to pursue and a lot of thinking to do about what kinds of learning would do me the most good. And when I get home I'll discuss all of this with my rabbi, of course.