So, a couple things about Hebrew School
Oct. 5th, 2005 11:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasHebrew school has been going on for three weeks, now. I have been INTENDING to tell y'all about stuff, since, well, a lot of you mainly read this lj for my cute stories about teaching Hebrew school, and my fun bartending stories, and I haven't tended bar regularly for over a year now.
Some basic stuff. Rafi, my former boss, is now teaching at Kesher full-time, and isn't at our Hebrew school any more. I miss him, because he's cool and all (and he's now married, as of the middle of August, and they look all newleywedy together, and they seem like the sort of people who will continue to look newleywedy together long after they have great-grandchildren), but the school's doing okay without him. We're also working without Mark, who was my boss TWO years ago, and was very happy to turn the educational director job over to Rafi, and just become a regular teacher. But he gave up teaching here in order to focus on politics in Somerville. Still, they're both around, and are going to be available for substitute teaching and stuff, which is good, because the kids miss them. And, y'know, so do I. Of course, we all got to at least exchange hugs and catch up outside of Rosh Hashana services today and yesterday.
Isaac also retired, in order to spend more time with his great-grandchildren, and to focus more on running community outreach stuff to the Russian immigrant community at Temple B'nai Moshe. And to do lots of other stuff there -- I think he's helping run THEIR Hebrew school.
Y'know that whole joke about how Jewish communities just don't interact with each other and are mutually hostile? Not so much true in Boston. People don't so much choose one and diss all the others, so much as over-commit to multiple shuls and have to pull back and spend their time with just two or three of 'em. I mean, me, personally -- I've got connections with B'nai Moshe, Temple B'nai Brith, Tremont Street Shul, Chavaurat Shalom, Congregation Eitz Chayyim, B'nai Or, and Cherie Koller-Fox, who is her own community just by herself. Among others. That's a pretty typical list.
Anyway, this looks like it's getting long enough to deserve a cut tag.
The point of this is that I'm now pretty much the senior teacher at Temple B'nai Brith. Being as I've been there for four years.
I'm also one of the older teachers, in that I'm 32.
We've got a new education director -- Beth Fine-Nelson. She seems good, and competent, and has a lot of experience. What she's NOT is weird.
And I mean "weird" in an "Illuminati" card game alignment sense. Where "weird" is the opposite alignment of "straight." But I think we'll break her in.
I think that she probably didn't quite know exactly what she was getting into. She's run Hebrew schools in Houston before, so she knows what she's doing from an administrative point of view, which is GREAT, because that's really what was weakest in the Hebrew school. But. . . she floated, in a staff meeting, the idea of doing a unit on diversity among Jews -- how not all Jews look Ashkenazic.
Okay. . .
So, first day of school, before school, a father came in with his son, signing him up for class. I greeted him, got his Hebrew name and all, talked for a little bit. After a bit, the father pulled me aside and said, "If the other kids are wondering about Samuel, I could come in and talk about it."
I had no idea what he meant.
Then I got it. "Because he's black? I don't think any of the other kids will even NOTICE, let alone be puzzled."
The father (white, incidentally), didn't seem convinced.
"Two students in the grade below him are Chinese, one student in the grade above him is Hispanic, and one of his classmates is Korean."
He clapped me on the shoulder, said, "Okay, good talking to you," and left.
Beth hasn't really mentioned the idea of doing a "diversity among Jews" thing since she actually MET the students. Honestly, we have a lot more of a challenge trying to teach about unity of experience among Jews. "Diversity" pretty much takes care of itself.
What else? I've got more stories I'd want to tell from the first few weeks of school, but I'll leave you with just one final image. One of the students I had two years ago (and, of course, have chatted with after school every Sunday last year), well, I got him hooked on Firefly. So, at Rosh Hashana services, he pulled me aside so we could talk about Serenity. I won't mention what we talked about, because it was spoiler-ful, but, well, if you've been reading spoilers for the movie, you know what we were saying, because that's what we were saying.
Some basic stuff. Rafi, my former boss, is now teaching at Kesher full-time, and isn't at our Hebrew school any more. I miss him, because he's cool and all (and he's now married, as of the middle of August, and they look all newleywedy together, and they seem like the sort of people who will continue to look newleywedy together long after they have great-grandchildren), but the school's doing okay without him. We're also working without Mark, who was my boss TWO years ago, and was very happy to turn the educational director job over to Rafi, and just become a regular teacher. But he gave up teaching here in order to focus on politics in Somerville. Still, they're both around, and are going to be available for substitute teaching and stuff, which is good, because the kids miss them. And, y'know, so do I. Of course, we all got to at least exchange hugs and catch up outside of Rosh Hashana services today and yesterday.
Isaac also retired, in order to spend more time with his great-grandchildren, and to focus more on running community outreach stuff to the Russian immigrant community at Temple B'nai Moshe. And to do lots of other stuff there -- I think he's helping run THEIR Hebrew school.
Y'know that whole joke about how Jewish communities just don't interact with each other and are mutually hostile? Not so much true in Boston. People don't so much choose one and diss all the others, so much as over-commit to multiple shuls and have to pull back and spend their time with just two or three of 'em. I mean, me, personally -- I've got connections with B'nai Moshe, Temple B'nai Brith, Tremont Street Shul, Chavaurat Shalom, Congregation Eitz Chayyim, B'nai Or, and Cherie Koller-Fox, who is her own community just by herself. Among others. That's a pretty typical list.
Anyway, this looks like it's getting long enough to deserve a cut tag.
The point of this is that I'm now pretty much the senior teacher at Temple B'nai Brith. Being as I've been there for four years.
I'm also one of the older teachers, in that I'm 32.
We've got a new education director -- Beth Fine-Nelson. She seems good, and competent, and has a lot of experience. What she's NOT is weird.
And I mean "weird" in an "Illuminati" card game alignment sense. Where "weird" is the opposite alignment of "straight." But I think we'll break her in.
I think that she probably didn't quite know exactly what she was getting into. She's run Hebrew schools in Houston before, so she knows what she's doing from an administrative point of view, which is GREAT, because that's really what was weakest in the Hebrew school. But. . . she floated, in a staff meeting, the idea of doing a unit on diversity among Jews -- how not all Jews look Ashkenazic.
Okay. . .
So, first day of school, before school, a father came in with his son, signing him up for class. I greeted him, got his Hebrew name and all, talked for a little bit. After a bit, the father pulled me aside and said, "If the other kids are wondering about Samuel, I could come in and talk about it."
I had no idea what he meant.
Then I got it. "Because he's black? I don't think any of the other kids will even NOTICE, let alone be puzzled."
The father (white, incidentally), didn't seem convinced.
"Two students in the grade below him are Chinese, one student in the grade above him is Hispanic, and one of his classmates is Korean."
He clapped me on the shoulder, said, "Okay, good talking to you," and left.
Beth hasn't really mentioned the idea of doing a "diversity among Jews" thing since she actually MET the students. Honestly, we have a lot more of a challenge trying to teach about unity of experience among Jews. "Diversity" pretty much takes care of itself.
What else? I've got more stories I'd want to tell from the first few weeks of school, but I'll leave you with just one final image. One of the students I had two years ago (and, of course, have chatted with after school every Sunday last year), well, I got him hooked on Firefly. So, at Rosh Hashana services, he pulled me aside so we could talk about Serenity. I won't mention what we talked about, because it was spoiler-ful, but, well, if you've been reading spoilers for the movie, you know what we were saying, because that's what we were saying.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-06 05:00 am (UTC)(Of course, I am very much an outsider here, coming from a West Coast intermarriage, and my mother's family being one of those Jewish families who escaped the rabbis as soon as they possibly could, first by moving from the shtetls to Warsaw, and then to the US.)
And me? I'm going to Nashoba Valley Chabad for High Holidays service, even though I don't grok them, and they don't grok me. My husband and I know the rabbi; he got kicked out of my in-laws' former Orthodox shul for being too welcoming to less-observant folks. My second choice would be the Reconstructionist, female rabbi who was the officiant at our marriage, and has a small group meeting on the North Shore. Opposite ends of the Jewish spectrum, yet I'm still comfortable in each. I'm not sure I could say that if I lived anywhere else.
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