Global, Politics, Religion

Every student is a teacher and every teacher is a student

Everyone has something to teach. Especially YOU.
Course proposals are being accepted for the National Havurah Committee‘s 2007 Summer Institute (August 6-12 at Franklin Pierce College in southern New Hampshire). Regular Jewschool readers have been reading about the Institute for a while. It’s a week of Jewish learning and living in a pluralistic multigenerational egalitarian community, bringing together and catalyzing Jewish communities across North America.
The 2007 Institute theme is “V’rav shelom banayich” (“Great shall be the peace of your children”), from Isaiah 54:13, from the haftarah of consolation that will be read that week. Courses are welcome that speak to this theme in any way.
Last year’s courses ranged from Talmud to Zohar to Jewish poetry to Palestinian narratives to Torah commentary through movement to Jewish war ethics. At the NHC, every teacher is a student and every student is a teacher, so teachers teach their own course for 90 minutes a day and participate in the rest of the Institute program for the other 22.5 hours. And teachers get to attend the whole week for free! I have taught twice at the Institute (once on Talmud, quantum mechanics, and indeterminacy; once on the history and mathematics of the Hebrew calendar), and these have been among my best teaching experiences, in a participatory community that really understands the value of learning and teaching.
What are YOU interested in teaching and studying? Submit a course proposal by November 29. Pass this on to any great teachers you’d love to learn with!

6 thoughts on “Every student is a teacher and every teacher is a student

  1. wait I don’t understand…the post-denomonational world is getting together in one place to learn from eachother and give and take…perhaps that could be called a Movement of Judaism and then create some sort of Committee and an institution and a (strike up the scary music band) a Denomonation…
    AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

  2. pissedoffliberaljew,
    yes, in fact some people do refer to is as the havurah movement. many unaffiliated minyanim attend national havurah institute; however many people from mainstream movement affiliated syangogues attend as well and learn a great deal from the program.
    personally, my ideology is very close to the Reform movement; however, since I do not belong to a Reform congregation, to most people i am post-denominational/nothing. i am certainly affiliated with a number of jewish orgs, such as Kol Zimrah, Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, among the many. i even went to JTS (a Conservative movement sponsored institution that trains Conservative Rabbis & Cantors, but also has pluralistic departments for grad school, undergrad, and jewish education) for grad school and now work at a Reconstructionist Synagogue.
    would it be less complicated for me to choose a movement and join a synagogue?

  3. Shamir-
    Perhaps it would be less confusing but it would not work for you…and that is the point.
    My point is that the idea of post-denom just doesn’t work. When you get together with like minded people you have a movement or a denomination. It just isn’t what you could call one of the big 3 (or 4) movements we currently have in the main street Jewish USA.
    I believe however that if you or others joined a congregation (reform, conservative etc) you might be able to provide the info and insight that is missing.
    But hey do what you want and stay Jewish my friend.
    polj

  4. pissedoffliberaljew-
    If it counts as a “movement” or “denomination” any time a group of Jews gets together or form a national organization to do Jewish things, then you’ll have to add Hillel, CAJE, the Klezmer Festival, and hundreds of other items to your list of denominations.
    The reason you think the NHC demonstrates that “the idea of post-denom just doesn’t work” is because you appear to have a bizarrely caricatured understanding of what this idea is, You seem to think that “post-denominational” Jews (and I’m not a big fan of that word anyway) advocate locking oneself in a room and never talking to anyone else. Of course that doesn’t work, and no one is suggesting that.
    When you suggest that the NHC is a movement/denomination merely because it involves like-minded people (as well as people who are far from like-minded) getting together, you elide the substantive differences between the NHC and the established denominations.
    Yes, people refer to the “havurah movement”, but they mean it in the sense of a grassroots upswell (like the civil rights movement), not an institutional hierarchy (like the Reform or Conservative movements). The Reform and Conservative movements (Orthodox Judaism is, structurally, another kettle of fish, so we’ll leave it alone for now) have official platforms that establish tenets of belief and practice, defined sets of member congregations, centralized rabbinic bodies that determine policies for these congregations, national organizations that set an agenda for the movement, and cultures in which people say “I do X because I’m a Y Jew”. The “havurah movement” has none of these properties. Independent havurot/minyanim operate entirely autonomously, and forfeit none of this autonomy when their constitutents participate in the National Havurah Committee. The NHC has one year-round employee, who works in an administrative (not religious) capacity.
    You might prefer one of these models over the other, but the fact remains that they are different, and the existence of events where independent Jewish communities get together doesn’t negate that.

  5. I believe however that if you or others joined a congregation (reform, conservative etc) you might be able to provide the info and insight that is missing.
    I don’t think congregations are so malleable that if shamir and I joined, they would all of a sudden be willing to change. The status quo wouldn’t be so persistent if there weren’t people happy with it.
    To the extent that we can have any influence on established congregations, we can do it more effectively from the outside, by creating successful alternative models than can be emulated.

  6. To the extent that we can have any influence on established congregations, we can do it more effectively from the outside, by creating successful alternative models than can be emulated.
    Which, by the way, JTS Chancellor-Elect Arnie Eisen basically just said in a public conversation the other day. What a breath of fresh air! Viva la nouvelle regime!

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