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livSo I survived the first month of rabbinic training. Which included not only starting multiple completely new subjects and semi moving to London, but running services for the High Holy Days on top of everything. Yes, I've been doing that all my adult life, but not as a professional and not with this much travel and not with communities I don't know.
I've partly been way too busy to post, and partly held back because I need to be pretty careful about what goes on the public internet. (This DW is fairly obscure, I doubt congregants would find it just casually, but I haven't fully scrubbed any possible links between wallet name and blog.)
Anyway. The first week was just ridiculously intense, even more so than I expected. Meeting my incredibly awesome fellow students (and don't forget about the dog) for the first time in person, on Hampstead Heath at sunset, after a boiling hot day when I got lost trying to carry too much stuff across London. Starting our course with a 14-hour day that culminated in the ordination of a Czech rabbi at the synagogue that looks after the scrolls that the Czech Jewish community rescued from the Nazis. A ceremony to welcome one of those survivor scrolls into the College. Re-encountering the story of R' Yochanan and Reish Lakish, this time directly unfiltered as a few short lines of Gemara where I struggled with the Aramaic even of a familiar story. And in the company of fellow Queer Jews who had never come across that story before, and of fellow Queer Jews who are already experts in reclaiming Jewish texts.
Tears of frustration and overwhelm, particularly on learning that solo leading High Holy Day services within days of starting our training was not actually compulsory, though everybody led us to believe that it was and less than a week from Rosh HaShanah was too late to back out. I found myself in tears about really quite minor things, just regular morning prayers but taking part As A Rabbinic Student, seeing the photo of my teacher R' Sheila Shulman in pride of place on the mantelpiece in the prayer room.
Then I came home andghoti_mhic_uait mounted an expedition to Costco in order to buy food so I could offer a farewell kiddush at my home synagogue. I hadn't been able to do that the week before starting college because I was working at another community. Which is both ridiculous and further confirmation that I've made the right decision to organize my life around getting better at running services and working with Jewish communities. The farewell service was really lovely; I wore my pretty Simchat Torah dress, and read Torah, and my parents took other roles in the service, and all three of my partners plus their younger children (including the ones who don't like religion) and my metamour all turned up to support me, and part of the sermon was about how great my family is. Some people I would not have expected to feel like that cried all over me from sadness that I'm leaving, even though I'm not really leaving.
All of this added up to a really really strong feeling that I had two completely separate existences. My normal life at home with my husband and partners and my community, and my rabbinic student existence where I am sleeping in the spare bedroom of a friend of a friend in Golders Green and learning things and having conversations I could hardly have imagined. The image I had in my head was of passing through a portal to a different plane of reality.
Then I had a regular week of classes, except it wasn't regular because I was doing everything for the first time. And also because I was leading Rosh HaShanah services at the end of the week! To be fair so were all my fellow students, so we were all in a sort of panicked daze, trying to take in a massive pile of new information and also trying to prepare our sermons, Torah readings and service plans. My assigned communities were a bit anxious, and kept trying to arrange Zoom calls to talk through incredibly minor details about which prayers I was doing in which order, which didn't help. I had my first proper Talmud class, 3X 2 hours of really intensive delving into a few lines of mostly Mishnah. A class on Biblical criticism, which has never been my favourite subject but the teacher is really fascinating, she's both Orthodox and a quite secular academic, so there are some amazing clashes of culture and assumptions with a class of broadly religious trainee Progressive rabbis. A terrifying but surprisingly enjoyable class where we're learning how to chant Torah, which means I have to do lots of singing in public.
Rosh HaShanah was a complete success, though intense even by the standards of these things. My first community was Liberal, so I'm less familiar with their liturgy and style. Also they meet in a church, which plenty of small communities do, but this is a really churchy church, with lots of crosses (which we made some attempt to cover) and pews and graves inside the building. I ended up leading from behind the altar rail (though at least not from the actual pulpit set about 3 metres above the ground), and I'm pretty sure I've never even been in the priest's bit of a church before. Also a churchy acoustic; I was miked for Zoom but unamplified within the building, so I found it a bit challenging to deal with the echoes and make sure I was audible to everybody.
cjwatson and ghoti_mhic_uait came along to be my support people, and K then drove us straight from the service to Stoke-on-Trent, where I'd agreed to lead second day RH because otherwise they wouldn't be able to manage it. So basically we left after Kiddush, drove straight through (with a brief stop at a service station to grab some pasties from Gregg's), and walked straight into the synagogue just barely in time for me to lead Maariv. Doing the whole of Orthodox RH by myself was a lot, but I've done it before and it's a familiar community. It was really good to see lots of old friends as well as some new people who have joined the community since the pandemic hit, including a shofar blower. Then I got the train directly back to London for week 2 of class...
My main completely emotionally overcome moment in the second week was realizing that we were timetabled in a classroom named after a student who was murdered by a homophobic serial killer in the early 2000s. I had sort of forgotten how much his death blew apart my little circle of variously Queer young Jews until I saw the plaque and photo. Part of what was hard was that 20 years ago, he was officially required by the college to be in the closet, though unofficially everybody knew he was gay. And it's not a direct link but we felt that there was a connection between asking him to hide his sexuality and his coming into contact with the evil murderer, in that if he'd been allowed to be properly out he probably wouldn't have been picking up strangers in clubs. And now he's celebrated, he has a classroom named after him, and history has been rewritten to make lots of publicity about how much the college and the movement love LGBTQ+ people.
Again, week 2 was a bit of a blur because everybody was thinking about Yom Kippur. My placement was with a Reform community I've worked with before, and they have a good choir and a number of lay members who are competent and willing to lead parts of the service, so it wasn't quite all on my shoulders. Initially they had planned not to offer any hospitality but I got advice from working rabbis that I didn't have to put up with that, so I pushed back. After some persuasion, they took me to a restaurant before the fast, and a community member brought me back to her home to rest during the afternoon and to broadcast the last two services of the day over Zoom, and to give me something to eat after the fast ended. This was only really possible at all becauseghoti_mhic_uait was heroic about driving me home again in the evening; in hindsight I ought to have insisted that they pay for a second night of accommodation, because even with the support of an extremely generous partner that was kind of ridiculous.
Comparing notes with my new colleagues we agreed that whatever happens we will never again be in the situation of doing all of the HHDs almost solo for the first time at the same time as starting the course!
I'm still working out how to live this life, but it's going well so far, and I'm feeling confident I made the right decision to make a major life change. Also extremely grateful for my awesome partners and friends and colleagues.
I've partly been way too busy to post, and partly held back because I need to be pretty careful about what goes on the public internet. (This DW is fairly obscure, I doubt congregants would find it just casually, but I haven't fully scrubbed any possible links between wallet name and blog.)
Anyway. The first week was just ridiculously intense, even more so than I expected. Meeting my incredibly awesome fellow students (and don't forget about the dog) for the first time in person, on Hampstead Heath at sunset, after a boiling hot day when I got lost trying to carry too much stuff across London. Starting our course with a 14-hour day that culminated in the ordination of a Czech rabbi at the synagogue that looks after the scrolls that the Czech Jewish community rescued from the Nazis. A ceremony to welcome one of those survivor scrolls into the College. Re-encountering the story of R' Yochanan and Reish Lakish, this time directly unfiltered as a few short lines of Gemara where I struggled with the Aramaic even of a familiar story. And in the company of fellow Queer Jews who had never come across that story before, and of fellow Queer Jews who are already experts in reclaiming Jewish texts.
Tears of frustration and overwhelm, particularly on learning that solo leading High Holy Day services within days of starting our training was not actually compulsory, though everybody led us to believe that it was and less than a week from Rosh HaShanah was too late to back out. I found myself in tears about really quite minor things, just regular morning prayers but taking part As A Rabbinic Student, seeing the photo of my teacher R' Sheila Shulman in pride of place on the mantelpiece in the prayer room.
Then I came home and
ghoti_mhic_uait mounted an expedition to Costco in order to buy food so I could offer a farewell kiddush at my home synagogue. I hadn't been able to do that the week before starting college because I was working at another community. Which is both ridiculous and further confirmation that I've made the right decision to organize my life around getting better at running services and working with Jewish communities. The farewell service was really lovely; I wore my pretty Simchat Torah dress, and read Torah, and my parents took other roles in the service, and all three of my partners plus their younger children (including the ones who don't like religion) and my metamour all turned up to support me, and part of the sermon was about how great my family is. Some people I would not have expected to feel like that cried all over me from sadness that I'm leaving, even though I'm not really leaving. All of this added up to a really really strong feeling that I had two completely separate existences. My normal life at home with my husband and partners and my community, and my rabbinic student existence where I am sleeping in the spare bedroom of a friend of a friend in Golders Green and learning things and having conversations I could hardly have imagined. The image I had in my head was of passing through a portal to a different plane of reality.
Then I had a regular week of classes, except it wasn't regular because I was doing everything for the first time. And also because I was leading Rosh HaShanah services at the end of the week! To be fair so were all my fellow students, so we were all in a sort of panicked daze, trying to take in a massive pile of new information and also trying to prepare our sermons, Torah readings and service plans. My assigned communities were a bit anxious, and kept trying to arrange Zoom calls to talk through incredibly minor details about which prayers I was doing in which order, which didn't help. I had my first proper Talmud class, 3X 2 hours of really intensive delving into a few lines of mostly Mishnah. A class on Biblical criticism, which has never been my favourite subject but the teacher is really fascinating, she's both Orthodox and a quite secular academic, so there are some amazing clashes of culture and assumptions with a class of broadly religious trainee Progressive rabbis. A terrifying but surprisingly enjoyable class where we're learning how to chant Torah, which means I have to do lots of singing in public.
Rosh HaShanah was a complete success, though intense even by the standards of these things. My first community was Liberal, so I'm less familiar with their liturgy and style. Also they meet in a church, which plenty of small communities do, but this is a really churchy church, with lots of crosses (which we made some attempt to cover) and pews and graves inside the building. I ended up leading from behind the altar rail (though at least not from the actual pulpit set about 3 metres above the ground), and I'm pretty sure I've never even been in the priest's bit of a church before. Also a churchy acoustic; I was miked for Zoom but unamplified within the building, so I found it a bit challenging to deal with the echoes and make sure I was audible to everybody.
cjwatson and ghoti_mhic_uait came along to be my support people, and K then drove us straight from the service to Stoke-on-Trent, where I'd agreed to lead second day RH because otherwise they wouldn't be able to manage it. So basically we left after Kiddush, drove straight through (with a brief stop at a service station to grab some pasties from Gregg's), and walked straight into the synagogue just barely in time for me to lead Maariv. Doing the whole of Orthodox RH by myself was a lot, but I've done it before and it's a familiar community. It was really good to see lots of old friends as well as some new people who have joined the community since the pandemic hit, including a shofar blower. Then I got the train directly back to London for week 2 of class...My main completely emotionally overcome moment in the second week was realizing that we were timetabled in a classroom named after a student who was murdered by a homophobic serial killer in the early 2000s. I had sort of forgotten how much his death blew apart my little circle of variously Queer young Jews until I saw the plaque and photo. Part of what was hard was that 20 years ago, he was officially required by the college to be in the closet, though unofficially everybody knew he was gay. And it's not a direct link but we felt that there was a connection between asking him to hide his sexuality and his coming into contact with the evil murderer, in that if he'd been allowed to be properly out he probably wouldn't have been picking up strangers in clubs. And now he's celebrated, he has a classroom named after him, and history has been rewritten to make lots of publicity about how much the college and the movement love LGBTQ+ people.
Again, week 2 was a bit of a blur because everybody was thinking about Yom Kippur. My placement was with a Reform community I've worked with before, and they have a good choir and a number of lay members who are competent and willing to lead parts of the service, so it wasn't quite all on my shoulders. Initially they had planned not to offer any hospitality but I got advice from working rabbis that I didn't have to put up with that, so I pushed back. After some persuasion, they took me to a restaurant before the fast, and a community member brought me back to her home to rest during the afternoon and to broadcast the last two services of the day over Zoom, and to give me something to eat after the fast ended. This was only really possible at all because
ghoti_mhic_uait was heroic about driving me home again in the evening; in hindsight I ought to have insisted that they pay for a second night of accommodation, because even with the support of an extremely generous partner that was kind of ridiculous.Comparing notes with my new colleagues we agreed that whatever happens we will never again be in the situation of doing all of the HHDs almost solo for the first time at the same time as starting the course!
I'm still working out how to live this life, but it's going well so far, and I'm feeling confident I made the right decision to make a major life change. Also extremely grateful for my awesome partners and friends and colleagues.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 11:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 03:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 12:22 pm (UTC)But by the sound of it you all swam.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 03:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 03:37 pm (UTC)* ETA: and ability to say 'no' to a commitment that seems overwhelming!
(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 01:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 03:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 01:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 03:27 pm (UTC)thanks for the update
Date: 2023-09-28 01:31 pm (UTC)Supportive partners do make a real difference.
Re: thanks for the update
Date: 2023-09-28 03:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 01:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 03:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 02:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 03:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 02:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 03:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 02:40 pm (UTC)Would I work as a chaplain with patients on Yom Kippur? Yes, tikkun nefesh, to save a life. I've been the patient in the hospital having a spiritual crisis without support. It's not enough to do a fantastic job of the surgery if you lose the patient to suicide only months afterwards. I explained that in my email and my interview for the internship.
I've also started graduate school classes. One is the Holocaust, my biggest gap in Jewish history due to learning too much from my 1902 grandmother who visited Berlin relatives in the 1920s and was in regular correspondence with them until the letters stopped, and letters were returned with death certificates after WWII. I want to throw up regularly with this class but I'm learning more complex answers than the simpler ones I knew. It's also going into the different propaganda and divisive techniques being used in different areas.
The other class is on Chaplaincy Models and Methods, with interfaith students all learning pastoral and spiritual care together. Reflective essays are hard for me, but I'm going to need the skill during the chaplaincy internship.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 03:40 pm (UTC)We don't get much Holocaust history until a bit later in the course. I'm glad your class is at least informative along with being awful.
It's cool that you're learning with interfaith students! I don't love reflective essays either, especially not if they're assessed, but it definitely is a learnable skill. I've been the other side of the desk guiding medical students through writing reflections when they mostly come from a pure science background.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 06:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 08:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 07:34 pm (UTC)Oh, yes. That. :)
Portal fantasies do tend to drop their protagonists right into the thick of things.
It sounds splendid, and infuriating, and grand. It sounds like you found exactly the right place for you.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 09:07 pm (UTC)It really is splendid and infuriating. We got to meet the German ambassador somewhere in week 2 – but only for 10 minutes before he was carefully shepherded away from students who might have unfortunate opinions. And I can't get my head round the part where we're celebrating the gay and lesbian icons of our shared history, but I'm old enough to remember that they had to fight for every crumb of acceptance, let alone support.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-10-01 05:05 pm (UTC)I'm not going to be just the support person or sidekick for much longer. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 08:16 pm (UTC)Thank you for sharing the story of the student who was killed and their legacy. <3
(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 09:36 pm (UTC)I am really fortunate to have so much good support, including here on my journal.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-28 11:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-29 10:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-29 10:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-29 12:13 am (UTC)Wow. (Can't add anything else to what everyone else already said.) Proud of you.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-29 10:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-29 02:21 pm (UTC)Although I’m supposed to modestly say how medical school is the most severe and stressful training even imaginable... sounds like you had a much more severe & rude introduction to school, even without having to hold a pulpit.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-29 06:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-29 10:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-10-02 06:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-29 02:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-30 02:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-30 07:03 am (UTC)But also: yay!
I'm impressed by your aplomb and your success.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-10-11 08:25 pm (UTC)