Looking Forward to My Third AJS Conference

Having attended the Association of Jewish Studies Conference twice before, I am very much looking forward to being able attending a third time. Having first attended in 2008 in Washington, DC and attending the following year in Los Angeles, I am glad that it is returning to Southern California, enabling my attendance.

With it taking place in San Diego, it is easy for me to reach, travel-wise. Of course, I am also grateful to my wife allowing me to go and her taking our kids for those days.

I am curious to see who will be there. One thing I have already noticed is that several of those presenting papers are people whom I know and are my peers, which will be great and did not happen in either of the previous conferences.

I am greatly curious to see how different the tweeting is. When I attended in 2008 and 2009, while I was engaged on Twitter about the conference, it seemed there weren’t many others engaging in it.  However, I am hopeful that there will be more discourse taking place in that space about the conference.

One thing to which I am looking forward is being in a space where there is such great intellectual discourse, curiosity, and scholarship, and being able to soak in it and to be enriched through the experience. I love such cerebral gatherings and events, especially on topics of great interest to me. 

I am also looking forward to re-connecting with people who are engaged in these endeavors and whom I haven’t connected with in-person (as opposed to online (primarily Facebook)). It will be great to be enriched through these conversations and see how my knowledge and experience will be enriched through these interactions.

I am most looking forward to sessions on rabbinics (such as rabbinic literature, Talmud, etc.), but – as in my attending previous AJS conferences – also seeking to go beyond just that field. Obviously, I am also curious in Bible, but we shall see which other panel discussions in other fields I attend.

Finally, for anyone who has read my previous blog posts here on attending AJS conferences (see below for a listing), will see that my writing style has greatly improved over the years since then. Also, I don’t plan on throwing all of my notes on to the screen. Furthermore, I think I took notes using pen and paper, then transcribed them, thus there are some non-sentences going on in some of those posts. Instead, I am aspiring to take notes and do writing on my tablet, which will yield an easier transferring of notes than transcribing. Also, I don’t think I will be throwing all of the panels on the same post.  Hopefully, if I am able to compose them well enough, I will post them separately on Matters of Interest.

In any event, I am greatly looking forward to attending!
 

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Listing of previous posts on AJS Conferences:

• Day 3 of AJS Conference 2009
• Day 2 of AJS Conference 2009
• Day 1 of AJS Conference 2009
• Association of Jewish Studies Conference #41: I'm There
• Addendum to Thoughts on AJS Conference
• Brief Reflections on the Recent AJS Conference
• Day 3 of AJS Conference 2008
• Day 2 of AJS Conference 2008

Shepping Nahas for Rabbi Weiss: Musing on "Kiddush Open Orthodoxy" at the Hillel Institute

This week, Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life is holding its inaugural Hillel Institute, along with a Pre-Hillel Institute for new Hillel hirees that took place prior to the conference, which I am attending. One thing that has struck me is that a few people to whom I've introduced myself have remarked, once I identify which rabbinical school I attended, "I've not met a YCT guy I didn't like" or something along those lines. Although at first I caught myself wanting to facetiously say "You haven't met many have you?", I realized YCT does graduate good guys (which I like to call a 'kiddush Open Orthodoxy'). But it's not simply that, but also specifically within a Hillel context: that YCT graduates are excellent for enriching the lives of Jewish college students.
Moreover, there has recently been an explosion of YCT rabbis going into the campus rabbinate: there have been more graduates in the last two classes in the field than there were in the previous four. If you want numbers, out of the total 62 guys who have gone through the program and graduated, of the 20 graduates in the last two years, 7.5 of them have gone into the campus rabbinate (one of them is splitting his time between working in a shul and on campus), while six of the first 42 graduates went into it (and four remain in it at present).
And those numbers have been showing a little bit this week: the YCT guys are bringing a robust Judaism to the table. Interestingly, the primary theme for guided discussions this week has been balancing breadth and depth and, although Hillel has been working on the breadth aspect for years, the latter of which is something to where YCT graduates are poised to bring Jewish knowledge, wisdom, and tradition. What's fascinating to me is that, while a YCT student, I thought many times while in the course of discussions being held at school, speakers talking to us, or certain topics being tackled, we were at the forefront of rabbinic education and poised to lead the Jewish world to greater heights - but, at the time, it also seemed like mere pie-in-the-sky musings. However, seeing the YCT graduates here is definitely starting to make it seem a little bit more realistic.