Decisions, more decisions
Sunday, May 13th, 2007 04:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lethargic_manSo, having ended up on the Conservative Yeshiva Summer Session I rather by default (it's the course I'd have attended if I had got into Kelim, and, obviously, this way I'll be attending it with people I know from Marom), I now have to decide what options to select.
I had been thinking of doing the ulpan [Hebrew as a spoken language] in the mornings, despite the fact I'm going all this way to attend a yeshiva for Jewish studies rather than Israeli. It's one of my regrets that I didn't put more effort into learning Hebrew on my year off, and maintaining what I had learned afterwards*. If I did take this option, I would have to make an effort to try and keep my Hebrew up afterwards. Part of this could be by browsing Hebrew-language websites, part by listening to online Hebrew radio stations (once I'd got them to work in Firefox, on Linux), but I would also need to find people to talk with in Hebrew as well.
That is, if I choose this option. I'm not sure how much I could achieve in just three weeks; and it would mean losing out on the chance to study Talmud. Oh, decisions, decisions!
* At the end of my year off, I could just about get by in conversation. Looking through my notes now, I see I still retain a lot of the basic vocabulary, but I have to think to summon up every word, whereas back then not only did individual words come naturally, but so did common phrases—whilst most of my thinking remained in English, bits of it were in Hebrew.
For the Sunday/Tuesday/Thursday early afternoon slot, I think I'd go for the Mishna study on בְּרָכוֹת. For the late afternoon slot, I really don't know. For Monday/Wednesday early afternoons, I think I'd go for the tefillah sessions (though how much would that have in common with the Mishna sessions?); for the late afternoons it's got to be our old friend (or enemy) the problem of evil.
I had been thinking of doing the ulpan [Hebrew as a spoken language] in the mornings, despite the fact I'm going all this way to attend a yeshiva for Jewish studies rather than Israeli. It's one of my regrets that I didn't put more effort into learning Hebrew on my year off, and maintaining what I had learned afterwards*. If I did take this option, I would have to make an effort to try and keep my Hebrew up afterwards. Part of this could be by browsing Hebrew-language websites, part by listening to online Hebrew radio stations (once I'd got them to work in Firefox, on Linux), but I would also need to find people to talk with in Hebrew as well.
That is, if I choose this option. I'm not sure how much I could achieve in just three weeks; and it would mean losing out on the chance to study Talmud. Oh, decisions, decisions!
* At the end of my year off, I could just about get by in conversation. Looking through my notes now, I see I still retain a lot of the basic vocabulary, but I have to think to summon up every word, whereas back then not only did individual words come naturally, but so did common phrases—whilst most of my thinking remained in English, bits of it were in Hebrew.
For the Sunday/Tuesday/Thursday early afternoon slot, I think I'd go for the Mishna study on בְּרָכוֹת. For the late afternoon slot, I really don't know. For Monday/Wednesday early afternoons, I think I'd go for the tefillah sessions (though how much would that have in common with the Mishna sessions?); for the late afternoons it's got to be our old friend (or enemy) the problem of evil.
