Practical Rabbinics

About This Course

What’s practical rabbinics? Just ask ChatGPT, right?

Kidding!

But seriously, this is the job. The job you want to do. The lifecycle, the holidays, the Shabbat services, the pastoral care. But it’s also the other part of the job — the boards, the buildings, and the baloney* that often comes with the job title rabbi.

The rabbinate demands a unique blend of academic knowledge, professional skills, personal wisdom, religious sensitivities, open mindedness, boundaries, friendship, mentorship and commitments that are wildly unrealistic for any human being. You have to be the pastor, the educator, the business person, the non-profit fundraiser, the center of the community (but don’t get an ego about it!), the lifecycle officiant and more. And you need to do all of this without burning out.

I’m here to help.

We will use a lot of role playing, Harvard Business School style case studies and perhaps some special guests to help us learn our way through this mixed bag of lessons collectively known as Practical Rabbinics.

Since pastoral care, homiletics and the business model innovation aspects of practical rabbinics are already covered in other courses, we’ll use this time to cover the items not otherwise discussed. I do recommend students take the other elective courses related to Practical Rabbinics such as Prepare Enrich, Spirituality, Health and Healing, and more.

Required Reading

There is NO REQUIRED READING to purchase. Past versions of the course have included the following, so I am keeping them here for your personal reflection only:

• Speed B. Leas, Discover Your Conflict Management Style.
• Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In.
• Gerald Bubis, The Director Had a Heart Attack and the President Resigned
• You may also be interested in picking up The Rebbe’s Army and other books found in Clergypreneur

I may also suggest other books along the way.

Course Outline

This course was designed by taking an actual nine hour day in the life of Rabbi Patrick and spreading it across nine weeks. Topics include:

• Welcome + Dealing With Imposter Syndrome
• The Life of a Rabbi with Rebbetzin Stefanie Papps
• Active Listening
• The “Business” Stuff
• Typical Conflicts & Their Outcomes
• Lifecycle (in honor of Rabbi Bill Kurry, z”l)
• Community Relations
• Event Management & Promotions

How the Course Works

Consider this the Practical Rabbinics Talmud. My content in the Mishnah. You are the Gemara and the post-talmudic commentaries and codicies.

Coursework will be posting different kinds of videos in the Practical Rabbinics Slack channel. You can use Slack’s built-in video recording feature for your posts, but since most are 10-minutes, and Slack only allows 5-minutes, this may not be practical. You can use your phone, YouTube, or something else if needed — but ALWAYS reply using the built in feature. It does not have to be high production value — no Hollywood stars needed! I recommend practicing a few times just to make sure you know how. Lean on support@jewishpluralism.org for tech support if needed.

My goal is to see you having conversations asynchronously with me and your fellow students, not just posting work and hoping “that’s enough”. Here is what a week looks like:

Monday: Review the content in the unit, then give yourself some time to think about it.

Tuesday by 9PM Eastern: everyone must have at least posted their video assignment.

Wednesday: give video comments or ask thoughtful questions of at least three of your fellow students. I will be posting comments on your work during this time as well

Occasionally I will ask you to do an additional, small task in Slack or to take a quiz. You’ll see it in the week’s work. Don’t worry – no surprises.

A piece of advice: before you record your videos, WRITE NOTES and refer to them. Trying to cold record without remembering what you read/watched and trying to relay information to me and your classmates is not effective.

Live Classes

If there is interest, I will do some Live sessions. I have included video samples from previous cohorts in this course, just for you to review. They are listed as “Archive” and are not coursework for you.

While it is not mandatory to come, I’d highly recommend it. The live classes will be based on what YOU have said matters most to you in this course. We will use Slack huddles for our meetings, so there is no link or password.

AI Policy

With the exception of Week 7 where we will discuss technology, AI is not to be used in any way, shape or form. Students who are found to be using AI will fail this class automatically and be referred to our Director for further discussion.

Meet Your Instructor