thoughts on training up maggidim
B"H
A friend and mentor maggid asked me to write up my thoughts on requirements for training maggidim. As it is relevant to the conversation of just what a maggid is, and how maggidut differs from rabbinics, I'm posting it here. Some editing has been done to protect issues of confidentiality. All comments welcome!
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B”H
(--------), shalom shalom.
In my reply to your email I suggested that the first place to start for maggidic requirements is the ability to define what a maggid is. I wasn’t being funny. This is so important, without it I think a maggid is really dead in the water (so to speak.) In this reemerging field of maggidut there is a wide range of opinion about what exactly is a maggid, with each teacher/ school claiming its own definition. Storyteller? Rabbinic Pastor? Facilitator of Sacred Autobiography? Outreach Worker? Melamed? Personally, I think they are all true, since maggidut, like rabbinics or hazzinut, is A PROCESS. This is a very important statement, so important I’m putting it right up here at the beginning. Maggidut is a process that constantly informs the way that a maggid operates in the field. Understanding this from the start is crucial, as it also informs the way that a maggid learns the tools of the trade. When I study rabbinics, I am doing so through the eyes and needs of the maggid. I am learning (and teaching) the material from a different perspective than I would if I was studying to be a rabbi or a hazan, or possibly even a rabbinic pastor in the sense that institutions like ALEPH define that role. (Keeping in mind that there is a tremendous amount of crossover between the roles of rabbi/ hazan/ maggid/ pastor… and that the best rabbis are also maggidim, eh?)
What does this mean? A maggid’s primary job is to “Relate” to the people. To Relate. Everything must come through this perspective. When I am learning new material, I am constantly thinking about how to apply it in the field. Maggidut is not about performing, as can be the case with cantorial soloists, and not about executing, the case with rabbis who must form and hold the communal structure. The maggid must be a general practitioner whose skill sets and ability to perform on demand legitimate the maggid’s presence as a spiritual teacher and act as a vehicle for teaching. The maggid’s skills are not an end in themselves, but are vehicles to a higher end—being a relational mechanism between HaShem, the Jewish spiritual path/ tradition, and the everyday reality of people’s lives.
continued...
posted by Maggid Sarah @ 10/17/2006 02:05:00 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
If you don’t know something about Kabbalah, just the basics, you can’t be a maggid today. Period.
This is the only statement -- in what is, I should say, a very good and significant piece, kol hakavod! -- that does not square with my own experience practicing maggidut in the field. Some conversence in Chassidut does seem to be practically (though not philosophically) necessary, just because that is the living cultural vein of modern Jewry to which we've relegated all possession of our tradition that the individual soul is a living letter of Torah. But I don't believe that this tradition is based in Kabbalah, per se. Is it? My assumption is that it is Talmudic at the very latest -- though of course now I am questioning that assumption, and I can't recall an actual citation from the canonical literature.
Anyhow, I don't believe I have ever once employed specifically Kabbalistic language or reference in the course of maggidic ministry; because, I think, my outreach is typically not to Jews who speak that language. Why do you believe it is necessary? And what, exactly, is the working maggid's prerequisite literature within Kabbalah?
B"H
I don't think that Kabbalah is necessary, per se, for the unfolding of personal narrative... I was, though speaking to the training of maggidim who would be operating primarily as rabbinic pastors, and in this context the maggid will encounter so many questions about kabbalah, or need to interface with other congregants or communal elements that employ kabbalistic teachings and references, that to know nothing will leave the maggid without the language needed to navigate these conversations. Even just a working understand of the concept of the sefirot will help. (how will the maggid deal with counting the omer without being able to explain, in the most basic terms, the sefirot and there essences?)
Deeper levels of kabbalistic learning, you're right, are only necessary to the extent that the maggid will employ them in the field.
B"H
I don't think that Kabbalah is necessary, per se, for the unfolding of personal narrative... I was, though speaking to the training of maggidim who would be operating primarily as rabbinic pastors, and in this context the maggid will encounter so many questions about kabbalah, or need to interface with other congregants or communal elements that employ kabbalistic teachings and references, that to know nothing will leave the maggid without the language needed to navigate these conversations. Even just a working understand of the concept of the sefirot will help. (how will the maggid deal with counting the omer without being able to explain, in the most basic terms, the sefirot and there essences?)
Deeper levels of kabbalistic learning, you're right, are only necessary to the extent that the maggid will employ them in the field.
Do you think a rabbinic pastor needs to be more prepared to answer questions about the Sefirot, or about halakhic traditions or Jewish history or politics? I'm certainly not against some Kabbalah vocabulary being part of the maggid's basic Jewish literacy, but I still don't see what practical consideration would so privilege Kabbalah as being specially crucial, outside of the (small) Renewal subculture, aside from it being somewhat trendy.
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