People of the Link @ LimmudBayArea 2012

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People of the Link

Estee Solomon Gray @estee

the inaugural :)Asilomar Conference CenterPresident’s Weekend 2012

@PeopleOfTheLink

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“People of the Book” NOT

9th c. Quran Napoleon

“eglise”

NOT


Jonathan Rosen, 2000 Charles Kadushin,


InterTwined R. Justin Stewart www.rjustin.com


http://www.rjustin.com/


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At the center of the Limmud experience

is a key but often overlooked attribute

of Jewish learning: everyone can be a

teacher and everyone must be a learner


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As much as Limmuds around the

world are connected, they also

reflect their own communities.

Hence Limoud, Limmoed, & Limud.


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Every Limmud is literally produced by its participants.

As much as Limmuds around the

world are connected, they also

reflect their own communities.

Hence Limoud, Limmoed, & Limud.


From the outset, Judaism has predicated its survival on education. Not education in the narrow, formal sense of acquisition of knowledge, but something altogether more vast.

Indeed, the word ‘education’ is altogether inadequate to describe Judaism’s culture of study and debate, its absorption of texts, commentaries and counter-‐commentaries, its devotion to literacy and lifelong learning.

Descartes said: ‘I think therefore I am.’ A Jew would say, ‘I learn therefore I am.’

Jonathan SacksChief Rabbi of the UK

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in CHEVRUTA, please

1. How does one know one is a physicist ?

2. How does one know one is a Jew ?

What does this teach us about learning ?

using your own life & identity(s) as text,

8-10 mins


Humans are built to learn.

learning

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http://wenger-trayner.comEtienne Wenger

social animals›❯


http://wenger-trayner.com/


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Where Learning Happens

COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE





CoP Definition #1 (“In Real Life”)

John Seely Brown

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http://www.johnseelybrown.com/




“ .. for the first time, we have the technology

that starts to honor the power and role of

the emergent parts of an organization.”

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1995


CoP Definition #2 (“On One Leg”*)

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“A social history of learning that has become a social structure.”

*after Hillel





CoP Definition #2 (“On One Leg”*)

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“A social history of learning that has become a social structure.”

*after Hillel





Six Degrees of Canadian Cyclinghttp://www.flickr.com/photos/gordonr/4194608074/


http://www.flickr.com/photos/gordonr/4194608074/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gordonr/4194608074/



Network of Practice

19*after Hillel

“An extended social history of learning that

has become an extended social structure.”


How Learning Actually Happens

participation reification

meaning

identity

practice

practice

knowing in action

innovation learning


Arnold Eisen, Chancellor of Jewish Theological Seminary speaking to MPJCDS board, c1997

To see oneself as a Jew is to see oneself as part of a conversation.

A conversation that extends over time, space, media, generations ...

In fact, Judaism IS the conversation.


http://pennhillel.org/files/u64/SNL_brochure_pics__4_smaller.jpg

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Jewish Learning

chevruta

va’ad

beit midrash

... DialogueMakloket Hiddush

Peer Learning Discipleship




“Hevruta: From Study to Action” summer/fall 2011

‣ movement between intellectual discussion & personal contemplation

‣ cultivation of compassionate listening

‣ deliberate partnering - paving the way for critical relationships

‣ ideas are multifaceted and complex

‣ responsibility for the other

Maya Bernstein


Jewish Practice

Christianity puts a premium on belief. Piety is determined by how committed one is to the belief in God and in Jesus as Savior. Yet, belief, in many Christian views, is not something that the individual achieves by his/her own efforts. Rather, belief (or faith) is a gift or grace of God that helps one find Truth and thus achieve personal salvation.

Judaism puts primacy on action and not belief. It puts supreme emphasis on imitatio dei. Judaism is a call to turn all actions in the everyday world into moments that transcend the mundane and find higher meaning and significance—acts of holiness. The centerpiece of holiness is not prayer to God or belief in God; rather, it is the performance of mitzvot... the halakhah (literally “the way”), which is the holy practice that leads to salvation (which though in Christianity generally means “saving” in Judaism can be more likened to tikkun olam—or repairing the world).

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LEARN OR DIE: COVENANTAL COMMUNITIES AS A NEW APPROACH TO HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT,

PhD dissertation, 2008, School of Education, Indiana University

Josh Plaskoff


"Renew Our Days as of Old": Innovation as a Metric of Jewishness

God innovates in the act of b’reishit bara ... the rabbis interpret this cosmogenic moment as one of innovation more than creation: God makes new within known frameworks and using preexisting elements. Human creative acts .... must follow the same rules.

The language of innovation is not merely faddish but instead is integral to the processes of Jewishness

.the ability to effectively stand with one’s feet in the past while seeing beyond it to the present and future ..

the hiddush (makes new)

The halaKhic system at it core entails an innovative process of ‘making new’ ancient ideas by applying them to contemporary circumstances.

Yehuda Kertzer

A Tradition of Innovation

Journal of Jewish Communal ServiceWinter/Spring 2011. Volume 86, No. 1/2.

the taqqanah (fix)


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Silicon Valley Learning/Practice

Technology evolves much as a coral reef builds itself from activities of small organisms — it creates itself from itself; and all technologies are descended from earlier technologies

“combinatorial evolution”

With domains, what comes into being is not a new device or method, but a new vocabulary for expression -- a new language for ‘programming’

new functionalities in. And this happens by slow emergence.

a constant re-expressing or re-domaining of old tasks — accounting, or transportation, or medical diagnostics — within new worlds of the possible.”

- ... not a magical, linear process marked by a series of “Eureka!” moments. ..

- more like the way a system of legal codes forms: slow, organic, & cumulative.

at the interstices between disciplines and sectors


People of the Link

The link, not the book, is (and always has been)

the core of Judaism.

InterTwined , R. Justin Stewart ( www.rjustin.com )




People of the Link

The link, not the book, is (and always has been)

the core of Judaism.

practice

value

meaning

concept▲





From

covenant & commandment to

community, commentary & conversation,

the most basic acts of Jewish life are all

forms of linking.

textlearningleadershipprayerpracticepeoplehood

.....


Even the Book is Linked. 28




NODENODE

TIE

relationshipconnection

activity

LINK


covenant

a thick, bidirectional tie the most profound of relationships


covenant

commandedness


NODENODE

Link

person self

person person

person community

person G-d


commentary, conversation

People of the Link


community, authority

People of the Link


Ruth

conversion, affiliationPeople of the Link


Link

radical thought


Link

radical thought


Link

(a mutually interactive verb: entailing an interdependency between two subjects, each being the object for the other. )

radical thought


The closest we can come to thinking about God is as a process rather than a being.

We can think of it as “be-ing,” as verb, rather than noun ...

We might call It God-ing ...


From

covenant & commandment to

community, commentary & conversation,

the most basic acts of Jewish life are all

forms of linking.

textlearningleadershipprayerpracticepeoplehood

.....


Even the Book is Linked. 38




why ?


Three Eras of Jewish HistoryThree Stages of Covenant Rabbi Yitz Greenberg





[LAY? ]



Link !


omg-d moments (Aspen 1996)

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‣‘The Jews’ actually skipped the whole pyramid hierarchy thing.

‣ We’ve been living & evolving radically linked architectures for millennia.

‣ (But evidently lost our language for it along the way. )


“Judaism has always been a religion of grassroots organizing and the rabbinic model of the 20th century synagogue is perhaps the most foreign to the traditional Jewish heritage.

The real question is not how are independent minyanim new, but how are suburban synagogues -‐ a product of early to mid-‐twentieth century -‐ a departure from a Jewish organizing heritage shared by ... dozens of Jewish communal structures of years past.

There is no new “big idea”; there is just investment in the old, but in a serious, meaningful, and thoughtful way.”’


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New/old language: The Networking of Knowledge

“ We thought that knowledge was scarce, when in fact it was just that our shelves were too small. Our new knowledge is not even a set of works. It is an infrastructure of connection.”

“ Traditional knowledge is what you get when paper is its medium... an accident of paper.”

“Networked knowledge is less certain but more human. Less settled but more transparent. Less reliable but more inclusive. Less consistent but far richer. It feels more natural because the old ideals of knowledge were never realistic...”


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New/old language: The Networking of Knowledge

“ The smartest person in the room is the room itself: the network that joins the people and ideas in the room and connects to those outside of it. It’s not that the network is becoming a conscious super-brain. Rather, knowledge is becoming inextricable from - literally unthinkable without - the network that enables it.”


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“To think that knowledge itself is shaped like books is to marvel that a rock fits so well in its hole in the ground.”

David Weinberger , Too Big To Know


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“To think that knowledge itself is shaped like books is to marvel that a rock fits so well in its hole in the ground.”

“To think that Judaism itself is made of its institutions is to ...

David Weinberger , Too Big To Know


learningleadershipfundingprayerpracticepeoplehood .....

InterTwined , R. Justin Stewart ( www.rjustin.com )46

(invitation to reconsider )

People of the Link




Link= (LIMMUD = learning)

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As Jews, Link is one of our native national languages. But, as with Hebrew, we need to relearn how to speak it.



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As Jews, Link is one of our native national languages. But, as with Hebrew, we need to relearn how to speak it.

To educate a Jew is to bring him/her into the Jewish community of practice and to link him/her to the larger network that is the Jewish people.

- Josh Plaskoff, Estee Solomon Gray, NATE conference, Feb 2011


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Go Forth and

Link !


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Appendices


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Judaism as CoP/NoP

content relationship praxis

reification participation

MEANING IDENTITYLEARNING


JUDAISM COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE

■ Learning is the root process ...■ “I learn therefore I am.”

■ ... out of which emerges community, meaning, identity, practice. ■ and not only individual communities, but whole landscapes, whole peoples

■ The socialness of it all! ■ Both the engine & the output of learning are social. ■ Jews are always negotiating of meaning !

■ The primacy of practice over belief ■ Removing the hyphen in Judaeo-Christian ■ The primacy and extensibility of active link / covenant / commandment / community

■ Distributed authority and multiple global/local forms of power ■ Since the destruction of the Temple, if not before ■ The primacy and extensibility of active link / covenant / commandment ■ People of the Link

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CONGRUITY

Estee’s professional/community life 1970-2010


20001995 2005 2010 53
