Last week Congregation Emeth, South County’s original Jewish
community, held its annual Scholar in Residence program.
Nearly every June since 1984 these retreats in various serene
settings have featured scholars addressing the congregation’s
members and guests on various aspects of Jewish life.
Last week Congregation Emeth, South County’s original Jewish community, held its annual Scholar in Residence program.
Nearly every June since 1984 these retreats in various serene settings have featured scholars addressing the congregation’s members and guests on various aspects of Jewish life. Previous years’ topics have included prayer, Zionism, Torah, music and humor.
Each weekend features lectures, worship services and walks through the beautiful surroundings (this year the Mt. Madonna Conference Center). There also are meals and special activities like crafts and games to occupy children while adults participate in the sessions.
According to Rabbi Yitzhak Miller, the congregation has been involved in a good deal of study on weighty topics during the past year, so it was decided to focus the retreat on a lighter, community-building topic.
This year’s scholar was Erica Lann-Clark, an internationally traveled performer and educator who tells personal stories, myths and folklore from a “modern, non-mainstream American” point of view.
Her daily two-hour radio show on KKUP (91.5 FM) brings stories to Silicon Valley commuters, and she has published short stories, poetry and plays.
One of Lann-Clark’s goals, which she shares with librarians, school teachers and other professional storytellers, is to restore our rich oral tradition of literature, “to get stories out of books and into mouths.”
Each session started with Lann-Clark recounting to her audience some of the hundreds of stories she has committed to memory.
These ranged from a Jewish wisdom tale to folk tales from other ethnic traditions to personal events from her own life.
But the weekend was not for entertainment only. Part of the schedule was taken up by a workshop to help the participants become better storytellers themselves. She asked people about when they tell stories and for examples of stories they tell.
One point that became obvious is that story-telling is not just the entertaining, literary-based activity we first think of. Most often our stories take the form of anecdotes, brief narratives of particular incidents told to make a point or clarify a situation.
Several strategies were taught to improve storytelling skills. One was “Creative Interrupter” which works on two narrative skills: the elements of surprise and tying up loose threads (“free association and reincorporation, the underpinning for simile and metaphor”). In pairs, one partner is the storyteller who is repeatedly interrupted by a “word-thrower” who gives random, unlikely words periodically which the story-teller must incorporate into the story. Partners change roles and begin again each 30 to 45 seconds.
Another time participants formed couples to tell each other personal stories based on two prompts:
• Tell about a time you were locked in or locked out and how
that changed you.
• Tell about the first time you experienced being Jewish and
how you are different now.
• Those who attended this retreat seemed to thoroughly enjoy the weekend of sharing their stories and hearing others’ experiences.
For more information about the various programs available from Erica Lann-Clark call (831) 479-1874 or e-mail la******@****io.com.
