Try a basso. I prefer the chazan to be clear, with words that can be understood by any ear. If, to get that, I have to suffer some unnecessary – but sometimes elegant – trills, okay.

Listening to mumbles instead of words is no fun – nigun excepted.

Ronnie

Mark and David:

How about a place on the blog for resumes and job postings?

Just kidding.

Sort of.

This is your student writing to you… I hear what you had to say about the brouhaha that was caused in your heart from the circumstances that impose on you; however, I certainly wanted to mention to you that you and no other rabbi at Yeshiva Atlanta made me feel close to Torah — you spoke my tongue, you were not presumptuous as most frum rabbis are, you do not take Torah and its teaching for granted — and I wanted to console you that at least in one student your teaching has found most cherished resonance, and I owe it to you. Your name rings when I share with many who was the rabbi at Yeshiva Atlanta with whom you were close. Aside from that, I wished to share with you some other thoughts on the matter at hand, namely, “How deep can you Love somebody?”, asked Leo Tolstoy — the answer is “Only as deep as you can suffer” — shallow people tend to fall off the boat from a mere trifle, and ask for a divorce when in reality the problem is insignificant. Likewise, the pain, the trial, the suffering is the conditioning that G-d imposes on some of his most worthy students to make them greater. As Ramchal writes, sometimes G-d brings you to the ground, so that he can rebuild you with a broader base, so that you can loom above other buildings.

Shabbat Shalom,

your student, in whose heart you will not be forgotten,

Boris

This does work for disciplined speakers with ad-lib-ability.

Whichever way, there has to be structure. If the talk might not be great, it can at least be good.

You make some good points. As far as the cutsie titles go,I think they are often a necesity since we live in a world of sound bytes and shorter attention spans. That doesn’t mean that we need to dumb down the shiurim but it often does mean that the cutsey title will bring more people out to learn Torah. I do agree that we generally need to be given more info on the topic.

As a bit of a public speaker myself (those who have heard me, please hold the jeers and virtual rotten tomatoes) I think that a script is often a bad idea since it tends to lock the speaker into a mode that often robs him of the free form and ad libbing that make for a great speech. I usually script my speech, rehearse from the script and gradually wean myself from it to the point that I can deliver the speech without the script. I then make a written “roadmap” highlighting the major points and transitions of the speech. That walks the line betweeen a rote script and freedom to change words, descriptions or even points on the fly.

We could also benefit from fewer cutesy titles for lectures, and more advance information on what will actually be covered. Speakers should be encouraged to work from a script (the really good ones know this already). Speakers should not have to rush at the end to the punch line because of poor pacing or organization.

If the speaker slips in a negative reference to any Jewish group or person (not a good idea in general, but unfortunately common) there had better be enough question time for the other point of view to be heard. I’ve been at one talk in Shul where a visiting rabbi who should have known better ridiculed a Gadol of a few decades ago; I felt as if I needed to take a shower after his presentation, for this and other reasons, to remove the “tumah”.

I don’t think that the popular lecturers on the Frum circuit are of the same ilk, but part of Kavod HaTorah is establishing a hirearchy and pecking order. Chazal tell us that Dayonim in the Sanhedrin were seated according to scholarly rank with the least august sitting at the ends of the table and the most illustrious towards the middle. As you mentioned recently in another thread, in order to avoid the mistakes of thinking that the Rambam was wrong or that Rav Akiva Eiger was superficial it’s vital to establish who the “Rav Akiva Eigers” are. I know this may sound Orwellian but some Talmidei Chachamim (and their opinions) are more equal than others.

How ironic – I was an entertainment attorney for nearly 25 years and I spent a great deal of time negotiating credit clauses and calculating star’s “marquis value” and fighting how big their names should be on the screen, the placement, duration and “most favored nations” that no one’s credits could be better than theirs. I thought when I moved away from that world that I could use Moshe Rabbenu’s model “M’chani na misifr’cha – write me out of the book” meaning that bottom line – it wasn’t all just about him. I’m comforted to learn that the skills I picked up in that world might still be put to use :)

Another seemingly difficult scenario is for mothers who must care for their young children on the Yom Tovim instead of being able to attend inspiring davening in shul. That was a hard one for me many moons ago. Took many years of work to appreciate the value and privilege of being able to care for childrens needs instead of being in shul on Rosh Hashona or Yom Kippur, or for shorter periods of time. Also work to stir ones self to as much intense and meaningful prayer as one is able to alone. Now, looking back, I have learned so much about what is truly important, about how we grow, and don’t always realize it until later.

The main purpose of a shiur is clearly the Torah learned and the intangible (i.e. not measurable) spiritual benefit derived.

However, that does not mean that we would fly Rabbi Frand in from Baltimore to address a crowd of 5 people, although those 5 people would certainly be learning Torah and accruing spiritual benefit.

So although every time Torah is learned there is immeasurable spiritual benefit, other more mundane factors such as the time spent and kavod of the speaker, the time of those involved in the project, the cost, the number attending, etc.. must be taken into consideration when evaluating whether to take on the project.

Regarding Altruism -there will always be those that are less fortunate and those that are more fortunate-its a universally applicable given. It gets tricky when that is incorporated into the “Y am I doing this” equation. The martini glass half full or it was meant to be slogan definitely messes with free will/choice/effort and predestined hard coded facts – the four nebulous and fluffy components of that ubiquitous concept called destiny.
What makes St. Louis the winning city answer? Remote location kiruv options are endless-you can apply the same reasoning to any given city or town from Neversink, NY to Truth or Consequence, NM to Bangor Maine.

One cant ever really get all cozy and comfortable with the one size fits all slippers and flip flops of altruism . There are other sizes/manufacturers/sources of Altruism and the competition to consider.You can even outsource your altruistic instincts to third world countries and give mass production a whole new global redefining connection tag, by becoming an actual manufacturer of altruism and branch out into related products like care and concern and in the process eliminating overall middleman costs and reaching so many more end users. Or reaching end users that are not usually part of the general marketing campaign and targeted end user Altruism R. Us connection program. Its hard knowing what the right thing to do is or what you were meant to be doing according to g-d.