Tonight I'm teaching my first class since summer 2010. It's a class on Jewish Women's History for a local temple's adult education academy. As of Tuesday, it almost didn't happen. My current enrollment is 4, maybe 5. We need a minimum number of 8 to make the class happen. When they called to let me know I didn't have enough people to make the class worthwhile (and to pay my salary), I offered to teach for 1/2 price. Hell, I need something on my resume, I'm pretty desperate for adult conversation, I love this material and even 1/2 wages are more than I'm making right now. My hope is that news of the class of will spread by word of mouth (it's a temple, we're Jews, we talk, this whole 'word of mouth' thing actually works) - and next year I'll schedule at a better time (after the snowbirds arrive for the winter but
before they leave to escape the warm temps).
A few months ago I had a conversation with a faculty member in which I said I was hoping to find part time work (any time work, really) by telling employers that I was essentially cheap labor because they wouldn't need to provide me any health care benefits. He pointed out that I should stick to my guns and not do that because it undercut the labor market as a whole and devalued my worth. He's right. Absolutely right. But he's also a comfy tenured faculty member of a large public U. And the same person who keeps telling me to just hold on, keep working (for nothing), and one day a job will come (after I do academic work, conferences, publishing, etc, full time, while waiting for my Prince... er, I mean.. job, to come).
So I'm sorry for personally undervaluing academic labor - but if it allows me to teach the class, and helps me spread the word around so I can get more enrollment and teach again for full wages next fall, I call it a win. Perhaps a funny definition of "win", but I'll take what I can get.
Wage politics aside - I'm stoked about this class. I love the material. Working with adults who actually want to be in the class is wonderful. I even made a cake for the first class and intend to bring a sweet and tea to subsequent meetings (though I'll do pretzels and tea for Rahel).We'll read the memoirs of 4 women, all pinpointed to important points in Jewish history:
Glükel of Hameln - the early modern
Rahel Levin Varnhagen and Hannah Arendt - Enlightenment and Assimilation
Fanny Lewald - Assimilation, Emancipation, Feminism
Etty Hilesum - Holocaust, Judenrat, "the thinking heart of the barracks"
What, you've never heard of any of these women? Yeah, they are often mere footnotes in general history books, and only held as examples of exceptional women in the sausage party that tends to be Jewish History (ok, weird analogy there...). But they are thoughtful, insightful, wonderful and horrible reflections of what it meant to be female and Jewish at important moments in European History. I can't wait to introduce a new group of women to these long-dead "friends".
