End of an era

First, praise the LORD for a successful scholarship application for my upcoming course at Spertus, "Medieval Judaism." I already was receiving an automatic 1/3 reduction in tuition for being a full-time clergyperson, and an additional 1/3 will also be paid through the scholarship I just applied for. So, I just had to pay the remaining 1/3 tuition plus course materials, fees, etc.

The "end of an era" is that I'm using up the last $145 of my Americorps Education Award which I earned working at the Helpline in Indianapolis late in the previous millennium. And just in the nick of time, as I had seven years to use up my $2362.50, and those seven years end this Saturday! It sure came in handy - first I took two computer courses, then an online linguistics course, then it paid for my first two courses at Spertus. So thanks, Americorps, for helping me get started. And thanks, Spertus, for finding me financially and/or academically worthy of the scholarship help.

So now I await the arrival of my new course materials. It'll be interesting to see what I learn of Maimonides, Rashi, the Masoretes, etc. I'm interested in what kind of comparison/contrast can be made between Jewish and Christian modes of thought during the Medieval period. And I suspect there'll be a bit of Kabbalah as well. In my previous "Jewish Theology" course, I remember some rabbi being quoted as saying something like this: "People who study the Kabbalah without being thoroughly grounded in the Torah first are likely to go mad." Good advice. If I follow it, I just might, in a way, know Kabbalah even better than Madonna does.