Questions For Lifelong Learners:
Sheldon Enger and Alyn Essman

Two successful businessmen, one retired and one semi-retired, talk about their passion to keep learning and why Washington University College's Lifelong Learning Institute fits the bill.

Washington University College’s Lifelong Learning Institute is for those aged 55+, many of whom are Jewish, retired and want to continue their learning. Henrietta Friedman, a Federation donor, is the founder and “godmother of LLI” said Alyn Essman, LLI student and facilitator. He describes the students as a mixed group of very smart people from all walks of lives. “Although the average age of the student is late 70s, they are as animated and excited to learn as they could possibly be. Ten percent are on walkers, in wheelchairs or using canes but their minds are razor sharp.” “Generally speaking, course leaders aren't necesssarily educators but are professionals in various fields. Many have a significant background on a topic to lead the study program,” said Sheldon Enger, who facilitates “The Collision of Judaism and Modernity” course.

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Sheldon Enger, a management consultant with an MBA from Wharton, is semi-retired from his work executing strategies for various mid-sized corporations. He’s currently transitioning into his “next life.” Part of that transition involves a strong commitment to learning and teaching a course on Judaism at LLI.

How did you hear about LLI?

My wife Rochelle knew people who had taken LLI classes and found them stimulating. I decided to enroll two years ago and took something that’s the opposite of anything I’d ever studied – a course about decoding genes. Ben Borowsky, MD, (my doctor) was the facilitator. From there, I took a class on opera.

How did you become an LLI facilitator?

At the time I enrolled at LLI, was teaching at the Central Agency for Jewish Education. In teaching at CAJE – and in general, I have found that many people who either didn’t attend a Yeshiva or Jewish day school, know precious little about Judaism. When I’d teach at CAJE or talk to friend, they often said they’d like to know more. There seems to be a huge vacuum of knowledge among Jews in general about post-Biblical Judaism. We study Biblical Judaism in Sunday school but few people understand what happened to Judaism after the destruction of the second temple. My course is designed to remedy that -- in part.

Where did the interest in teaching your Judaism class at LLI come from?

While taking a course on Arab terrorism at LLI, many of the non-Jews in the class asked me to talk about Israel and the Muslim world as part of the discussion. They knew I knew a lot and said to me, “Why don’t you teach a course on Judaism. I’d like to know more about it?” So, I began teaching “The Collision of Judaism and Modernity” at LLI this semester.

What makes you qualified to facilitate this class?

I am qualified to teach this course because I was a Yeshiva student in St. Louis for five years. I had also done a great deal of studying on my own. I began to teach this course at a small college – St. Norbert’s College – in Green Bay, Wisc. I was going there a lot for a client. So, that’s where I started teaching the class, honed my skills and fine tuned the curriculum

So, how has the class worked out at LLI? Is it successful?

Between 40 to 50 signed up and one third of the class is non-Jewish. They are now going to make me part of their curriculum, and the class will be offered again in the spring of 2009. So, yes, it’s been a successful venture.

Can you summarize what your class is about?

It deals with the last two centuries of Judaism from emancipation to the emergence of Zionism to the Holocaust to the foundation of Israel and the Arab-Israel conflict to Judaism in America. It’s a close look at what have been the major events that have altered Jewish history as a result of Jews breaking out of the ghettos of Europe.

As a facilitator of a course on Judaism, what is your role exactly?

We start with the premise that people aren’t going to know much about the topic. I will begin with a lecture or activity to get people into understanding such concepts as the Zionist experience. For this I assigned the students different roles: some were rabbis, some were Theodor Herzl and so forth. I then posed the question: “How would your character see a certain issue and what would his or her position be?” This was to get them into the discussion. Then I’d throw out questions and go from there.

How often did the class meet?

Once a week for eight weeks.

What was the preparation for the class?

I developed reading materials and an assortment of information so the participants would have some background on a topic – assuming they read the material I suggested. And most of them did read it. For some topics, I showed them a video such as the PBS documentary: Civilization and Jews, narrated by Abba Eban.

What have been some of the highlights of being a facilitator?

A Jewish woman who took my class came up to me several months after the class ended.  (She typified one of my concerns about most of us having a poor background in Judaism.) When I ran into her, she said to me, “I want to thank you for doing that class because ever since, I’ve been more interested in Jewish events. I’m now reading everything I can get my hands on.” That is my objective – to have Jews take a greater interest and greater pride in our history and background.

Are you evaluated as a facilitator?

Every facilitator is evaluated by the students. I could tell from the reaction of the people in my class that it was working. They asked great questions and they were so engaged. I got that instantaneous positive feedback. Also, several people came up to me at the end of the class and said, “Let’s keep it going.” I said, “I don’t have any more material…but I can get it.”

What has been most rewarding?

I knew LLI had a large Jewish population. I thought only Jews would take my course, but that wasn’t the case. The non-Jewish population – which comprised about a third of the class – was every bit as interested in learning about Judaism. To me this demonstrates some of the potential of living in a pluralistic society. If it’s going to work, we really need to understand other. I think this course is one tiny contribution to that.

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Alyn Essman, who is a former Jewish Federation President (1989-91), spent almost 50 years building a financial career. A CPA by training and former Chair of CPI Corporation, he leaped headlong into the unknown when he signed up for LLI. He said that he traded in his financial career for a different path – the study of great literature: Faulkner, Shakespeare, Melville, Joyce and many other authors who have come alive for him. “Since signing up for LLI, I have read more books in the past four years than I had read previously in my entire life.” Essman has taken 8 or 9 literature classes each semester, has been a facilitator, learned on his own and now serves on the LLI Steering Committee. 

How did you become involved in LLI?

A friend recommended it about four years ago.

What was the first course you took and what was it like? Were you intimidated?

It was a reading of Faulkner – which was interesting, challenging and something I was totally unacquainted with. The facilitator – Larry Kahn, a retired pediatrician, was extraordinary. It was magical. We had about 28 people in the class – people who had studied Faulkner for years and those like me who were experiencing it for the first time. Everyone in the class was interesting and literate. As I sat through the course, I thought, “How do these people know so much about literature and I know absolutely nothing?”  I had avoided literature for all my school years; I used to find reading difficult and tedious. That’s all changed.

Did you take other literature courses?

Yes. I followed Larry into some Shakespeare classes where we read plays and discussed the times and history. I found it to be interesting and that’s when Larry invited me to join him to do some facilitation. 

So, that’s how you became both a facilitator and a student?

I joined two other presenters to facilitate a class on Shakespeare’s Tempest. And from there Larry Kahn invited me to participate with him in a course on Virgil’s Aeneid. We read it together and had a class of 20-30 people. It was two eight-week sessions. I liked the Aeneid so much that I went back and read the Iliad and Odyssey for fun. We had a great time. In the Aeneid class, we invited the head of the ancient literature department at Wash U. to speak and hoped that we could get a half hour of his time. He sat with us for two hours regaling us on the Aeneid. We asked if he minded coming to our class to work with seniors. He said, “It’s a delight to work with people who really want to participate.”

In the second session we brought over a woman who had taught the Aeneid to high school students for about 14 years. She was in her 50s – 5 feet of dynamite and she bubbled around the classroom for an hour or two talking about Women and the Aeneid. And someone said to her: “I feel we’re really imposing on you.” “Imposing,” she said, “I go through this course every year with kids, some of whom who don’t really want to be there learning. It’s great to be with people who ask questions and go into detail.”

What did you facilitate next?

A course on Joseph Conrad. Then, I asked the class what they wanted to do next and the concensus was James Joyce’s short stories. Not Ulysses. I read that on my own, plowing through it for four or five weeks with an explanatory volume by my side. I wanted to do a class on that, but it didn’t gel.

Where did this passion come from suddenly to read great literature?

I took a risk. And the more I learned, the more liked it. I also facilitated a course with another woman – a high school English teacher – on Robert Frost. I had read a Frost bio and fell in love with it.

Did you facilitate more courses? What were the challenges?

Larry and I did Dante’s Divine Comedy and after four or five weeks, we turned to each other one day and said, “What are two nice Jewish boys doing…40,000 lines of poetry, special characterizations and all about the roots of Catholicism.” We had a class that followed us for three sessions: Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. People stuck with it for the whole time. We had a half-dozen devout Catholics in that course. At the end of each session, I asked them how they thought we were doing. They said: “Jewish guys or not, you’re doing great and I don’t think we’d have gotten through class without you.”

What other challenges have you faced as a facilitator?

We did an experimental course –where we had a whole group of about 8 facilitators who joined together and did Moby Dick. It was a 16-week program. I read it three times –the first two times I could have thrown it away, but reading and analyzing it with the class, discussing the language and the overtones was a delight. The class discussion and interplay between the individuals who were reading and analyzing it from different points of view was magnetic. We even had a guy in the Moby Dick class with a nautical background who did a session on knot tying and brought in knots for everyone.

Did you become a facilitator of any of your facilitators?

I took a class from a Marilyn Mackris who was teaching philosophy from Socrates to Sartre. We studied the philosophers from the ancient Greeks to Freud, Kant, Jung, Sartre and up to the current philosophers. Then, Marilyn signed up for my class on F. Scott Fitzgerald. And she loves it. We did two novels: The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night. We do a lot of oral reading. When we got to the end of week 7, we realized we didn’t finish the book. The class wanted to extend the course a week. And we did.

Does what you learn push you to read things you never thought you’d tackle?

Definitely. After my philosophy class with Marilyn, she suggested that I read Richard Tarnis’ Passion of the Western Mind. I got the book and started rumbling through its 700 pages. The more I read, the more I got into it and couldn’t stop. 

What piqued your interest in such a tome?

There’s an inertia that binds all of us and makes it kind of impossible to make us get going. But, if you enjoy something and are encouraged by others, it becomes exciting enough to command your attention.

Have you taken what you’ve learned and applied it to your life in any way?

I took a class in Darwin –The Voyage of the Beagle taught by Sam Zibit, former head of the Jewish Center for the Aged. It was fascinating. I finished and got a compendium of Darwin’s publications, sat down and plowed my way through the Origin of the Species. It took a couple of months. Now, my wife Marlyn and I are taking a cruise that will follow the Voyage of the Beatle…the route that  Darwin traveled.

What do you children and grandchildren think of your newfound passion?

They look at me..they’re students too…and they can’t believe what I’m doing. They’ll ask: “How many books are you reading?” I’ll have three or four books going at one time. I’ll read before bed at night and something for study during the day. I keep exploring new ideas and concepts. LLI has stimulated that.