Pesach Songs and Vocabulary

Yesterday, the 6th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan (coincidentally, the 6th day of April), we returned from our spring break vacation and set right in to preparing for Pesach, which begins just a week from this evening.

As usual, I began the Sunday sessions by reading from the novel, "The Family Y Aguilar." We are currently studying the Jews of Spain, and this novel provides detailed descriptions of what life was like for Crypto-Jews living there at the start of the 17th century, in constant fear of discovery by the Inquisition.

After cleaning our tables from the Goldfish snacks which the students enjoy while I read the story, we took about half an hour to review the 15 steps of the Pesach seder - the reason for, and "how-to" of each step. As we went along, I shared with the students which rituals the Crypto-Jews remembered and which they had forgotten after years of living without Haggadot, synagogues, Rabbis, Jewish calendars, and siddureem (prayer books). Thanks to the fact that the steps of the seder rhyme, and can be set to many tunes, the Crypto-Jews recalled all the steps, but could not recall the rituals that accompanied several of them. They devised new rituals for those they could not recall. Next Sunday we'll be re-creating an abridged version of a Crypto-Jewish seder in class both sessions, so the students will be able to experience the new rituals which many Jews of Sephardi heritage still practice today.

We then moved to our second classroom, set up for our Hebrew Through Movement exercises. For the past few sessions, I've been focusing on introducing Pesach vocabulary, and we've had a lot of fun in the process. Lots of photos are taken, but because of all the movement, so many of them come out blurred.  Here are a few of the more successful shots:

L'hadleek neirot shel yom tov (Light the holiday candles)

L'hareem kos shel Pesach (Raise the Pesach cup)

Leesh'foch ya'een shel Pesach ba'kos shel Pesach (Pour Pesach wine into the Pesach cup)

Koolam l'varech al neirot shel yom tov (Everyone bless the holiday candles)

Following our HTM exercises, Joel came to our classroom to teach us two Pesach songs. The first was the Crypto-Jewish melody for the 15 steps of the seder - a very simple and haunting melody. Once Joel was sure we could sing that melody on our own (which we'll sing at the seder next week), he taught us an even older melody that originated with the Jews of Babylonia (whom we recently studied). We also had fun putting the names of the steps to other recognizable tunes - the William Tell overture, the Star Spangled Banner, and Tango Jealousi. The final song we learned yesterday was the Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) version of "Chad Gadya," the final song in the Pesach Haggadah - "One Kid."  This song was originally composed in Europe sometime during the Middle Ages, written in Aramaic. The song made its way down to Spain, and became a very special song for the Crypto-Jews, who envisioned themselves in the kid's role of victim and ultimate victor.  The song is "Un Cavritico" (A Little Kid), and we were able to capture Joel teaching this song in the following videos.