What Does it Mean to Be Jewish?

Since we are still getting to know each other, I began our week day sessions by going around the room, asking each student to share his or her first name. As the students were sharing their names, Julie (my Tuesday co-teacher) and Donna (my Wednesday co-teacher) wrote the name on the whiteboard, under certain column headings. The students were asked to try to determine the pattern of the columns. There were nine different columns, and at the end of the exercise each day, several students recognized that each column represented a different language of origin of the name.

Tuesday's students and...

Wednesday's students. We labelled the columns after the students discerned the pattern.

Now that we determined that our first names represented languages from areas around the world, the next obvious question to the students was, "If we are all Jewish, why aren't all our names listed under Column #1 (Yiddish) or Column #2 (Hebrew)? Most of the students were familiar with the fact that Jews have lived and continue to live in many parts of the world, and that we have borrowed elements from the cultures around us, including names. With that in mind, my next question was, "If Jews live everywhere in the world, how can you tell that someone is Jewish?"  This was a question which I asked the students to consider at home, before school began, and from the discussion that ensued both days, it was obvious that many had carefully considered this question.

 There were lots of ideas to share!

By the end of the discussion, we had determined that to be Jewish means to be a citizen of the oldest nation on Earth today. We also determined that many Jewish citizens are followers of the religion of the Jewish nation - "Judaism." Since the definition of a nation is "a group of people with four attributes in common: language, land, laws, and history," we fit into the definition of a nation. But because of our unique history, having been exiled from the Land of Israel for almost two millenia, the Torah and commandments became our common bond. In order to ensure the continuation of our nation, as is the case for any nation, it is imperative that each generation teach the next one aspects of the four national attributes - connection to the Land of Israel, an awareness of the laws - commandments - of our nation, an awareness of our historical roots, and some knowledge of our Hebrew language.

And speaking of our Hebrew language, we began our Hebrew Through Movement sessions this week. Most of the students have been involved with this program for three years, and I was amazed by how much they recalled after our long summer break. Here's a little peek at one group of girls following my Hebrew commands without any review at all:

Just imagine how much Hebrew our Edot students will be able to understand by the end of this year! Not to mention Jewish history, laws relating to the holidays and prayers, and hopefully a better understanding of the connection of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel. Good, upstanding citizens of the oldest nation on Earth!