Being Jewish

During the coming year, our Edot students will be learning about the cultures and values of the Jewish Diaspora communities of Ethiopia, Iraq, Spain, and Yemen. A major theme throughout our studies will be to explore why and how these Jews maintained a strong Jewish identity for centuries, in spite of being separated from each other. But before we can begin discussing these looming issues, we have to ask ourselves a very basic question - what does it mean to be Jewish?

This is precisely the question I posed to the Edot students yesterday. How can you tell if someone is Jewish? If we can figure out the answer to that question, we can have a good chance of figuring out what it means to be Jewish. We had quite an animated and fruitful discussion each session, during which students shared what they have learned to date at home and at school about Jewish symbols, rites, holidays, food, clothing, music, etc.

We concluded that to be Jewish means to be a member - a citizen, if you will - of the oldest surviving nation on our planet. We conform to the four necessary attributes of a nation - we have a language, a land, laws, and history in common. Because of our very long and unique history, we were forced to live outside of our land - Israel - for almost two millenia (some of us, we will learn, even longer than that!), but we always kept its memory alive in our hearts and minds. We kept our Hebrew language in our prayers, and also integrated it into new languages spoken in Europe, Spain and Portugal, the Middle East and North Africa - Yiddish, Judeo-Spanish (Ladino), and Judeo-Arabic, respectively. And we studied and taught the Torah, which we had written down during the Babylonian Exile, some 2,500 years ago. The Torah is both our national history book (along with succeeding Biblical books in the "Prophets" and "Writings" section of our Hebrew Bible) and our constitution. What we refer to as commandments, are the laws of our nation.

We looked at our holidays and religious rites, and saw that each was developed very carefully by the Talmudic era Rabbis, to keep our national memory and pride alive. We concluded our discussion by having the students share what they thought we should study in JQuest in order to ensure that a new generation will learn enough about our nation to transmit the memory and pride of our roots to a new generation after them. We should, the students said, study Hebrew, Jewish history, the geography of Israel, and learn the important laws.

This is precisely what I intend to share with them, as my teachers and parents shared with me. Am Yisrael Chai - the Nation of Israel lives!

We started our discussion by having each student share his/her first name (not nickname!). Each name was written in different columns on the whiteboard, and the students were asked to try to figure out the pattern. The pattern was the language of origin of each name. When I asked why all our names aren't under the "Hebrew" column, they answered, "Because Jews live everywhere."  What a great segue to the topic of what it means to be Jewish.

There were lots of ideas to share about how you can tell if someone is Jewish...

...which a TA each session wrote on the board as they were shared.

We concluded our discussion by having returning 6th grade students share important ideas they had learned in Edot during the previous school year. Ella shared that she learned that no matter where they lived, Jews always borrowed elements of their neighbor's culture, then gave them a "Jewish twist" (recipes were "kosherized," song melodies were borrowed and given Hebrew or Yiddish or Ladino words, etc.). Aaron shared that Jews had experienced many dark periods in our history, but through them all we always felt proud of who we are and remembered that we have to work to make the world a fair ("balanced") place for everyone.

What should we learn in JQuest this year to help us be good citizens of the Jewish nation?  Hebrew was the first subject that came up.  And so we began our Hebrew studies for this school year with a review of the Hebrew Through Movement program vocabulary.  Almost all the students were familiar with the program from last year, and what a wonderful surprise for me to realize that they had all remembered so much of the foundational vocabulary.

After reviewing the vocabulary together, we were ready to follow individual commands: Ben, la'shevet al ha'shoolchan (Ben, sit on the table); Ariston, la'rootz (Ariston, run); Leo, la'seem yad b'toch ha'kees (Leo, put a hand in the pocket); Jacob, la'koom (Jacob, stand up); Ari, la'shevet tachat la'shoolchan (Ari, sit under the table)

And when the session was over, we ended with the command "leem'cho kapa'eem" (clap hands), as I shared a hearty  "metzooyan!" (excellent!) It has been three years since we introduced the Hebrew Through Movement program to our school, and its success reverberates at the start of each year when the students show how much of the vocabulary they recall after a long summer break. The laughter and excitement during the sessions is icing on the cake!