From Purim to Pesach!

During our final weekday session before our spring break, we continued to have fun with Purim (which began Wednesday evening right after JQuest classes were dismissed!), but we also began to explore both the Pesach (Passover) holiday which follows exactly one lunar month after Purim, and how the Crypto-Jews of Spain observed it.

First, we began the session with a Purim Hangman Game, in which the students had to figure out which Jewish value the Roman-era Rabbis saw embedded in the Purim story. (The one in the photo above is "Sharing with the less fortunate.")

These were quite challenging to figure out, since they were phrases and not single words.

And in a few cases, the students had to figure out entire sentences. ("Jews need each other in times of trouble.")

All the students became involved, which is precisely what we want to achieve during our community activity time.

We also had fun during our Edot Hebrew Through Movement session. After a brief review of all the foundational vocabulary we had learned during the year, I introduced the first part of a children's song in Israel which teaches the Hebrew words for right, left, forward and back.

By introducing the words y'meena (to the right) and s'mola (to the left) as well as l'faneem (forward) and achora (backward) in a song, the students learned the words much faster than had I simply spoken them, and so I was able to quickly move on to giving commands using the words:

Ella, la'lechet y'meena la'meela "chalon," v'leen'goa ba'meela. (Ella, walk to the right to the word "window," and touch the word.)

After tefilla (prayer session) and hafsaka (recess), we came back to our classroom, at which point I reviewed how we had learned in our previous Edot session that Pesach was the favorite holiday of the Crypto-Jews. Why? Because just as God had heard the cries of the ancient Israelite slaves in Egypt and had sent Moses to lead them to freedom, so, too, did the Crypto-Jews in Spain dream of the day that God would free them from the slavery of having to outwardly behave as Christians even as they desperately tried to recall the prayers, blessings, and rituals of the Judaic faith of their ancestors without being accused of doing so by the Inquisition. 

I then introduced the class to the 15 parts of the Pesach seder ceremony, developed by Roman-era Rabbis, and as we read about the prescribed ritual for each step, I shared with the class how the Crypto-Jews either performed the ritual if they recalled it, or the ritual they replaced for the original which they had forgotten.

Just as I was introducing the very last song we sing at the seder - "Chad Gadya" (One Kid), Maya, our music director, came into our classroom to teach us "Un Cavritico," the Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) version of the song. You can hear Yehoram Ga'on, the Israeli singer and actor who narrated and sang on the "From Toledo to Jerusalem" video I shared with the students a couple of weeks ago, singing "Un Cavritico" here.

And here is Maya teaching us the chorus to the song:

And Maya teaching us the Sephardic (Spanish-Jewish) melody to the parts of the seder ceremony - "Kadesh U'r'chatz"

As I mentioned, we are now on a two-week spring break. We return to JQuest classes on Sunday, April 10th, at which time we'll be continuing to explore the Crypto-Jewish experience in Spain, leading up to a Crypto-Jewish Seder which we'll be conducting in our classroom on Sunday, April 17th. This seder will be the culminating event for our exploration into Spanish Jewish history and culture, and will be a student-only event.