Ashkenazeem

I introduced the students yesterday to the earliest history of the group of Jews most of us at Isaiah are descended from - the Ashkenazeem. To do so, we had to go back some 2,000 years, to the time when Judea was occupied by the Romans.

Since our last history lesson was about the Maccabean Revolt against the Syrian-Greeks about 2,200 years ago, I began the lesson by "storytelling" (in as exciting a manner as possible) what happened in Judea for the 100 or so years between the victory of the Maccabees and the occupation of Judea by the Romans. I then shared that once the Romans had been invited by Jewish emissaries from Judea to help them depose the corrupt Hasmonean king Hyrkanus, which they successfully accomplished, they occupied Jerusalem and the rest of Judea. Thus began the Roman occupation of our homeland, eventually leading to the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70 C.E. and, sixty-five years later, with the unsuccessful Bar Kochba Revolt and the total ban, on pain of death, of all Jews from Jerusalem and all of Palestina (which was the Roman name for Judea).

I shared with the students that there were four major groups of Jews that evolved out of our efforts to learn to live under Roman occupation: the Pharisees (the Rabbis) who looked to interpret the Torah for answers; the Sadduccees (the Priestly Class) who performed the sacrificial rituals in the Holy Temple while it still stood, believing that the best way to deal with the Romans was to work with them; the Sicarii (the Terrorists) whose solution was to murder anyone they suspected of working with the Romans as well as the Romans themselves; and the Nazarenes, who eventually were called Christians in the Greek-speaking world outside of Judea. Their solution was to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's" (i.e. follow both Roman law and God's commandments which they did not view as mutually exclusive).

It was the Nazarenes we focused on yesterday, as I shared videos from the "Heritage: Civilization and the Jews" dvd-rom program about the birth of Christianity (minutes 8:35-12:56), the growing tensions between traditional Jews and the Nazarenes during the first 100 years of the religion (minutes 16:42-19:02), and then jumping to the Dark Ages in Europe (minutes 17:20-24:00) to show how this gap had grown and why the Jews were persecuted. Finally, we learned that most Jews emigrated to eastern Europe following the horrific Black Death (Bubonic Plague) (minutes 42:20-48:35)  which decimated western Europe's population between the years 1347-1349 (one-third of its population died from the Plague!). It was blamed on Jews poisoning the wells, and the populace of all the western European nation-states were so set against the Jews, that no king or Church leader dared to invite them to live on their lands for many years after.

Back in the 1200's, Polish princes in eastern Europe had invited Jews to settle on their lands, to help them claim title to those lands. They promised Jews that they would not persecute them (indeed, any Christian who tried to do so would be punished), and that they could own land and enter any trade they wished. Their promises were at first suspect, but following the Black Death (which never spread to eastern Europe), the Polish princes again extended their offers, and this time, the largest wave of Jewish migrants in history moved east.

It was here that we ended our history lesson for the day so that we could join the other 5th and 6th graders for a music session with Revital and Michaela. During the coming weekday sessions, we'll be continuing our history lesson, which will focus on the rich Yiddish culture that evolved in eastern Europe.

During the past weekday sessions, our weekday music teacher, Eric, taught us a Tu Beesh'vat (holiday of the trees) song about the "Tall, Tall Trees." Yesterday, Revital and Michaela taught us an Israeli dance for a song about the earth and sky (appropriately titled, "Adama v'Shama'eem" - "Earth and Sky"). Below is a bit of the dance captured by my T.A. Max during the first session.

During tefillah, we had a representative talk to us about Camp Tawonga, near Yosemite, and then enjoyed a "Creative Tefillah" led by several Y'tzira 6th grade students. The theme they came up with was "Broadway plays." This coming Sunday, several of our Wednesday session Edot students will be leading another "Creative Tefillah." I can hardly wait to learn what theme they decide upon!

Shabbat Seder Booklets

We used our scheduled Edot time after hafsaka (recess) on Tuesday and Wednesday to continue working on the Shabbat Seder booklets which we began at the start of the semester. Each booklet, when completed, will include all the blessings used for the rituals of welcoming Shabbat into our homes on Friday evenings (lighting the candles, blessing the children, blessing the wine, washing the hands, and blessing the challah), as well as a new blessing we wrote for our parents. The booklet is the culminating activity for our Shabbat unit of study, and reflects much of what we have learned in this unit - the language of Shabbat (the Hebrew roots for words in the blessing formulas and other Shabbat related ritual words), and the order of the rituals traditionally performed to welcome Shabbat in the form of a table of contents page for the booklet.

This week, we focused on the blessing said for the sons and daughters, and we added a new tradition - a blessing to be said for our parents.

The blessing for the daughters asks God to "make you like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah," the four matriarchs of the Jewish nation.

And the blessing for the sons asks God to "make you like Ephraim and Menashe," the two sons of Joseph, born in Egypt. According to a midrash (a Rabbinic teaching), this blessing attests to their unique strength. They were raised in Egypt as Egyptian noblemen, yet refused to give up their Jewish identities. They have become symbols of the loyalty of children to their parents and their faith.

As with all the other blessing pages for the booklet, we learned the words, recited the blessings together, then set about decorating the page to fulfill the Rabbinic concept of "heedoor meetzvah" (glorifying the commandment).

Students colored in the Hebrew letters of the blessing...

...and created symbolic drawings to represent the ritual (in this case, blessing the children).

This turned out, for the most part, to be a very calming activity, yet also a social one. Coloring in doesn't require that much attention, and as they colored, the students could socialize with each other.

As I mentioned earlier, we wrote blessings to recite over our parents.

Using the traditional wording for the short blessing formula, students filled in a worksheet to help them create the blessing.

They were asked to think of 3 positive adjectives describing their parents...

...and then think of two things to thank their parents for - first, something their parents do for them which is all too easy to take for granted (e.g. driving them to sports practices or games, helping them with homework), and second, something special their parents have done for them or given to them (e.g. taken them on a special trip, given them a very special gift). I'll be typing these up and they will be included in the booklet.

Finally, each student chose two pieces of colored construction paper which will serve as the front and back covers of the booklet.

First, they had to copy the Hebrew words "Seder Shabbat" in Hebrew letters on the top of the front cover...

...then put their full names on the bottom.

It was up to each student how to decorate the covers, with the suggestion that they use Jewish and/or Shabbat-specific symbolic drawings.

During the final fifteen minutes of each session, we joined the other 5th and 6th grade tracks for a music session with Eric Shoen, our weekday music teacher. Since Tu Beesh'vat, the holiday of the trees, is coming up on February 11th, he taught us a song about the "Tall, Tall Trees."

On Sunday, we'll be starting our new unit of study about the Ashkenazee Jews, with a focus on the Jews of eastern Europe. Stay tuned!

Shabbat Posters - Heedoor Meetzvah

We used most of our time each session yesterday to create posters depicting eight Shabbat Seder (Friday night welcoming Shabbat ceremony) rituals. Up to this point, we've learned about the rituals, the blessings for several of the rituals and the Hebrew language roots for key words in the blessing formulas and the words "shabbat" and "shalom."

I have explained several times to the students the Rabbinic concept of "Heedoor Meetzvah," which literally translates to "glorification of the commandment." The concept derives from a line in the Book of Exodus which says, "I will glorify my God." Talmudic era Rabbis asked themselves, "How can we glorify a God Who is omnipotent and omniscient and from Whom all glory emanates?" Their answer was that we could glorify God's commandments. How can we glorify God's commandments? By creating beautiful objects related to the commandments - objects used in our rituals. This encompasses creating beautiful dressings for the Torah scroll to designing beautiful keedoosh cups and candlesticks, challah covers, tablecloths for holiday tables, etc.

So today, the Edot students put their artistic skills to use to show the beauty of our Shabbat rituals. Four posters were created during each session, and the results were truly beautiful:

First comes the planning stage - here, Max and Joey are working out their design for depicting the "Ha'Motzee" blessing over the Shabbat challah.

Emma and Ashley and Jack (out of the photo frame) are figuring out which materials to use for their "Preparing for Shabbat" poster, while Abby and Maddy are deciding in the background which materials to use for their poster depicting the "Shalom Aleichem" song we traditionally sing every Friday evening, to welcome the "angels from on high."

Once the students decided on a design and on the materials to use to depict their assigned ritual, they divided up the tasks and worked very well together. Here, Callen, Zach and Jeremy are working on "Lighting the Shabbat Candles."

After outlining their design in pencil, the three boys took turns adding color and detail to it.

For those rituals involving blessings, I gave a pre-printed sheet with the blessing in Hebrew, English transliteration and translation for them to glue onto the poster. Joey and Max decided they wanted to copy the Hebrew of the "Ha'Motzee" blessing by hand, with remarkable results.

Jack and Emma are carefully painting in their outlines of drawings relating to preparing for Shabbat (setting the table, putting money in a tz'daka box, dusting the furniture as part of housecleaning).

Joey is painting a "magen daveed" (Star of David) on a challah cover, which will almost completely cover the challah he and Max created out of puff balls on the poster.

Here, Rona and Emily are creating a collage which will depict the "Keedoosh" (blessing over the wine) ritual.

Gabby is busy working on a poster depicting "Blessing the Children."

And Michael is totally focused on painting images of what was served for the traditional Shabbat Meal.

Below are a couple of the completed posters. I'll be creating a Shabbat bulletin board in the hallway outside our classroom once all the posters have been completed.

We finished each session with a visit from Revital and Michaela to our Edot classroom. Revital, with Michaela's help, taught us two Yiddish songs - "L'Cho Doidee" (a Yiddish version of the Sephardee -Spanish Jewish- poem "L'Cha Dodee") and "Shabes, Shabes, Shabes," which are a wonderful introduction to our new unit of study about Ashkenazee Jews which I'll begin next Sunday. These are two of the songs which they traditionally sang at the Shabbat table, following the meal.

  

More Stumpers

In just a couple of weeks, I'll be introducing the second unit of study in our Edot curriculum this year - the Ashkenazeem (Jews of Europe). We'll learn what we know about their earliest history, migration to eastern Europe in mid-15th century, and the Yiddish language and culture they developed over a thousand-year period.

In preparation for this unit of study, I've put up stumpers relating to the Ashkenazeem on the "Jewish World" bulletin board in our classroom, for those students who are interested in earning stickers toward the Toys 'R Us gift certificate. Each stumper's answer is in the newspaper article hung directly below the sentence strip. One of my main goals with this program is to show the students that it's not just in our classroom that we can learn about our Jewish world - the articles are taken from The New York Times, S.F. Chronicle, Boston Globe, "J" (our Bay Area weekly Jewish newspaper), and other public sources. 

Here's an overview of the bulletin board

 Below are photos of the individual stumpers:

In case it's hard to read the stumpers from the photos, here they are:

How is Rabbi Shlomo Koenig different from most Hasidim?
Who assigned last names to Russian Jewish families in the 1700's?
What was the performance of the late Shifra Lerer always touched by?
What Yiddish name for Amsterdam do the Dutch still use today?
Who were the Jewish Gauchos? (Where did they live, where did they come from, what did they do?)
Why didn't Rashi become Rabbi for the City of Troyes?

Which language may help linguists (people who study languages) discover the origins of Ashkenazi Jews?
Why does Dr. Blaser believe many Jews were spared from the Black Death?

Parents - if you're ever curious about the answers to stumpers in the classroom, there is always an open invitation for you to come to the classroom (Room 201) to find the answers in the articles yourself. Or, of course, just get in touch with me, and I'd be glad to provide the answer!

Making Rugalech

This past Tuesday and Wednesday, our Edot, Shira and Y'tzira 5th and 6th graders spent the first part of each session up in the Oneg Room, learning how to make one of my favorite Jewish pastries - rugalech.

It's an easy recipe, but whenever you have a roomful of eager students enjoying the social interaction of working together, and couple that with a lot of cinnamon and sugar and flour, it's bound to get a bit messy. My hat goes off to Karen and Stephanie who shop for, prepare and set out all the ingredients (including making the dough for each table) and baking tools before each session begins, instruct us on how to prepare the recipe, and then bake and clean up after we leave for other school activities. We all look forward to the final 10 minutes or so of the class day, when they bring the baked goods in plastic bags down to each of our three classrooms for each student to take home (or eat immediately, as the case may be!).

YASHER KO'ACH, KAREN! (Hebrew, for "hats off to you!")

YASHER KO'ACH, STEPHANIE!

I'll let the photos tell the story of how the rugelach is made and how focused the students were on getting it right. (And they did - they were delicious!).

B'TEYAVON!  BON APETIT!

(Hopefully, you all received the recipe by e-mail - if you haven't, let me know and I'll send it to you.)