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!