Orange Cake and Talmud Studies

The first half hour of  our weekday sessions this week were dedicated to the fourth of our 7 cooking sessions with Karen. This time, we prepared a simple and very delicious orange cake in honor of the upcoming Tu Bish'vat holiday that will be celebrated on January 31st. It's a bit of a stretch, since oranges have never been part of the Tu Bish'vat seder developed about 500 years ago by Lurianic Kabbalists. However, Israel is famous for its Jaffa oranges, so it is a way to connect with the land!

These beautiful (and sweet-tasting!) oranges are navels - not the famous Israeli Jaffas. But the resulting cake tastes just as good!

As usual, we began each session around the demo table, watching Karen as she shared the best techniques for squeezing the juice out of the orange and then grating the peel. (Tuesday session)

(Wednesday session)

Most of the time preparing the recipe was taken up by squeezing 2 oranges, enough to get 1 cup of orange juice.

As each orange half was squeezed as dry as possible, its juice was poured into a measuring cup until an entire cup was collected.

By the end of the session, we had a roomful of orange-squeezing experts...

...who put their heart and soul and all their might into the squeezing process!

Contemplating how to get the very last bit of juice out of the remaining pulp

Even as some students were still squeezing juice out, others began the process of grating the orange rind to get 1 teaspoonful of the zest.

Following Karen's advice, they held the grater in one hand and moved the orange peel up and down the grater with the other (though we did spot a few students trying it the other way around!)

And, of course, as each step was completed, it was important to check the recipe card to find out what came next.

Measuring the 3/4 cup of sugar

There was even time to take a quick break to finish the last bite of pizza snack!

Stirring with a smile!

And finally, pouring the batter into the greased pan...

...being sure to scrape out every last drop!

Eventually, all that was left on the table were the dirty measuring cups and spoons and empty orange shells.

Did I say "empty" orange shells? Silly me! 

There was still enough pulp left to enjoy the sweet pulp still left in the shell.

There's a Yiddish expression - "Es loz sich essen!" (It lets itself be eaten!) If these boys could speak Yiddish, I'm sure that's exactly what they would be saying. 

The final step - setting the pans in the kitchen oven to bake.

Oops - did I say the final step? Here is a photo my T.A. caught "behind the scenes" after teachers and students left the Oneg Room to go to tefillah. There's another Yiddish expression that comes to mind here - OY!!!

A very big  TODAH RABAH (MANY THANKS) goes to Karen and Siena, our Hebrew Through Movement teacher, as well as to our Tuesday and Wednesday 5th/6th grade T.A.'s, for cleaning up.  And, of course, to Karen who stays behind after everyone leaves to bake the cakes, divide them up and pack each piece to bring down to the school building to be enjoyed by our students and teachers before the end of the day's session.

Following our half hour tefillah session (in the Beit Knesset with Rabbi Greninger and Ben for the 5th graders, and in the Sanctuary with Cantor Korn and the 7th graders for the 6th graders), and a 15-minute hafsaka (which we took in our classroom to stay warm!!!), I continued our historical overview of the Babylonian Jewish community.

After briefly reviewing what we had learned up to that point (see my previous posts), I jumped a thousand years ahead in our "time machine" to share the incredibly rich and vibrant culture the Jews of Babylonia had developed since they were first brought in exile to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar. Our focus was on the great Talmudic academies that arose in the Babylonian cities of Sura and Pumbedita under Rabbinic leaders known as the "Ge'onim." After a brief overview of this period (minutes 37:55 to 41:45), we focused on one page of the Talmud in order to get an idea of how detailed the Rabbinic discussions and arguments could get when discussion an aspect of Jewish law.

Again, I used the "Heritage: Civilization and the Jews" dvd-rom program. It's videos are on YouTube, so I can share them with you here, as I did above; unfortunately, there is no way I can share the multimedia parts of the program, which is where we found the "A Page of the Talmud" part of our lesson. The subject discussed on this page related to how we know when exactly to say the "Sh'ma" prayer in the morning (i.e., how do we know when sunrise has occurred). In going over this subject, this multimedia presentation taught us the different parts of each page of the Talmud (the Mishnah, G'mara, Rashi, Tosefot, and later commentaries), and introduced us to Rabbis who discussed the issue over a several hundred year period.

On Sunday, we'll finish our historic overview of the Babylonian/Iraqi Jewish edah.