The Original Edah

Welcome back to Edot, everyone! Hopefully, you all had a smooth and enjoyable transition into 2018.

We jumped right in to our second semester yesterday morning by beginning a new unit of study about the very first edah (Jewish Diaspora community) - the Babylonian/Iraqi Jewish community. Even today, members of this edah refer to themselves as Babylonian Jews, proud descendants of those leaders and artisans of the ancient Kingdom of Judah who were forced into exile by King Nebuchadnezzar in the year 586 B.C.E., and who formed the first permanent Jewish community outside the boundaries of Israel. There was a time when Babylonian Jewry was considered the aristocracy of the world Jewish community, thanks in large part to the great Talmudic centers of learning that they established in ancient cities in what is today Iraq  - cities like Pumbedita, the ancient name for Falluja, where sadly so much fighting recently took place.

In order to give the students proper historical background to help them understand what preceded the Babylonian Exile, I used the "Heritage: Civilization and the Jews" dvd-rom program (published by the Revson Foundation) to bring to life a summary of the history described in the five books of the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy), and the first 6 books of the "Prophets" section of the Hebrew Bible (Joshua, Judges, I Samuel, II Samuel, I Kings and II Kings). We ended our historical "journey" yesterday, with the Assyrian Empire's conquest of the Kingdom of Israel and the forced exile of all of its inhabitants to its two largest cities - Assur and Nineveh. We never hear from them again, and to this very day they are referred to as the "Ten Lost Tribes of Israel."

We finished the lesson by viewing a video from the "Heritage" program, describing King Solomon's reign and the era of the prophets (which began with Samuel in Israel and ended with Ezekiel in Babylonia) (we viewed minutes 46:28 - 57:00). I let the video play through the introduction to the Babylonian Conquest of the Kingdom of Judah as a bit of a "teaser" for the material we'll be covering next session.

Just prior to our history lesson, we reviewed the Hebrew foundational vocabulary I'd introduced to the students since the start of the school year. This time I added a new element to the Hebrew commands - recognizing some of the words we have learned written on flashcards. With this exercise, I'm introducing the literacy element of the Hebrew Through Movement program. During this session, I introduced the new words "meelah" (word) and "t'moona" (picture) and "chamsa" (a bit of an introduction to the symbol we'll be learning about during our Babylonian Jewry unit of study).

As a warm up, I had students "dancing" by having them hop on one foot and then the other. "Baneem, leek'potz al regel echad v'az al regel sheinee." (Boys, jump on one leg and then on the other.)

We spent a few minutes reviewing Hebrew geographical names on our map of Israel. (Justin, leengo'a b'yam ha'keeneret.) (Justin, touch the Sea of Kinneret - a/k/a The Sea of Galilee.)

Below is a video taken of Michael and Maddie, who have just walked backward from their seats to the door per my Hebrew command, and are now following my commands to point to the door, to the word for the door, to touch the picture of a door, and to touch a chamsa hanging on the side of the door.

And here is David, walking v-e-r-y  s-l-o-w-l-y to the window, then pointing to it.