A Very "Moving" Session

Yesterday proved to be an "action-packed" day for our Edot students. We started the session learning three folk dances: "Hora Nirkoda" (which means, "Let's Dance a Hora"), "Mayim" (the Water dance), and the Turkish Kiss, a dance to a very popular Turkish song. Alan King, our dance instructor, has been leading Israeli dancing at Temple Isaiah and other Bay Area venues for several decades, and amazingly was able to teach us all three dances within a 20-minute period.

A good run is a terrific warm-up activity before dancing

Learning the "grapevine" (a/k/a the "Mayim") step

A circle within a circle, for the "Hora Nirkoda" dance

The final part of the "Mayim"  dance is showing how the water we "found" is distributed to the crops with a sprinkler system - arms and legs are waving like the sprinklers

Learning the first move of the "Turkish Kiss" dance

We were hot and thirsty after dancing for 20 minutes straight. Once up in the classroom, we quenched our thirst and opened the windows for fresh air. Everyone had a chance to rest while I read a chapter from "Out of Many Waters" (I had to stop every now and then - still trying to catch my breath!) 

Once rested, we moved into Room 202, which was all set up for our "Hebrew Through Movement" activities. I introduced several new vocabulary words this session:   l'hatzbiya (point at), al (on), tachat (under), and al yad (next to).  We had a lot of fun with the new words!

Banot La'Koom (Girls stand up)

Achshav rak Mora Charna (now only teacher Charna) - modeling the new vocabulary

La'shevet al ha'shulchan (Sit on the table)

La'shevet al yad ha'delet (sit next to the door)

La'shevet al yad ha'kiseh (sit next to the chair)

L'hatzbiya al ha'delet (point to the door)

David, la'shevet al ha'shulchan (David, sit on the table); Aaron, la'shevet tachat ha'shulchan (Aaron, sit under the table)

We finished the session with exercise for our fingers - preparing the table of contents page for the Shabbat Seder booklets we're making. These booklets will be used during our upcoming Family Shabbat Seder, on Friday evening, January 25th.  The table of contents page describes the rituals we perform to greet the Sabbath on Friday evening. Each student has been asked to draw a symbolic picture for each ritual. To do so, they have to learn the order of the rituals and what each ritual entails. To help them learn, I gave each student a copy of our "Welcoming Shabbat at Temple Isaiah" booklet, which describes each ritual. The students accomplished quite a bit in the 20 or so minutes we had remaining to the session - some even managed to complete the page. I'm always impressed with the quality of work they put into the projects.

Hmm - which part of "Preparing for Shabbat" (the first ritual) should I draw?

Working with pencil before coloring in the drawing

Can you tell from the drawing what the second ritual is?

Reading about the Candle Lighting ritual in the booklet

You can't get much more focused than these guys!

Hanuka Celebration at Temple Isaiah: Bring-A-Friend Day

We have been celebrating the joyous holiday of Hanuka this week. As part of our Religious School celebrations, students were given the opportunity to bring a friend with them to class. This year, sixteen of our Edot students brought friends with them. I assumed that most, if not all of the friends would have very little knowledge of Hebrew or of the Hanuka story, so I put our regular curriculum aside and designed a lesson plan that would allow everyone to participate and have fun learning about the holiday.

I started the day by reading a very brief summary of the Hanuka story.  We then divided into four groups; each group was assigned to create a skit lasting 2 minutes, based on a part of the story I had just read. I added a slight twist to the assignment - each group had to create a skit presenting their part of the story in a particular style as follows:  "The Diary of a Wimpy Kid," "Calvin and Hobbes" (Wednesday's group chose "Peanuts" instead), "a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novel," and "Dora the Explorer."

The results were hilarious. Each group was given about 25 minutes to prepare their skit (we divided up into different rooms and areas), then we all gathered in the Beit Knesset to enjoy the performances.

Again, there was a twist - after a group presented its skit, I asked them to act it out several times again, first in just one minute, then in just 30 seconds, and finally in just 15 seconds. They were told to be sure to include the most important part of their assigned section of the story each time. At the end of the final performance, the audience was asked to guess which characters or books the story was told through. In every case, the audience guessed correctly.

After the final performance was over, we moved back to our two Edot classrooms, and played the dreydl game using pennies. There were other Hanuka games to choose from, but everyone preferred the dreydl game (except for one group which played dreydl for a bit, then chose a Hanuka car race board game called "SOV" to play).

We ended the day with a wonderful Hanuka assembly in the Sanctuary with the other Religious School classes. Rabbi Greninger explained the symbolism of the Hanuka menorah (also called a "hanukiya"). On Tuesday she lit four candles and on Wednesday, five candles while we all chanted the blessings. Rabbi Greninger then shared the layout of the Sanctuary for the friends who were visiting (a good review for our own students as well!), and we sang Hanuka songs. We finished, as we do all our t'fila sessions, by singing the "Hashkiveinu" prayer as we all stood and held arms, swaying to the rhythm of the melody.

As always, a picture is worth a thousand words, and the ones below will hopefully convey at least a little of the fun we had during our "Bring-A-Friend" days.

Figuring out how to act out the story

Another group plans its skit

Dora the Explorer shares how the Maccabean Revolt began

Sharing how the Maccabees purified the Temple in a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure format

Hanuka story through the lens of "The Diary of a Wimpy Kid"

A group huddle to figure out how to perform the skit in just 30 seconds

Rabbi Greninger welcomes our "friends" during intermission

Perfecting the dreydl spin technique

Does the dreydl ever stop spinning?

Playing the SOV Hanuka car race game

Answer to "Do you recommend Temple Isaiah Religious School to other students?"

 

 

 CHAG  CHANUKA SAMEACH - HAPPY HANUKA!

Shabbat Shalom

This past week we continued to explore the "roots" of Shabbat by taking a close look at the shoresh (word root) of the word "Shalom."  We learned that any word built from the 3-letter shoresh of "shin-lamed-mem," from which the word shalom is built, must have something to do with "whole or complete."  For example, the Hebrew word "l'shalem" means to pay, since you are "completing a deal" with the payment. Therefore, the English word "peace" is not a true translation of shalom. A more accurate translation would be "a sense of completion."  To explain this more clearly, I asked the students if any of them had ever been assigned a long-term project in school, several weeks in advance of its due date. Of course, everyone raised their hands. Then I asked who had gone home the day the project was assigned, and had begun to work on the project immediately, planning the pacing and preparation to be sure it would be completed to the best of their ability by its due date. A few hands still remained in the air.  I asked those students how they felt when they handed in the completed project on or before its due date. They all agreed that they felt good about, and proud of their work. This, I explained to them, is the true meaning of "shalom" - that sense of completion you get when you know that you have worked hard on a project and accomplished it to the best of your ability, feeling proud of your accomplishment. 

We then discussed what the true meaning of the phrase, "Shabbat Shalom" is, according to the "root meaning" of the phrase. We reviewed how the Talmudic era Rabbis described how we must "balance on the timeline" (i.e. use time as best as we can to work in partnership with God to create a just world) for six days of the week.  If we work hard, to the best of our ability each of the six days to accomplish this task, we can "enter" the seventh day, Shabbat, with that wonderful feeling of "completion," knowing that we can now "rest" (i.e. step back and admire God's work and our own),  having done what we could to help bring about a just world.

Of course, because we're human, we won't be able to accomplish everything all at once, and we may make mistakes. Therefore, Shabbat isn't only a time to reflect on the previous week's accomplishments; it's also a time to look forward to the next 6 days, to plan how to improve our actions, and continue to do our part to effect "Tikkun Olam" ("repair the world") as individuals and as a community. When we wish everyone "Shabbat Shalom" at the start of Shabbat, we are really saying, "I hope you are entering this wonderful day we've been given to appreciate the universe God created and your own role in it, with that wonderful sense of completion that comes with knowing you've done everything you can to bring about a better world."
All that with just two words!

Shabbat Shalom.

Shabbat, Thanksgiving, and Hanuka

We used this past week to conclude our unit of study about the American Jewish edah (with a focus on the Jewish participation in the westward migration of the 19th century and the development of new, uniquely American Jewish institutions).  Students who participated in last Sunday's Gold Rush field trip were given the opportunity to share what they had learned on the trip with the rest of the class, and volunteers read the "letters home" which they had written on the bus. I prepared a bulletin board in the hallway which documents both what we learned in class and what we experienced on the trip. 

We now turn our attention to the eastern European edot - the Polish and Russian Jews, most of whom belong to the Ashkenazi umbrella group of Jews in the world. I'll be sharing more detailed information about the history and culture of Ashkenazi Jewry, as we study it in class over the coming two months. Because of our very limited time in Religious School, I'll be using the holiday of Shabbat as a focus for introducing the students to the Ashkenazi culture of eastern Europe. We'll learn about their Friday evening "Kabbalat Shabbat" (greeting Sabbath) ceremony - the foods they ate, the songs and prayers they sang, the stories they told, and the Yiddish language they spoke - as we prepare to conduct our own family "Shabbat Seder" to be held on Friday evening, January 25th.
 
We began this unit of study yesterday by focusing on the holiday of Shabbat. We reviewed what Judaism teaches about the purpose of time and the Jewish concept of "Tikkun Olam" (repairing the world). I then shared that one of the commandments God issued to the newly formed and freed nation of Israel, after the Exodus from Egypt, was to prepare for themselves a calendar, and on that calendar to mark  "special days."
We made a list on the board of what those special days were, which were specifically mentioned in the Torah - Rosh Ha'Shana, Yom Kippur,  Shabbat, Sukkot, Pesach, and Shavuot - and then I asked the students which of them they believed Judaism considered to be the holiest. Yom Kippur is the holiest day on the Jewish calendar; interestingly, it is also referred to as the Shabbat Ha'Shabbatot" (the Sabbath of Sabbaths), indicating that Shabbat is considered so holy, that Yom Kippur was considered to be "Shabbat" by the Talmudic era Rabbis. In fact, Yom Kippur and Shabbat are the only two holidays which are allotted 25 hours (from sundown until the third star can be spotted in the night sky the following night).

I then introduced the class to the Hebrew grammatical concept of the "shoresh" (the root). In Hebrew, the shoresh is composed most commonly of 3 letters (sometimes 2, and occasionally 4 letters), from which words can be built. All the words built from the same shoresh have a common meaning, and it's this fact which often helps linguists understand the mentality and culture of the people speaking the language. Since the roots of the Hebrew language were developed at least 3,000 years ago (and are used even today when new words are added to accomodate our modern times), the shorashim (plural of shoresh) allow us to look back in time at how the culture and environment of the ancient Israelites influenced their language.

The first shoresh I introduced the students to was "sh-v-t" (the shin, vet, tav letters), from which the word "Shabbat" can be built. We learned that all the words that can be built from these three letters must have something to do with "rest". Shabbat is the day of rest. (La'shevet, one of the words we have learned during our "Hebrew Through Movement" lessons, means "to sit" - we rest when we sit).  We discussed the meaning of  resting when the question arose as to why God had to rest after 6 days of creating the universe. Our conclusion was that the understanding of what resting meant to the ancient Israelites might have been very different from our understanding of it today. We think of resting as not working, perhaps as sleeping or simply not doing what we have to do during the rest of the week.  Could it be that the ancient Israelites looked upon rest as the opportunity to stand back and have the time to appreciate what they had worked on all week?  When the Torah tells us that God rested on the 7th day, could it mean that God stopped creating, and took the time to appreciate Creation?  ("And God saw that it was good.")  We concluded our discussion with the decision that when we are told to rest on Shabbat, perhaps we are being given the opportunity to stop focusing on the details of life during the week, and take a day to "step back" and appreciate what we have accomplished, as well as what God accomplished during the six days of Creation.

We used the quarter of an hour or so that we had left before Joel came to lead us in singing songs, to fill in the dates on the Cheshvan and Kislev calendar pages, using the Hebrew letters as numerals. Students were quick to note that while the month of Tishrei was filled with one holiday after another (Rosh Ha'Shana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot,  Sh'mini Atzeret, Simchat Torah and Shabbat), the month of Cheshvan had no holidays except for Shabbat. Talmudic era Rabbis actually added on "Mar" to the name of the month (Marcheshvan), to denote its lack of holidays. "Mar" in Hebrew means "bitter."  Thankfully, the month of Kislev which began this past Thursday, has a very joyous historically-based holiday, beginning on the 25th of the month: Hanuka!   So it wasn't surprising that Joel led us in singing some favorite Hanuka songs. And since we are the Edot class, studying the cultures of Jews all over the world, he shared with us that one of our favorite songs, "Oh Hanuka, oh Hanuka" was originally written in Yiddish (which we'll be studying following our winter break), and we sang it both in English and Yiddish. We then sang another favorite Hanuka song, this one written in the Ladino language of the Sephardi Jews - the Spanish/Portuguese Jews - called "Ocho Kandalikas" ("Eight Candles").  And we couldn't have a Hanuka song session without singing one of the more recent Hanuka songs sung by the Maccabeats, called  Candlelight .

Joel shared with us that the upcoming holiday of Thanksgiving was the Pilgrim's attempt to re-create the Jewish Sukkot harvest festival. The original Thanksgiving feast was to have lasted 7 days, just like Sukkot. Unfortunately, the native Americans invited to the feast left after only 3 days and, over the centuries, the holiday evolved to the one day (and long weekend!) that we celebrate today. Interestingly, when Judah Maccabeus created a celebration for re-dedicating the Holy Temple once it was reclaimed from the Syrian Greeks, he also declared it was to be the Sukkot harvest festival celebration which they had missed celebrating in the Temple a few months prior to its recapture.

With this in mind, I'd like to wish you all a very enjoyable Thanksgiving cum "second Sukkot" holiday, and don't forget that Hanuka is not far behind (we light the first candle the evening of December 8th - less than 3 weeks from now!).

Singing Hanuka songs, with the shoresh for Shabbat on the board behind Joel

Everyone sang with lots of ru'ach (spirit)!

More ru'ach, and we haven't even learned about the Hasidim yet!

Hebrew and Yiddish lyrics to a favorite Hanuka song

Ladino lyrics to this Hanuka song written by Flory Jagoda

Gold Rush Field Trip

The day of our field trip to Sonora and Columbia in the Mother Lode country finally arrived yesterday. The weather was perfect all day long - sunny, in the mid-50's (except for the evening - when the sun set at 4:42 p.m.,  and it turned very chilly very quickly!). The information sent out to all the participants promised that we would leave precisely at 9 a.m., and that's exactly what we did. Everyone arrived in good time...

Except for these two who had to make a run for it !

and we settled in for the 2-1/4 hour drive to Sonora on the comfortable coach (the air-conditioned, motorized kind!). I introduced everyone to the background history of the Jewish pioneers who eventually settled in northern California, with the help of readings in the information packet given to each family. First, we got into the proper mood for the day by singing a couple of Gold Rush era songs ("Oh California" sung to the tune of "Oh Susanna" and "Clementine"). Parents were then asked to read excerpts to their children from the memoir of Moses Bruml and from a letter written by Hannah Hirschfelder, describing their sea journeys to California from Europe. A third excerpt they read to their children was from I.J. Benjamin's description of the boat and wagon trip to Sonora from San Francisco (a two-week journey in those days!).

Then it was time to sit back and watch a 42-minute film directed by Bill Chayes, a local filmmaker, called "Birth of a Community: Jews and the Gold Rush." It's a terrific documentary film, which really shared a lot of information that the students could use for the assignment I gave them as soon as the film was over.
I asked each student to "become" a Jewish pioneer buried in the Sonora Pioneer Jewish Cemetery that we would be visiting that afternoon, and to write a "letter home," describing their journey to California, how they earned their living in Sonora, and how they maintained their Jewish identity there. Some students were assigned pioneers whose lives were very well documented, so they had a lot of material to work with for writing their letters. Other students were assigned pioneers whom we know so little about that only their gravestones provided information. In those cases, the students were encouraged to make up information to bring the pioneer "to life" by using information we learned in class and in the film to fill in the gaps.
I'm always amazed at the quality of the letters the students write in the hour or so left before we arrive in Sonora. This year was no exception. Here's an example:

November 3, 1869

Dear Mother and Father,

It has been ten years since I have landed in the Gold Land, but all of my memories still seem young. Since I traveled alone on my treacherous journey, I was very lonely on the way over. Life didn't seem complete without my sister, so I decided to make this long journey.

As you know, our life in Germany was OK. They did not let us practice some customs, but the real reason I left was because I missed my dearest sister so much, and needed to see her.

I sailed first from Germany to New York. Then, I took a steam boat named the "New Orleans" from New York to Panama. We had to hike and take a canal boat to get through the Isthmus to the Pacific coast. We then had to wait for two weeks for another boat to come and pick us up. The maximum people allowed on the ship was supposed to be 400, but 1,000 people were crammed into one ship. We finally arrived in San Francisco in 1859. I didn't stay there long, and I almost automatically moved to Sonora. There, I met my husband, Mayer Baer, and now have seven beautiful children. One died.

My life is amazing in Sonora. I make a good living, selling hand-knit hats, and we are the Jewish center of the town. I am still very  religious. My husband takes the role of a rabbi. He leads services, marries people, etc. My children help in the store, and I get to see my dear sister often.

I wish to see you soon, mother and father. I do miss you.

With much love from your dearest daughter,
Helena (Oppenheimer Baer)


We reached Woods Creek Rotary Park in Sonora around 11 a.m., and enjoyed a picnic lunch. Since we still had 1-2-3-4 cakes left that the students had made the previous Sunday, I "sawed" a couple of them into enough pieces for us all (they're that dense!), and we enjoyed their sweet taste. Somehow they seemed to taste even better outdoors on a sunny day in Gold Country.  We boarded the bus again (and those who drove themselves got back in their cars) around noon, and headed to Columbia State Historic Park where we were met on Main Street by Frank Cimino, who has been docenting at the Park for a number of years. He shared a general history of the Gold Rush times with our entire group (57 of us in all), then we divided into 3 smaller groups for three stations. While one group learned about the Jewish pioneer merchants in Columbia, people like Shalom and Harris Levy, Joel Levy, Phillip Schwartz, and Rose Levy, the second group climbed the hill up to the old Columbia school house and were taught a lesson that children back in 1861 might have been taught, using slates and chalk. The third group had time to themselves to explore the stores along Main Street. Or, if they wished (and some did!), they could ride the Wells Fargo stagecoach or pan for gold (that water was really COLD!).

By 3 p.m. it was time to drive back to Sonora, to visit its pioneer Jewish cemetery, the earliest Jewish cemetery in the area (the first burial was Hartwig Caro, a 17-year old boy, who died and was buried in 1853).   After I gave a brief introduction about the Commission for the Preservation of Pioneer Jewish Cemeteries and Landmarks in the West, which maintains seven pioneer Jewish cemeteries in the Mother Lode region including Sonora's, I handed out a treasure hunt. Families had to find symbols on the gravestones like wilting flowers and broken tree limbs (representing people who died too young), certain Hebrew letters like "pey" "nun" at the top of almost all the gravestones (initials standing for the Hebrew words "poh nikbar" meaning "here is buried"), lambs (representing children who died), and fraternal organization symbols for the Masons and Oddfellows, to which many Jewish men belonged in those days (and still do today, for that matter). Up until a few years ago, we used to do gravestone rubbings, but the stones are now much too fragile for that activity, so the treasure hunt replaced it.

Students shared what they had learned about the people buried in the cemetery and finally, before we left, we all said the Mourner's Kaddish together and put pebbles on the gravestones as a sign that we remember and care about the people buried here. Some members of our group, according to Jewish law, washed their hands before leaving the cemetery in the washbasin provided. Then it was time to head back to Lafayette. We said goodbye to the families who drove on their own, and headed back to the bus.

During our drive home, we watched the two-hour film, "The Frisco Kid" starring Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford. It was a perfect wrap-up for our day. The film tells the story of a Polish rabbi who is sent to San Francisco with a Torah scroll, to become the newly formed Jewish community's rabbi there in 1850. On the way, he encounters many difficulties, not the least of which is trying to preserve his Jewish beliefs and rituals in the wild west. Harrison Ford plays the bank robber who befriends him, and gets him out of quite a few situations. The film ended just 10 minutes before we arrived back in Lafayette, the end to a perfect day.

Frank, our docent, with the hat

Frank with one of the three groups - notice the Wells Fargo stagecoach in the background

Phillip Schwartz's "New York Fancy Dry Goods Store"

Inside Phillip Schwartz's store, you can buy things that the pioneers bought back in Gold Rush days

Girls and boys lined up separately back in 1861 to enter the classroom (they also had separate play areas for recess)

History  Lesson

If you can't behave, you sit for an hour or more with the Dunce Cap on (notice the map in the background - only 33 states back in 1861)

Misbehave a second time, and get your palm slapped hard with a ruler

Gathering at the Sonora Pioneer Jewish Cemetery

Looking for the letters "pey" "nun" as part of the Treasure Hunt

Continuing the search for symbols on the gravestones

Discovering Felix Edgar Dreyfous' gravestone, whose wife had inscribed on it, "To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die."

So as not to end this post on a sad note, I thought I'd share the following  photo I took of a sign hanging in one of the saloons on Main Street in Columbia. It wasn't only during the Gold Rush days that times were rough!