The First Edah

Now that Hanuka is behind us (it seems to go faster every year for me!), we turned our attention during the final weekday session of our first semester to our next major unit of study - that of the Iraqi Jews, or, as they refer to themselves, the Babylonian Jews. This was the very first edah in Jewish history. It was the edah which developed the earliest form of Judaism, and which established the pattern of existence for Jewish Diaspora communities to follow. It was the first edah whose members could truly be called "Jews," and not ancient Israelites.

Historians are pretty much in the dark as to the origins of the Beta Yisrael community in Ethiopia. But when it comes to the origins of the Iraqi/Babylonian Jewish community, the opposite is true. We have an enormous volume of documentation, not only from our own Hebrew Bible, but from archaeological finds and historical documents left by the Babylonians and Persians (who conquered the Babylonians and whose king, Cyrus, allowed the exiled peoples in Babylon to return to their homes again in 537 B.C.E., including the Judeans).

In order to truly understand how momentous an event the establishment of the Babylonian exile community was in Jewish history, I had to first review with the students the earliest history of the ancient Israelites. Using interactive maps on the "Heritage: Civilization and the Jews" dvd-rom program, we reviewed what the students had learned beginning in third grade about Abraham's journey to Canaan from the Sumerian city-state of Ur (according to the Book of Genesis). We followed the successive journeys of the ancient Israelites on the map from Canaan to Egypt and back to Canaan under the leadership of Moses and then Joshua. Then I became a storyteller, sharing in as dramatic a way as possible how a simple, nomadic people became a nation when they left Egypt (according to the Book of Exodus), and eventually settled down as farmers and shepherds and tradespeople in Canaan's hill country. The ancient Israelites lived an egalitarian life under the leaders of their tribes called judges (Books of Joshua and Judges). But when the people demanded that one leader be appointed by God to unify them as they fought against the Phillistines (Book I of Samuel), their lives changed drastically. Suddenly, a noble, privileged class arose which became corrupt, and corruption spread to the merchant class. Men called prophets arose (Samuel was the first) in the 10th to 5th centuries B.C.E., who railed against the corruption of the upper classes - men like Isaiah and Amos. Kings David and Solomon had built and fortified a united kingdom of Israel, but following Solomon's death, ten of the twelve tribes separated and formed their own northern Kingdom of Israel, while the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin (the largest and smallest tribes, respectively), formed the southern Kingdom of Judah.

With the advent of the prophets, a moral concept of history began to develop, along with the beginnings of a new concept of a more powerful God who could control mighty empires and send them to punish the Israelites if they rejected God's covenant made with Abraham and subsequently with all the Israelites at Mt. Sinai. No longer was their God - Yahweh - a local deity whose power faded outside the borders of their land.

At this point, I shared two video segments from the "Heritage" program with the students. The two segments tell the story of how the northern Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrians in 722 B.C.E. and how its inhabitants were exiled to Nineveh and Assur - two of Assyria's great city-states, never to be heard from again. They are referred to as "The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel." It's very likely that the inhabitants intermarried with the Assyrians, forgetting their history and laws - their very identity.  The story continues when, about 100 years later, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia conquered the Kingdom of Judah and exiled about 10,000 Judeans. It's very likely that they remembered what had become of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Israel, and thus very consciously did what they had to in order to preserve their history and language and laws for future generations. The first video segment is from "A People is Born" chapter of the Heritage Program (begin with minute 49:18 and view to the end of the chapter). The second segment is from "The Power of the Word" chapter (view the beginning to minute 10:25).

I used the time allotted for our Hebrew Through Movement Program this past week to review all the vocabulary I introduced over the past semester. I'm impressed at how much the students have learned from this program!

I'd like to wish all our Edot families a very enjoyable winter break. We return in 3 weeks (Tuesday, January 5th and Wednesday, January 6th), at which point we'll continue to investigate the history and culture of the Iraqi/Babylonian Jews. Please be sure to put Sunday, January 31st on your calendars for our Family Chamsa Workshop. This will be the culminating activity for our unit of study about the Iraqi/Babylonian Jews, and will take place during both Sunday sessions, at their regular time. 

HAVE A HAPPY AND HEALTHY 2016!

A Week of Fun and Games

During our past two weekday sessions, some of our Edot students took advantage of our annual "Bring-A-Friend Day" program to share JQuest with a Jewish or non-Jewish friend. This program is always associated with the Hanuka holiday, since it gives us a chance to "step out" of our normal curriculum for a day in order to plan fun Hanuka activities for the students and their friends. No prior knowledge of the holiday is necessary (though our Edot students did learn about the background and traditions associated with Hanuka over the past couple of weeks), in order to include all the friends in on the fun.

All three tracks (Edot, Shira and Y'tzira) participated in the first part of the session's activities. First, I read out loud a brief summary of the Hanuka story while all the children ate their snacks. Then it was time to divide up into four groups. Each group was assigned 1/4 of the Hanuka story summary I had just read, and was asked to perform it in a certain style. Each group found a private space in the classrooms or in the Beit Knesset to create and rehearse their skits, since the style in which they had to perform their skit had to remain a secret from the other groups, which were asked to guess the style when the skits were performed.
It was during this rehearsal period that friends and students had a chance to get to know each other.

 

Then, after 20 minutes of rehearsal time, it was time for all the groups to reassemble in the Beit Knesset for the skit presentations. The first group to perform was asked to perform its part of the story in the style of an American western movie; the second group in the style of Star Wars; third group in the style of a Harry Potter novel; and the last group, in the style of a Sesame Street episode.

Here's a video of the group presenting in the style of an American western:

 The audience had no trouble guessing the styles of each skit, and, even more importantly, a lot of fun was had both by performers and audience!

Each day, Rabbi Greninger joined us to welcome friends to JQuest.

 After all the skits had been performed, it was time for each track to return to its own classroom for more fun and games. Our Edot students were able to show their friends our Edot classroom and teach them how to play the dreydl game. Each student and friend received a dreydl to play with and a bag of Skittles candies to use for betting.

Some of the children had a chance to show off their dreydl spinning techniques, honed each year on Hanuka!

We ended each session up in the Sanctuary, where all the 3rd through 6th graders and their friends gathered for a special Hanuka candle lighting assembly. Rabbi Greninger introduced the friends who had never been in a synagogue before to the important elements in a synagogue, and asked them what they had learned during the session. Then she led us in saying the blessings over the Hanuka candles, and we finished off the session each day with Hanuka songs.

Lighting the 3rd candle on Tuesday:

Yesterday, our Edot students had a chance to share what they had learned during units of study we had just completed in our Edot and Holiday curricula during our Shekel Game. How can you not have fun while betting a certain number of sh'kaleem (Israeli currency) that your group can answer a review question correctly?!!

We also had a visit from our music director, Maya, each session yesterday. Now that we have completed our unit of study about the Beta Yisrael Jews of Ethiopia, we are beginning a new unit of study about the Jews of Babylonia/Iraq. To  help us get started, Maya taught us to sing two songs, the lyrics to both of which come from Psalm 137 - "Al Naharot Bavel" ("By the Rivers of Babylon"). In the Psalm, the Judeans forced into exile by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia mourn the loss of their homeland and wonder how they can find comfort in the new and strange land to which they have been brought. Here are a couple of videos taken as Maya taught us each song:

Hanuka Around the World

Following our week-long Thanksgiving holiday break, we took advantage of having just finished our unit of study about the Beta Yisrael of Ethiopia to delve into a mini-unit of study about Hanuka (which began last night!). During the weekday sessions, I introduced the students to the historical background of the holiday, as well as to the specific events that led to the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid ruler, Antiochus Epiphanes and against those Jews who adopted the prevalent Hellenistic culture of the times. This was, in fact, the first and thankfully only time that Jews were involved in a civil war. We also explored the true miracle of Hanuka, which has nothing to do with a story the Rabbis in the Talmud created about 500 years after the actual events of the Hanuka story, in an attempt to erase a violent episode from our national consciousness.

I used the Maccabean Revolt episode of A&E channel's "Mysteries of the Bible" series (many of which episodes can now be found on YouTube) to share the above information with the students. It's a fascinating account, using Biblical (Books of the Maccabees) references as well as other documentary evidence (largely from the Jewish writer Josephus Flavius who wrote a history of the Jews during the Roman occupation of Judea, some 100 years after the events of the Hanuka story took place). The sections I shared with the students were Act I (up to minute 9:32), Act II (minutes 17:43-21:00), and Act V (minute 36:38 to the end of the program) - a total of about 22 minutes.

On Sunday (yesterday), I reviewed what we had learned from the above, then asked the students to share how we celebrate Hanuka today. We generated a list that consisted of lighting the Hanuka candles and saying the blessings, eating latkes, sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts) and chocolate gelt, singing Hanuka songs, getting presents, and spinning the dreydl. Then, I asked the students which of the things on the list we are required to do according to Rabbinic law. The answer is only the first item on the list - lighting the candles and saying the blessing (we are required to "l'farsem et ha'nes" ("make famous the miracle") by displaying the Hanuka menorah (a more modern term is a hanukiya) to the public (i.e. in a window or outside). The only law relating to the hanukiya itself is that each candle holder or oil reservoir representing the days of Hanuka be at the same level as the others. The servant candle, or shamash, is the only exception. This is to show that each day of Hanuka is as important as the others. I introduced the Hebrew word "halacha," which is how we refer to Rabbinic law in Judaism. Literally, the root of the word has to do with "walking" - i.e. we are walking on the path created for us by the Rabbis. All the other things we generated in our list of how we celebrate Hanuka go under the heading of the second Hebrew word I introduced to the students - "masoret," which means "tradition or custom."

With this explanation of the difference between "halacha," which Jews all over the world follow, and "masoret," which can be very different amongst the edot - Jewish communities established all over the world - I introduced the project we worked on during the remainder of yesterday's session - "Hanuka-Around-the-World posters. Each of 8 small groups of students (4 first session and 4 second session) was asked to illustrate the predominant custom of celebrating Hanuka in its assigned edah. The resulting posters are now hanging on a bulletin board in the hallway.

Here are some photos my TA's each session caught of the students working on the posters, as well as photos I took of the completed posters and the resulting bulletin board designed to be a hanukiya. The 8 candles are the 8 posters.

In Alsace (in France), families use "double-decker" hanukiyot (plural of hanukiya), 8 candles in each of the two levels. Each level has its own "shamash" (servant) candle as well. This way,  parents and children can light the candles together on the same hanukiya.

Many Persians practiced the religion of Zoroastrianism going back to ancient days. In this religion, the number 8 is a symbol of perfection. Jews living in Persia (modern-day Iran) adopted the belief in this symbol of perfection, and instead of lighting just one hanukiya each holiday, light 8 hanukiyot each day, so that on the 8th night of Hanuka, they light 64 candles - the ultimate symbol of perfection (8 x 8).

In Kurdistan (northern Iraq), people were very poor, and could not afford special ritual objects. Jews there were no different. On Hanuka, for example, eggshells were used as the oil holder cups for the hanukiya.

During the Middle Ages, Christians in Lithuania and the Ukraine handed out gold or silver coins to neighbors and friends at Christmas time. Jews living in these eastern European countries (and later in Poland and Russia as well), adopted this custom, and gave gold or silver coins to their children as rewards for successfully studying Hebrew and Torah. During the 1700's, this custom became associated with Hanuka, as well as with education.

Jewish families in Tunisia, in North Africa, hang up their hanukiyot each year on the doorpost opposite the one on which their mezuzah hangs. They light the candles each of the 8 nights while it hangs on the doorpost. They keep the hanukiya hanging there until Purim, about 3 months later.

A common custom for many celebrations in Mexico is to hang a pinata filled with toys and sweets on a tree limb outdoors, then blindfold children and have them swing a stick, trying to break open the pinata. Jewish children adopted this custom, and on each of the 8 days of Hanuka, a huge, dreydl-shaped pinata is hung up, filled with candies and coins. Children must try to break it open while they are blindfolded.

In Morocco, Jewish children are sent out on the 8th night of Hanuka to collect from neighbors and friends all leftover oil and wicks. That night, giant bonfires are created using these leftovers, and people sing and dance around the bonfire until the sun rises.

In Yemen, a custom arose among Arab children of collecting wicks for oil lamps from their neighbors and friends for a week, just prior to the winter. Jewish children adopted this tradition, and associated it with the Hanuka holiday, using the wicks they collected for their hanukiyot.

CHAG CHANUKA SAMEACH! (HAPPY CHANUKA HOLIDAY!)

Don't forget that the coming weekday sessions are Bring-A-Friend days.