The Seduction of Hellenism

Today I shared the world that the Jewish People lived in some 2,200 years ago. It was a world very similar to our own in the United States today, in that most Jews lived outside of Judea (as the Land of Israel was called back then). They lived throughout most of the known Mediterranean world at that time, interacting every day with other people and other cultures, and spoke the lingua franca of the times - not English like today, but Greek. They read the Torah in Greek translation (the Septuagint), and enjoyed the dominant culture of their world - the Greek culture. They enjoyed helping their neighbors celebrate their festival days as their neighbors shared in celebrating Jewish special days.

After we viewed the 8-minute segment from the "Heritage: Civilization and the Jews" dvd-rom program about the Greek culture (minutes 16:46-25:11), I introduced the term, "Hellenism" and asked the students to raise their hands if they believed they could have kept their Jewish identity and beliefs even as they enjoyed all or parts of the Greek culture described in the video. They all raised their hands. And, indeed, most Jews of those times believed the same - that they could be true to their Jewish beliefs and feel a strong Jewish identity, even as they actively participated in the Greek culture around them. Most - but not all Jews believed this.

There were a group of Jews living in Judea itself, who believed that adoption of any aspect of the Greek culture would lead to certain doom for the Jewish nation. After our Thanksgiving holiday break, I'll be sharing the specifics of who these Jews were, how they acted on their belief, and what the consequences of their actions were on the Jewish People and culture.

Let me take this opportunity to wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving holiday, and I look forward to seeing our Edot students again on Tuesday/Wednesday, November 29th/30th when JQuest resumes classes again.

Grating, Jumping, and Lots of Laughing

Our past two weekday sessions were filled with all of the above! First, the grating...

Under Karen's (Tuesday Session) and Stephanie's (Wednesday's Session) tutelage, we prepared Vegetable and Fruit Kugel Cupcakes - here's a batch ready to put in the oven. To get to this point, we had to do a lot of grating!

Here's Gabe beginning to grate an apple

And Maddie halfway through

The hardest part, as Michael realized, was getting a good grip on the fruit to grate it, without getting any fingers in the way. Thankfully, no Edot fingers were grated in the process!

Each fruit and vegetable was grated onto a piece of parchment paper, and when completed, the paper could be easily lifted up and the grated fruit or vegetable shaken gently into the mixing bowl. Here's Jeremy getting as much of the apple gratings as possible free from the grater.

Two carrots and half a large sweet potato also had to be grated. Callen is using a small grater for the carrot.

Jack preferred to grate the carrot directly into the bowl instead of onto the paper.

Emily and Alexia in grating mode. By the way, the Hebrew word "l'gared" means both to grate and to scratch!

As each ingredient was put into the mixing bowl, a student at each table crossed out the ingredient on the instruction sheet, to be sure it wasn't added in more than once. Here's Jeremy checking out the instructions.

Once all the grating was done, matzo meal, melted margarine, baking soda, nutmeg, salt and cinnamon were added into the mixture and stirred all together.

The final step before baking was to fill paper muffin holders about 2/3 of the way with the mixture. You could use a spoon...

...or your fingers.

Once we washed the hands, and the muffin pans went into the oven, it was time for hafsaka (recess.) Two weeks ago, Daniella ordered jump ropes (both the regular and Chinese variety), as well as large pieces of chalk for the students to play with during our 15-minute break. The jump ropes have proven to be very popular:

Back in the classroom, I decided to introduce the subject of Hanuka, the next holiday coming up on our Jewish calendar in a little over a month, with a game called "In the Manner of the Word." The game gave me a chance to find out what the students recalled from previous years about the events of the story, as well as about the customs and laws relating to the holiday.

After briefly reviewing what the students recalled about the Hanuka story and its laws and customs, I asked for volunteers to give me a complete sentence to write on the board relating to the story or the laws or customs. Once we had 5 sentences on the board, I asked for all the students to call out adverbs, which I hurriedly also wrote on the board. Once these two preliminary activities were completed, we could begin to play the game.  And here's how it's played:

A student volunteers to go out of the classroom, while another stands guard at the door to be sure the first student doesn't look through the narrow window to see what's going on in the classroom. A third student is then asked to come up to the board and quietly point to one of the adverbs ("the word") written on it - as Jeremy is doing here. Once all the students have seen which adverb has been chosen, the volunteer who went out of the room is allowed to re-enter.

The object of the game is for the volunteer who went out of the room to guess which adverb was chosen. To do so, s/he must choose another volunteer to stand up and act out one of the five sentences "in the manner of the (chosen) word." No words can be spoken or sounds made during the acting out process. The results can prove to be hilarious!

Here's Jack acting out "The Maccabees fought the Syrian Greeks, stupidly."

And here's Ashley acting out "We recite two blessings over the Hanuka candles, loudly."

There was no shortage of volunteers for acting out the sentences!

And everyone got the chance to get up and stretch their acting muscles.

We laughed so hard, we didn't hear the bell ring at the end of the session!

With this game, we are now beginning a mini-unit about the history behind the events of the Hanuka celebration. It's hard to believe, when we think of how we celebrate Hanuka today, that this holiday commemorates a period in our national history which was so traumatic to our sense of national identity and our relationship to God that early Talmudic era Rabbis nearly determined not to commemorate the events of this period at all. The fact that this holiday exists on our calendar is proof of the overall positive outlook of Judaism and the strength in its belief about the purpose of time and history.  

Mass Immigration to the Golden Land

Last week, during the weekday sessions following our trip to Sonora and Columbia, I introduced the students to the final great wave of Jewish immigration to the United States. This wave took place between 1880-1924, and this time it was mostly eastern European Jews who came.

I reviewed with the class how the very first Jewish community in what was to become the United States, was established in New Amsterdam (re-named New York when the British conquered it from the Dutch). The year was 1654, and the community consisted of 23 Jews who came originally from Portugal, via Recife, Brazil. They were fleeing the Inquisition. Over the following 140-150 years, most Jews in the United States were of Sephardi (Spanish/Portuguese) origin. They lived in five major commercial cities along the eastern coast - New York, Philadelphia, Newport, Charleston, and Savannah. The second wave of Jewish immigration to the U.S. consisted of approximately 200,000 Jews who came mostly from central Europe - parts of France, Germany, Prussia and a few from Poland. They were escaping religious, economic and social persecution, and consisted largely of young men and women who wanted to start families and "find their fortunes" in a relatively new United States which needed more immigrants to build its economy and secure its territories. And, of course, after 1848, many came after newly discovered gold in California.

Once we had reviewed the above, I shared with the students that for reasons we'll be learning about in our next Edot unit of study, over 2 million Jews entered the U.S.between 1880-1924, and brought with them their Yiddish language and culture. Again, I used the "Heritage: Civilization and the Jews" program to bring the history to life, sharing a video segment and several multimedia presentations relating to the subject of this mass immigration. (minutes 24:54 to 38:05). In this segment, the narrator, Abba Eban, describes the emergence of the American Reform Movement (originally called UAHC - United Association of Hebrew Congregations) among the German Jews, and the emergence of the American Conservative and Modern Orthodox Movements among the mostly eastern European Jews, along with other cultural aspects of this era.

This final lesson about the Jews of the United  States (I wish I could continue into the modern era, but unfortunately I don't have the time to do so!), provides me with a perfect segue into our next Edot unit of study - Ashkenazi Jewry, with a focus on the Jews of Poland and Russia. But before we begin this unit, I will be sharing a mini-unit on the holiday of Shabbat, beginning next Sunday (our final class before Thanksgiving break). Eventually, I'll be merging this Shabbat unit of study with that of the Ashkenazi Jews, and our culminating event for what we learn about both will be a family "Shabbat Seder," to be held in our classroom on Sunday, January 29th.

During our past two weekday sessions, we all had a chance to meet our newest music teacher at Isaiah, Eric, during the final 15 minutes of the class. All three 5th and 6th grade tracks met in Shira's classroom, and had a wonderful session, learning two songs - "Betzelem Elohim" and "Ha'Tikva" (not the Israeli national anthem!).
Here he is teaching us the first song:

In preparation for our Shabbat unit of study, I put up new stumpers and challenges on our holiday board:

In case you can't read them in the photo, here they are:

Stumpers: (1 sticker each)
What is "Kabbalat Shabbat" and when was it first introduced?
Where exactly in the Torah are we commanded to observe Shabbat?
What is "Lechem Mishneh" and what does it remind us of?
Why is it important for Dr. Arpadi to honor Shabbat? (newspaper article)
Name the 6 "special Sabbaths" and tell why each is "special."

Challenges: (5 stickers each)
Name the 10 parts of the "Shabbat Seder." 
Name all the things that were created on each day of Creation.

A very big thank you goes to Alison for substituting for me this past Sunday while I attended the annual meeting for the Commission for the Preservation of Pioneer Jewish Cemeteries and Landmarks in the West. The students played the Shekel Game, a wonderful way to review what we've learned in class since the start of the school year in our Siddur, Jewish History/Edot and Holiday units of study. They also had another music session with the other two 5th and 6th grade tracks - this time with Revital, our Sunday music teacher.

Thar's Gold in Them Thar Hills

There's a lot of gold in those hills, and we went after it yesterday. It's not the shiny stuff you have to dig for; the gold we went after (and found!) was historical information about the Jews of the California Gold Rush. Six families from Edot, Shira and Y'tzira tracks drove to Sonora and Columbia on Highway 49 in gold country on what turned out to be a beautiful fall day, and spent the entire day getting to know each other and, of course, learning about what life was like for Jewish pioneers living in that area between the 1840's to 1870's.

We met in Sonora's Wood Creek Rotary Park and enjoyed a picnic lunch there.

It was the perfect setting for schmoozing and getting to know each other.

And, for dessert, I brought the 1-2-3-4 cakes the Edot students had made a couple of weeks earlier.

Once we had all had a chance to eat and get to know each other, we packed up our picnic baskets and drove the 10-minute drive to Columbia State Historic Park.

There, we were greeted by Debbie, one of our docents, dressed as a pioneer woman.

After giving us a general introduction about the Park and Columbia's place in Gold Rush history, Debbie led us up a (very steep!) hill to the Old Columbia School House, built in 1861, where we were greeted by Ms. Parrott, our "School Marm." She immediately divided us into two lines - one for boys and one for girls before having us file into the school room.

We learned history, ciphering (arithmetic), spelling and reading just as students back in 1861 would have learned the subjects. Here, we are having a geography lesson, learning about the routes many of "us" immigrants took from Europe to reach California.

Here, each boy is being asked to spell certain words; if he spells a word incorrectly, the whole class has to write it out five times for homework (no pressure!). Charlie, spell 'cemetery.' c-e-m-e-t-a-r-y. Whoops - wrong! Guess what we have to do tonight!

Some kids have a hard time learning what they're supposed to. Here's where you get to sit and what you get to wear if you don't do your homework or can't answer several questions in a row correctly!

If you can't behave in class, you get the switch over your fingers if you're a boy and on your ankles, if you're a girl. And then you get to stay after school and do chores for the school marm - like cleaning out the outhouse or emptying the stove of all the ashes.

Before it was time to go back down to Main Street for our tour of Jewish businesses, we had a chance to gather on the school steps for a group photo.

Debbie led us down to The California Store, a typical mercantile establishment of the times. There, we met our town docent, Don, all dressed up as a miner would have for a special occasion in his "Sunday best."

First, he took us to see the Odd Fellows Hall in the red brick building. Many Jewish men belonged to this order, as well as to the Masonic Order. We know from local newspaper accounts that Jewish pioneers were allowed to use the Hall for High Holiday services during the1850's, and that a chandelier hanging inside was donated by the Jews to thank the group for their generosity.

When we came to the original site of the H.and S. Levy store (Harris and his brother Solomon), Hannah read a "letter home" to her family, taking on the persona of Sarah Levy, Harris' wife. The letter described to the family she left home in Europe why she and Harris had to leave their family and friends, how they were shipwrecked off the coast of Cuba on their way to California, and what her life was like in Columbia since they arrived. Descendants of the Levy Family eventually moved to San Francisco and established the Mervyn's Department Store chain (which went out of business some years ago).

Just before leading us to the original site of Phillip Schwartz's New York Fancy Dry Goods Store, Don shared how many Jewish merchants like Schwartz became tax collectors to earn extra money (though certainly not any friends!).

The New York Fancy Dry Goods Store stood just next door to a barber shop and the blacksmiths shop. Here is Joseph Tarkoff reading a "letter home" from Phillip Schwartz; you can hear the blacksmith hard at work in the background!

All this walking through the town can make a man hungry. What better to munch on than a (not-so-tasty) piece of hard tack (no pizza for this pioneer!)

We learned that after the gold ran out in the Columbia/Sonora area, Columbia survived thanks to all the marble stone that they could quarry. Here are some makeshift steps made out of Columbia marble. Columbia was honored, in the 1860's, by having marble from its quarry chosen to be part of the Washington Monument in D.C.

After about 40 minutes of free time on Main Street after our tour (during which time you could choose to pan for gold, take a stagecoach ride, have something made in the blacksmith's shop or just watch him working, and/or try out some of the tasty old-fashioned treats in the saloons, ice cream parlors, candy stores or restaurants), we headed back to our cars for the short ride back to Sonora to visit the Pioneer Jewish Cemetery on Yaney Avenue.

Sonora's was the first Jewish cemetery established in Gold Country, back in 1851. It's first burial was a young, 17-year old named Hartwig Caro who died in 1853 and was "mourned by a parent and brother" whose names faded away long ago.

The cemetery lies adjacent to the Tuolomne County Sheriff's Department and is regularly maintained by prisoners from its jail.

After briefly sharing a history of the cemetery and of the Commission for the Preservation of Pioneer Jewish Cemeteries and Landmarks in the West which owns the deeds to this and to six other pioneer Jewish cemeteries in Gold Country, I handed out a "treasure hunt" to each family which asked them to find gravestones with certain symbols on them. This gave the families a chance to look around at all 45 known graves (there are many others whose markers were lost long ago) as they searched for the symbols.

Doves were frequently carved into or sculpted on top of children's gravestones.

Lambs were also frequently sculpted or carved into children's gravestones.

The Hebrew letters "pey" "nun" stand for the Hebrew words, "poh neekbar" (here is buried) and are found on almost every Jewish gravestone.

So, too, are the Hebrew letters "tav" "nun" "tzadi" "vet" and "hey" (at the very bottom of this gravestone). They stand for the Hebrew words, "t'hey nishmato tz'rura b'tzror he'chayim," meaning, "may his soul be bound up in the bond of everlasting life" (a verse from the first Book of Samuel 25:29)

Once the "treasure hunt" was over, we gathered to hear two Edot students read their "letters home" next to the gravestones of the Jewish pioneers they had been assigned to "become" in class. First, Charlie read his "letter home" from Emanuel Linoberg, the richest man in Sonora when he suddenly died at the age of 40 from a heart attack.

Then, it was Michael's turn to read his "letter home" from Hartwig Caro, the young man who was the first to be buried in this cemetery.

We then chanted the "Kaddish" (the Mourner's Prayer) together, and each person took large pebbles I had brought to the cemetery, to place on one or more graves. Even though we never had a chance to know these Jewish pioneers personally, we place the pebbles on their gravestones to let people know that these pioneers are not forgotten. 

 

And that was the purpose of this field trip - to learn about these Jewish pioneers who left at a young age everything and everyone they knew behind them, to seek out a better life for themselves and their future generations in a land "that they did not know." This coming Shabbat, we will read parshat "Lech L'cha" in synagogues all over the world. The history of our Jewish nation began with the story of a great physical and spiritual journey. And ever since, Abraham's descendants have continued his journey to every corner of the world. Just as Abraham took it on faith that he would be led to a place of blessings and fulfillment, so every generation of Jews has also looked for a place on Earth where we could improve our lot physically, socially, economically and spiritually. Early California Jews found such a place, and our Bay Area Jewish community, which they founded,  has an obligation never to forget them.

ZEECHRONAM LEE'V'RACHA - MAY THEIR MEMORIES BE A BLESSING

Our Pouches Are Packed; We're Ready to Go!

Our final project in preparation for the Gold Rush field trip this coming Sunday was to make pouches similar to those carried by gold miners and peddlers to carry their valuables. For the miners, valuables meant gold. For the peddlers, including Jewish peddlers who traveled sometimes as far as 100 miles between farm houses and mining camps, valuables could be precious Jewish ritual objects, such as t'fillin (phyllacteries) and perhaps a Siddur (prayer book), but also food they would need to see them through until their next stop. In most cases, hardtack (definitely kosher!) was a staple.

We already prepared the hardtack two weeks ago in class. On Tuesday and Wednesday this week, we made the pouches.

During Gold Rush days, leather was the material of choice for pouches. In our Edot class, it was felt (a lot cheaper and much easier to work with!)

Each student was given a 10" diameter circle of felt with pre-punched holes along the circumference.

Then the student chose a red, gold, or green drawstring to weave in and out of the holes (which proved to be the hardest step, since it was easy to miss a hole).

Finally, the string was drawn tight to form the pouch shape and, just before it was time to go down to recess, each student put several pieces of hardtack into the pouch.

It was too tempting not to taste the hardtack, and luckily we had made enough pieces to allow each student to take a piece to "gnaw" on during recess. The concensus opinion was that it tasted "OK" - i.e. not bad and not great. We agreed that if you were really hungry and had nothing else to eat, it probably would have tasted a lot better, maybe even great!

I'm looking forward to greeting those of you who are joining us on the field trip in Sonora's Woods Creek Rotary Park around 11:15 Sunday morning, where we'll enjoy our picnic lunches and some 1-2-3-4 cake before heading to Columbia State Park for a tour of Jewish businesses on Main Street and a lesson in the Old Schoolhouse there. We'll end the tour in the Sonora Pioneer Jewish Cemetery, where we'll have a treasure hunt, looking for Jewish and other gravestone symbols, and learn about some of the Jewish pioneers buried there from "letters home" our students wrote.

REMEMBER TO TURN YOUR CLOCKS BACK ONE HOUR BEFORE GOING TO BED SATURDAY EVENING!