Hebrew School
Apr. 23rd, 2006 01:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasAfter the horribleness of yesterday, which Lis blogged about, it's good that today's Hebrew school was wonderful.
We weren't sure how many kids would show up, as today is officially the last day of spring vacation for Boston-area schools, but seven out of the eight did. Which is a remarkably large percentage for my class. . .
As we wait for everyone to trickle in, kids take paper leaves and write or draw on them a mitzvah that they've done in the past week, or, in this case, since we were off for Pesach, past two weeks. I suggested that most everyone had a mitzvah that they could ONLY have done since the past class -- eating matzah, which is only a mitzvah on Pesach.
Anyway, as they were working on that, I talked a little bit about Pesach, and how the z'roah and beitzah are there to represent the sacrifices in THE TEMPLE, but aren't sacrifices. This happened because I was asking about other mitzvot that people do on Pesach, and one of them said, "Eating everything on the seder plate," and I corrected him that we eat MOST things on the seder plate -- karpas, maror/chazeret, charoset -- but not everything -- we don't eat the z'roah. The beitzah is debatable -- most families start the meal with eggs, but it's part of the MEAL rather than a separate part of the seder. And so I talked about how the z'roah is to represent the bone of a lamb that we WOULD be eating if THE TEMPLE was standing, but, since it's not, we don't do sacrifices, so we don't eat the lamb.
And that sparked a discussion about why we HAVEN'T rebuilt THE TEMPLE. Or, as the kids refer to it, "THE TEMPLE, Version 3." I explained that there was a Muslim holy site right smack-dab where THE TEMPLE is supposed to go.
Ben suggested that, well, the Western Wall is still standing. Can't we just use that as the EASTERN wall, and build THE TEMPLE, Ver. 3, right next door?
I allowed that that was an interesting idea, but I didn't know if it would work, and Gabe said that he didn't think it would, because the commandment was to build THE TEMPLE where it was built, and we haven't gotten ANOTHER commandment to rebuild it, so we're still working off the FIRST commandment, and so we'd have to follow that as closely as possible, which would mean building it right where it was the first time.
Maddy said that it was totally not fair that the Muslims built a structure right where THE TEMPLE was supposed to go, and Jake said that he thought that, once the Romans destroyed THE TEMPLE, it was okay for someone else to come in and use the space, and that he thought it was unfair of the Romans, but he didn't think the Muslims had done anything wrong, because the Byzantine Empire, which was the successor to the Roman Empire was at war with the Muslim empire for a long time, and the Muslims had a lot of stuff destroyed by the Romans, too, so they had a right to capture land from the Romans.
Jasmine said that she could totally see both points of view, and wanted to know if it was possible to rebuild the Dome of the Rock half-size, and build The Temple #3 half-size so they could both be on the same spot.
These are second and third graders.
I told them that I didn't know whether most of their ideas would work, and that they should study lots more and make good arguments, because maybe they could convince people and come up with solutions.
This entire discussion was entirely unplanned and spontaneous. I had no intention to discuss this with them, but, once they got started, it seemed like a good thing to let them continue. But, as it started to wind down, after ten minutes or so, I started the actual lesson I had prepared.
I was talking about how we use Hebrew words for concepts because there aren't exact English matches. So we had three words: חסד, צדק, and כבוד, of which they're familiar with the last two. And we tried to come up with English words that we could squish together in our minds to get the Hebrew concept. For k'vod, we used things like "honor", "respect", "obey", "opposite of embarrassed". Tzedek got "justice", "fairness", "right", "righteousness." And then, to introduce the concept of chesed, I gave them "love", "kindness", and "mercy", and they came up with some other words to put in, like "friendship" and "caring".
So then I was able to introduce gemilut chassadim. Naturally, they made the obvious "give me loot" puns, which is only to be expected, but we started talking about what gemilut chassadim, and how it's different from tzedakah.
We didn't get as far as I'd hoped to with that, because we'd spent the first half of the period talking about THE TEMPLE, which was a perfectly good way to spend it.
In the second half, Hebrew, I actually feel that Max was paying attention and I got him to learn some stuff. So that's good.
Anyway, as the students' request, I've got a bribe system going -- the best behaved kid gets a prize. Three students all were fantastic today, so we ended up with a three-way tie. As I only had one prize, I agreed to bring something cool in for each of them next week.
One of them really loves buttons which say stuff.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chanaleh, can I get a rush order from you, maybe? I don't know exactly what she'd like, but the sorts of 1-inch buttons that you make are EXACTLY what Maddy loves.
We weren't sure how many kids would show up, as today is officially the last day of spring vacation for Boston-area schools, but seven out of the eight did. Which is a remarkably large percentage for my class. . .
As we wait for everyone to trickle in, kids take paper leaves and write or draw on them a mitzvah that they've done in the past week, or, in this case, since we were off for Pesach, past two weeks. I suggested that most everyone had a mitzvah that they could ONLY have done since the past class -- eating matzah, which is only a mitzvah on Pesach.
Anyway, as they were working on that, I talked a little bit about Pesach, and how the z'roah and beitzah are there to represent the sacrifices in THE TEMPLE, but aren't sacrifices. This happened because I was asking about other mitzvot that people do on Pesach, and one of them said, "Eating everything on the seder plate," and I corrected him that we eat MOST things on the seder plate -- karpas, maror/chazeret, charoset -- but not everything -- we don't eat the z'roah. The beitzah is debatable -- most families start the meal with eggs, but it's part of the MEAL rather than a separate part of the seder. And so I talked about how the z'roah is to represent the bone of a lamb that we WOULD be eating if THE TEMPLE was standing, but, since it's not, we don't do sacrifices, so we don't eat the lamb.
And that sparked a discussion about why we HAVEN'T rebuilt THE TEMPLE. Or, as the kids refer to it, "THE TEMPLE, Version 3." I explained that there was a Muslim holy site right smack-dab where THE TEMPLE is supposed to go.
Ben suggested that, well, the Western Wall is still standing. Can't we just use that as the EASTERN wall, and build THE TEMPLE, Ver. 3, right next door?
I allowed that that was an interesting idea, but I didn't know if it would work, and Gabe said that he didn't think it would, because the commandment was to build THE TEMPLE where it was built, and we haven't gotten ANOTHER commandment to rebuild it, so we're still working off the FIRST commandment, and so we'd have to follow that as closely as possible, which would mean building it right where it was the first time.
Maddy said that it was totally not fair that the Muslims built a structure right where THE TEMPLE was supposed to go, and Jake said that he thought that, once the Romans destroyed THE TEMPLE, it was okay for someone else to come in and use the space, and that he thought it was unfair of the Romans, but he didn't think the Muslims had done anything wrong, because the Byzantine Empire, which was the successor to the Roman Empire was at war with the Muslim empire for a long time, and the Muslims had a lot of stuff destroyed by the Romans, too, so they had a right to capture land from the Romans.
Jasmine said that she could totally see both points of view, and wanted to know if it was possible to rebuild the Dome of the Rock half-size, and build The Temple #3 half-size so they could both be on the same spot.
These are second and third graders.
I told them that I didn't know whether most of their ideas would work, and that they should study lots more and make good arguments, because maybe they could convince people and come up with solutions.
This entire discussion was entirely unplanned and spontaneous. I had no intention to discuss this with them, but, once they got started, it seemed like a good thing to let them continue. But, as it started to wind down, after ten minutes or so, I started the actual lesson I had prepared.
I was talking about how we use Hebrew words for concepts because there aren't exact English matches. So we had three words: חסד, צדק, and כבוד, of which they're familiar with the last two. And we tried to come up with English words that we could squish together in our minds to get the Hebrew concept. For k'vod, we used things like "honor", "respect", "obey", "opposite of embarrassed". Tzedek got "justice", "fairness", "right", "righteousness." And then, to introduce the concept of chesed, I gave them "love", "kindness", and "mercy", and they came up with some other words to put in, like "friendship" and "caring".
So then I was able to introduce gemilut chassadim. Naturally, they made the obvious "give me loot" puns, which is only to be expected, but we started talking about what gemilut chassadim, and how it's different from tzedakah.
We didn't get as far as I'd hoped to with that, because we'd spent the first half of the period talking about THE TEMPLE, which was a perfectly good way to spend it.
In the second half, Hebrew, I actually feel that Max was paying attention and I got him to learn some stuff. So that's good.
Anyway, as the students' request, I've got a bribe system going -- the best behaved kid gets a prize. Three students all were fantastic today, so we ended up with a three-way tie. As I only had one prize, I agreed to bring something cool in for each of them next week.
One of them really loves buttons which say stuff.
chanaleh, can I get a rush order from you, maybe? I don't know exactly what she'd like, but the sorts of 1-inch buttons that you make are EXACTLY what Maddy loves.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-23 08:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-23 10:07 pm (UTC)Of course, it'd have to be a rush order to be in time for next week, esp. if you live in the Boston area; she's in Phila., like me.
I don't get it?
The Romans built a temple to Jupiter on the ruins of the Temple. The Christians later turned this into a church, which was razed/rebuilt a number of times, sometimes as a mosque. It was only "recently" that the Muslims cleared the whole area to build their mosque. This mosque had no real importance until it became a rallying point against "the perils of the Jews, who where coming to Palestine, in ever greater numbers" - this was sometime in the middle of the 19th century.
There IS in fact a requirement to build the Temple in the exact same spot, which is what would prevent any such attempts to rebuild it just now. It might be possible to determine this position through extensive archaeological digs, but disregarding the mosque for the sake of this argument, that in itself would be problematic, because not knowing exactly where things are, you would have to be very careful to NOT dig in areas that are strictly forbidden to enter. It's a chicken and egg problem.
Interestingly enough, the Temple itself is NOT actually required specifically for the Pascal sacrifice! "All" that is required is to know exactly where the Great Altar was. There are leading Torah scholars who advocate for bringing this sacrifice in present time. But that still doesn't solve the problem of the "inconvenient" mosque. The late Chief-Rabbi Shlomo Goren made extensive measurements of the Temple Mount, at the time it was recaptured in 1967. According to his method (a minority opinion, but still interesting) the "Rock" inside the Dome of the Rock, is NOT in fact the Ehven Hashtiyah as many people think, but the base of the Altar. Which would make bringing sacrifices there really problematic...
Those are some pretty clever students you have. Good for you!
"Any generation in which the Temple is not rebuilt, it is as if the Temple was destroyed in that generation." :-(
Re: I don't get it?
Date: 2006-04-24 01:56 pm (UTC)But I don't want to radicalize the second graders too much too soon. Even though, for myself, I agree more with Maddy that the Muslims were totally unfair for building where THE TEMPLE goes than Jake that they had a right to do it because they conquered the area from Byzantium.
Re: I don't get it?
Date: 2006-04-24 01:59 pm (UTC)Therefore, "TGIש" would mean, "Thank Ghu it's שבת".
Re: I don't get it?
Date: 2006-04-24 04:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-23 10:10 pm (UTC)I still maintain that we can't build Temple 3.0 because you couldn't possibly fit all of the world's Jews in one building anymore. The tribe's gotten a wee bit big. I think we should use the solution used in other faiths where anytime you're in a temple, you do a ceremony whereby for as long as you're in sacred time, the temple is a stand-in for THE temple, and so you're really there even if you aren't physically there as such.
And then do whatever it is we used to do, except that we don't know most of what it was.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-24 04:37 am (UTC)During the Israel/Egypt peace talks, I suggested to my Dad that they redraw the map so that the borders on the Sinai desert looked like linked hands. He looked very wistful. Ah, the idealism of youth. :(
Hug Sami for me, please? (Finally caught up on Lis' blog. Aie.)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-24 05:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-24 02:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-24 02:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-24 03:19 pm (UTC)Actually, I think it's the first SOLUTION I've heard suggested in years.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-24 08:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-24 09:03 pm (UTC)There's probably a better, more official way to do it, but that's how I did it.