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xiphiasSo, I thought I'd try to write down some of the things which I taught to my students this year.
Every once in a while, I wonder why the Hebrew School keeps hiring me back. I mean, the board members' children have all had me as a teacher -- they KNOW what I teach and how, and yet, they not only keep hiring me, they LIKE what I'm teaching their kids.
So it might be a good idea to try to remember a few of those things:
"Well, it's true that I like to say that 'the Hannukah story is a lie', but that's not 100% true. Everything in the Hannukah story that we tell, except for the oil, actually happened. It just that it's not the WHOLE story. The Maccabees did recapture and re-dedicate The Temple. The fact that Antiochus's army captured it back and re-desecrated it six months later doesn't change that.
"The trick to getting a happy ending in a historical story is knowing when to stop telling the story. In real life, there are good times and bad times. If you stop telling the story during a good time, then you have a happy ending. But, in reality, there ISN'T an ending. All history leads to other history, and it doesn't stop until now. I mean, now. Or maybe NOW. Dang, I missed it again. But no story has ended yet. All stories are only going to end with the heat-death of the universe, and maybe not even then.
"So, the Hannukah story is true. It's just not the whole truth. But no historical story is the WHOLE truth -- the whole truth includes everything, everywhere, up until, NOW. Or NOW, or . . . you get the idea. So you ALWAYS have to choose where to stop. They didn't have a whole lot of great places to stop, but, if you want to have something you can have a party around, you have to choose SOMETHING good."
Another lesson: we'd somehow gotten onto a digression onto the Book of Prophets, which, in historical terms, covers stuff that is BEFORE what we were supposed to be studying:
"The Book of Prophets DOES teach important lessons. For instance, the story of David and Goliath -- what's the lesson that we learn from that?"
[they came up with various good answers, such as faith in yourself and trust in G-d.]
"Those are all good answers, but I think there's an even more important and basic lesson that the story teaches us: 'Never bring a knife to a gunfight.'"
Every once in a while, I wonder why the Hebrew School keeps hiring me back. I mean, the board members' children have all had me as a teacher -- they KNOW what I teach and how, and yet, they not only keep hiring me, they LIKE what I'm teaching their kids.
So it might be a good idea to try to remember a few of those things:
"Well, it's true that I like to say that 'the Hannukah story is a lie', but that's not 100% true. Everything in the Hannukah story that we tell, except for the oil, actually happened. It just that it's not the WHOLE story. The Maccabees did recapture and re-dedicate The Temple. The fact that Antiochus's army captured it back and re-desecrated it six months later doesn't change that.
"The trick to getting a happy ending in a historical story is knowing when to stop telling the story. In real life, there are good times and bad times. If you stop telling the story during a good time, then you have a happy ending. But, in reality, there ISN'T an ending. All history leads to other history, and it doesn't stop until now. I mean, now. Or maybe NOW. Dang, I missed it again. But no story has ended yet. All stories are only going to end with the heat-death of the universe, and maybe not even then.
"So, the Hannukah story is true. It's just not the whole truth. But no historical story is the WHOLE truth -- the whole truth includes everything, everywhere, up until, NOW. Or NOW, or . . . you get the idea. So you ALWAYS have to choose where to stop. They didn't have a whole lot of great places to stop, but, if you want to have something you can have a party around, you have to choose SOMETHING good."
Another lesson: we'd somehow gotten onto a digression onto the Book of Prophets, which, in historical terms, covers stuff that is BEFORE what we were supposed to be studying:
"The Book of Prophets DOES teach important lessons. For instance, the story of David and Goliath -- what's the lesson that we learn from that?"
[they came up with various good answers, such as faith in yourself and trust in G-d.]
"Those are all good answers, but I think there's an even more important and basic lesson that the story teaches us: 'Never bring a knife to a gunfight.'"