The Values of Belonging

Download print-friendly lesson plan of Activity 1

Before You Get Started

Look at the list of enduring understandings, which one would you like to emphasize through this activity?

Goal

This activity aims to examine attitudes of participants towards the idea of belonging to the wider Jewish community. Is it a positive or negative experience for them? Is it a meaningful or meaningless part of their identity?

Materials Needed

• 10 small cards (or pieces of paper) for each participant
• 1 piece of paper (81/2X11 or A4) for each participant
• 2 different colored markers for each participant

Time Needed

30-60 minutes, depending on the size of the group and the amount of time you want to give to group discussion.

Directions for Activity

1. Each member of the group is given a series of ten cards. On each card they write one description that defines their belonging to a group. (They have ten cards so can write up to ten aspects.) One card needs to be “a Jew.” For example they might write a list that includes some of the following:
   • A WOMAN
   • A DAUGHTER
   • A SISTER
   • A GRANDDAUGHTER
   • A STUDENT AT SCHOOL
   • A BELIEVER IN HUMAN RIGHTS
   • A CANADIAN/AMERICAN ETC.
   • A MEMBER OF 11^TH GRADE
   • A BASKETBALL PLAYER
   • A GUITAR PLAYER
   • A DANCER
   • A JEW
   • A HUMAN BEING
   • AN ENVIRONMENTALIST
   • A READER
2. After finishing writing on the cards, each student divides his/her cards into two piles, labeled “very meaningful” and “fairly meaningful.” If there are any descriptions that are even less meaningful, they can add a third category, “not very meaningful.” They decide which group the “Jew” card goes but will not touch this card it in the next part of the activity.
3. Starting with the less meaningful cards, the participants take each card (apart from the “Jew” card) and write what being a member of that group means to them. For example, what does it mean to them to be a dancer and to be a member of the community of people who define themselves as dancers? What does it give them? How important is it in their life? Why? Do they feel connected to others who define themselves as dancers?
4. Let each person present one of their “very meaningful” cards (but not the Jew card) to the whole group and see if other people feel similarly to them.
5. Working again as individuals, let each take their “Jew card” and stick it on a larger piece of paper. Around the edge of the circle the participant writes single words or phrases of her or his feelings, positive and negative, towards the word Jew in the center. They might, for example, write some of the following words: positive words such as “belonging” or “connected” or negative words such as “parents’ pressure” or “boring” or words like “bar (or bat) mitzvah” or “Hebrew school” which could be either positive or negative.
6. When they have written all the words or phrases around the circle, they take two different colored markers and draw arrows connecting the words to the circle. If the words express a positive feeling or value that draws them in towards their community they should express this by means of an arrow in one color pointing inwards towards the circle. If the word represents something negative or something that draws them away from the community, they should draw an arrow in the other color, away from the circle. The more important the factor (in either direction), the bigger the arrow should be drawn.
7. When finished, divide students into pairs and ask them to compare their diagrams. How many of the factors appear in both of the participants’ diagrams? Are there things that appear as positive in one person’s diagram and as negative in the other? have them talk about the different factors. Which are stronger, the positive or the negative? Which if any factors are negative?
8. Back in the whole group, the students discuss and list all the factors that came up. Make two lists made, one for the positive and one for the negative factors.
9. Divide the class into small groups and on based on the list lists, have each group attempt to summarize the feelings of the class as a whole towards the Jewish community, and have them try to express this in a statement. The statement should include a general outline of the position of the class, explaining any significant minority positions that developed, and it should also include any suggestions of the small group for improving the Jewish community.
10. Finally, have each individual tell which pile they put their “Jew card,” very meaningful, fairly meaningful or not meaningful, and ask them to explain their position.

Note to Educator

Did the enduring understanding that you set out to teach surface during this activity?

Collective Memory & Haggadah

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Before You Get Started

Look at the list of enduring understandings, which one would you like to emphasize through this activity?

Goal

Participants will explore the key aspects of collective belonging with regard to how it relates to the Passover Haggadah.

Materials Needed

Copies of excerpts of the Haggadah (see below for suggestions)

Time needed

30-40 minutes

Directions for Activity

1. Read Text #1 Collective History and Memory from Passover Haggadah.
2. Suggest to the participants that the Passover Haggadah is a great educational and pedagogic text, put together by the Rabbis in the Middle Ages in order to put forward a number of educational messages to the scattered world community of Jews.
3. Divide the group into small groups and give each group a few pages of the traditional Haggadah (you could give each group different pages, or the same to everyone).

Examples of texts to include:

• “This is the Bread of Affliction” (Ha Lachma Anya)
• “Once we were slaves” (Avadim Hayinu)
• “It would have been enough” (Dayenu)
• “Next Year in Jerusalem” (L’Shana Haba’ah)

4. Ask each small group to identify educational messages in their section and to present them to the whole group. What are the rabbis trying to teach us through the way that they have organized the Haggadah?
5. Sum up the discussion and ask participants to share a question or idea they are left with.

OR

1. Alternatively do a “jigsaw exercise” in which a member of each of the small groups becomes a member of another small group in which all of the pieces in the Haggadah are represented.
2. Try and identify which major messages the Rabbis are trying to give and why? What are they saying about the way that Jews should relate to their history? Why? What do these passages mean to you?
3. Now listen to this film clip, dealing with Jewish memory. In this very short (under a minute) piece we hear Jewish educator Avraham Infeld talking about the importance of memory for Jews. What do the students think about the idea that “Jews must not have amnesia”?

Note to Educator

Did the enduring understanding that you set out to teach surface during this activity?

Collective Memory – Benefit or Burden?

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Before You Get Started

Look at the list of enduring understandings, which one would you like to emphasize through this activity?

Goal

Participants will explore how collective memory can ground their identities as Jews and may (simultaneously) be a potential burden.

Materials Needed

• Copies of phrase from Haggadah
• Copies of Katznelson quote
• Tape

Time Needed

30 minutes

Directions for Activity

1. Present the phrase from the Haggadah to the class.

2. Discuss what it means, asking why the Rabbis did not tell us simply to remember the going out of Egypt? Suggest that according to the Rabbis, the Jewish approach to history places memory at the center. Ask whether this is realistic – in which ways yes and in which ways no?

3. Put a line of tape on the floor with one end defined as positive and the other defined as negative and ask them to line up according to whether they like the approach of the Rabbis or not. In the resulting debate, you might like to bring the piece from Berl Katznelson in order to strengthen the negative side!
4. Sum up the discussion and ask participants to share a question or idea they are left with.

Note to Educator

Did the enduring understanding that you set out to teach surface during this activity?

Making Jewish History Personal

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Before You Get Started

Look at the list of enduring understandings, which one would you like to emphasize through this activity?

Goal

Participants will consider which events in Jewish history are worth remembering with the same sense of importance as we remember the story of the Exodus from Egypt

Materials

• Copies of phrase from Haggadah
• Copies of Katznelson quote
• Paper
• Pens/Pencil

Time Needed

30-45 minutes

Directions for Activity

1. Present the phrase from the Haggadah and how the Rabbinic approach is encapsulated in the phrase.
2. Explore the question as a group: Is it a good approach in the eyes of the group? Why? Why not?
3. Bring the piece from Berl Katznelson to underline some potential problems that can arise when we try and remember too much on a national level.
4. On the assumption that we cannot “remember” all of our history and internalize it, ask the group (first individually and then in smaller groups) to choose three or four events in Jewish history that all Jews should remember and seek to internalize.
5. Why should those events be remembered and internalized over others? Each group needs to explain and justify its choices.
6. Sum up the discussion and ask participants to share a question or idea they are left with.

Note to Educator

Did the enduring understanding that you set out to teach surface during this activity?

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Jewish Identity beyond the Individual: Buber’s View

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Before You Get Started

Look at the list of enduring understandings, which one would you like to emphasize through this activity?

Goal

Participants will explore the place of Jewishness within their own identities and consider the ways it is both situated in the “self” and goes beyond it as well.

Materials Needed

Text from Buber

Time Needed

30-40 minutes

Directions for Activity

1. Examine the Buber text.

2. Reflect on the following questions with the group: What is he saying about the way we grow an identity? What is the difference between giving such a message to Jews living in Diaspora and giving it to any other non-Jewish audience?

3. One of the ways to think about the text is that Buber understands that Jews in the Diaspora have a choice and need to make that choice consciously. From his point of view, the Jewish identity should be chosen as the dominant root identity.  Discuss with the group how they feel about that assumption. Should their root choice be for a Jewish identity or a different one? Do the changes in the world in the last century invalidate Buber’s ideas? In what ways? In what ways do they not?
4. Sum up the discussion and ask participants to share a question or idea they are left with.

Note to Educator

Did the enduring understanding that you set out to teach surface during this activity?

Creating Your Jewish Identity Timeline

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Before You Get Started

Look at the list of enduring understandings, which one would you like to emphasize through this activity?

Goal

Participants will explore key events that have contributed to the connection to (or disconnect from) their own Jewish identities.

Materials Needed

Text by Buber

Paper

Pens/Pencils

Time Needed

30-40 minutes

Directions for Activity

1. Examine the text from Buber.

2. Let each individual create a Jewish consciousness or identity time line for themselves. Ask participants to add between 5-10 events that they can identify which helped either increase or decrease their Jewish consciousness and identity. (For an interesting conversation later on encourage them to think about some events that increased their sense of identity and some events that might have distanced them from feelings of being Jewish.) Give them prompts including: How old were they? What actually happened at that stage in their lives? Who were their friends and circle of influence?

3. When they have created their own personal timeline, they should share it with someone else in the group.

4. Finally as a whole group, generate a list of the different events that have influenced people’s timelines. See what patterns emerge.

5. Discuss what the participants feel about their own Jewish consciousness at the moment and the place that Jewish identity plays in their life.  Is it too much for them or too little? If they would like to increase the Jewish awareness in their life, which strategies would they suggest for themselves?
6. Sum up the discussion and ask participants to share a question or idea they are left with.

Note to Educator

Did the enduring understanding that you set out to teach surface during this activity?

‘The Jews’ by Yehuda Amichai

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Before You Get Started

Look at the list of enduring understandings, which one would you like to emphasize through this activity?

Goal

Participants will use poetry and metaphor to understand the multiple dimensions of the concept “The Jews”.

Materials Needed

Copies of poem “The Jews” by Yehudah Amichai

Paper

Pens/Pencils

Art supplies

Time Needed

30-60 minutes (depending on how much time you spend on the art project)

Directions for Activity

1. Read the whole poem, “The Jews” closely.
2. Ask your students to look carefully at the metaphors that Amichai uses to describe the Jewish People. What do we learn about (Amichai’s understanding of) the Jewish People? What kind of People are we, according to him? Do your students find these metaphors accurate and resonant for them?
3. Ask your students to suggest other metaphors.
4. Get out some art supplies (markers, colored pens or other materials) and ask your students to illustrate the metaphors or write about them more extensively.
5. Create a large display around the phrase “The Jews are …” and add your written pieces, Amichai’s poem and any artistic display you make to go with it.
6. Sum up the discussion and ask participants to share a question or idea they are left with.

Note to Educator

Did the enduring understanding that you set out to teach surface during this activity?

Meaningful Jewish Peoplehood Practices

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Before You Get Started

Look at the list of enduring understandings, which one would you like to emphasize through this activity?

Goal

Participants will consider what actions we do in our day to day lives that can make identifying with the Jewish people a meaningful practice.

Materials Needed

White board

Markers

Paper

Pens/Pencils

Time Needed

45-60 minutes

Directions for Activity

1. Write the phrase “the Jews are …” on a white board and ask the group to suggest possible nouns to complete the phrase: “The Jews are a ….”. Possible suggestions might include words like: religion, a people, a nation, a civilization, a culture. If People is not on their list, add it in.
2. Now divide the group into small groups: Give each group all of the words that have been suggested and ask them to think of three essential actions needed for the collective to exist according to each definition. For example, for religion, suggestions might include: coming together regularly to pray, fasting on Yom Kippur, building a Sukkah, boys putting on tefillin, maintaining places where Jews can study traditional texts, training Rabbis etc. For nation, suggestions might include learning Hebrew as a Jewish language, supporting the State of Israel, defending rights for Jews in all countries, celebrating Jewish festivals etc.
3. Explain that the question “what are the Jews?” has received many answers, especially since the Jews entered the modern world in the last two centuries or so.
4. Explain that there is much difference of opinion and suggest that each person is entitled to come to their own conclusions. The oldest of all of these definitions and the one that appears most commonly in traditional Jewish sources is the word עם – Am – translated as People as in Am Yisrael – the Jewish People. Explain that this is the word that you are going to concentrate on: what does it mean to be part of the Jewish People?
5. List all of the actions that they have chosen for People. If they were asked to choose just one that they see as absolutely central for existing as the Jewish People, what would they choose? Why?
6. Sum up the discussion and ask participants to share a question or idea they are left with.

Note to Educator

Did the enduring understanding that you set out to teach surface during this activity?

Covenantal Belonging

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Before You Get Started

Look at the list of enduring understandings, which one would you like to emphasize through this activity?

Goal

Participants will reflect upon their sense of belonging to the Jewish people through the lens of the biblical concept of Covenant.

Materials Needed

Copies of Genesis text (Genesis 1-14)

Copies of ‘The Jews’ by Yehudah Amichai

Time Needed

30-45 minutes

Directions for Activity

1. Look carefully at the motif of the covenant in the poem.
2. Consider the role of circumcision as a key moment in becoming part of the Jewish People. What does it add to the poem that Amichai focused on this expression of covenantal belonging?
3. Discuss the notion of covenant with your students. What is a covenant? How is it different from an agreement?
4. Look at the excerpt from Genesis in which God makes a covenant with Abraham.   What does God promise to Abraham and what does Abraham need to promise in return? How do your students relate to this notion? Do they feel part of a covenant with the Jewish People, and if they do, how do they join?
5. For older students, you might want to raise the (controversial) issue of brit milah (circumcision) as a concept. There are some contemporary debates about circumcision, in several frameworks. Some countries or local authorities are considering outlawing it, and some parents are against it also, considering it too “tribal.” Others take brit milah as a normative practice for their community (this is true of Orthodox and traditional Jews and even secular Israelis.) Ask participants what they think about the practice of Brit Milah as being a sign of connection to a tribe. What is powerful about that kind of “sign” of a covenant or holy agreement? Are there other ways in which this commitment to a tribe is/ should be expressed in our day?
6. Sum up the discussion and ask participants to share a question or idea they are left with.

Note to Educator

Did the enduring understanding that you set out to teach surface during this activity?

The Tribe

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Before You Get Started

Look at the list of enduring understandings, which one would you like to emphasize through this activity?

Goal

To explore the essential features of the Jewish collective through the lens of anthropologists studying a tribe. When looking from the outside in, what are the core features of the Jewish tribe? Across all of our ‘sub-tribes’ what are our common values?

Time

1 hour or over several sessions

Materials

Video clip, screening device and internet connection

Paper

Pens/ Pencils

Poster paper

Material for exhibit

Direction for Activity

1. Write the word “Tribe” on a board. What does it evoke for participants? What are the main features of a tribe?
2. Watch clip from film “The Tribe” (cue through 5:06) or watch the short film in its entirety.
3. Ask for participants to share their general reactions. What was surprising, funny or thought-provoking about the clip or film?
4. Ask participants to complete the sentence “The Jewish Tribe is…” From the list try to see if a pattern emerges of common values that transcend different ‘sub-tribes’.
5. For an extended activity: Ask participants to become anthropologists for a day and “study” the Jewish tribe. If they were neutral observers looking in, what would they discover about this tribe and the values that are central to it? Choose a holiday (like Shabbat, Passover or Sukkot) and have them observe the ways Jews prepare for this sacred time (in a home, synagogue, bakery or deli, be creative!) Have them develop questions to ask key informants around what they are doing and why. Take pictures or videos and then assemble and analyze all of the raw data they collect in an exhibit for their school or community.

Note to Educator

Did the enduring understanding that you set out to teach surface during this activity?

Be Your People

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Before You Get Started

Look at the list of enduring understandings, which one would you like to emphasize through this activity?

Goal

To provoke participants to consider their reaction to someone who discovers they are Jewish and confronts them about it.

Time Needed

45 minutes- 1 hour

Materials

Video clip, screening device and internet connection

Plain T-shirts or baseball hats

Fabric markers

Direction for Activity

1. Watch the clip from the Hebrew Mamita (also named Vanessa Hidary) all the way through

2. Ask participants to share what inspired them, surprised them or made them think. In particular, ask them to share what it means to “look Jewish” or to “act Jewish”. Have they ever been told they don’t look or act Jewish?

3. Describe that situation.  Did it strengthen your resolve to identify with the Jewish collective (as it did for Hidary?) or did it have a different effect?

4. Hidary affirms at the end, when someone says “you don’t look like, or act like your people. Impossible, because you are your people.” Ask participants to react to this statement.   Do they agree that by being called a “Jew” they are being identified as a part of a collective?

5. “Becoming your people” is not something new for Jews. For a more extended conversation on the topic see Amir Gilboa’s song and discussion points (See Activity 7 in Israel and Jewish Peoplehood section.)

6. To bring the idea of ‘Being your people’ home, ask participants to make T-Shirts or baseball caps that broadcasts the idea “I am my people.” It can be: “I am the Jewish people”, “I’m a Jew”. Have them wear these t-shirts/ baseball caps for a week and then check in to process what it was like for them to broadcast their Jewish identity so boldly? Did it feel more comfortable knowing that others in the class/ group were doing the same?

7.Sum up the discussion and ask participants to share a question or idea they are left with.

Note to Educator

Did the enduring understanding that you set out to teach surface during this activity?

The Jewish Family

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Before You Get Started

Look at the list of enduring understandings, which one would you like to emphasize through this activity?

Goal

To have participants consider the metaphor of “family” as a way of understanding their connection to the Jewish people.

Time Needed

45 minutes-1 hour

Materials

Video clip, screening device and internet connection

Paper

Pens/ Colored Pencils

Markers

Direction for Activity 1

1. Watch the Clip 
2. Ask participants which “definition” of being Jewish resonated most for them – religion, culture, family?
3. Now watch the Clip by Avraham Infeld

Does the idea of “Jewish family” resonate with you?

4. Create a A Jewish Home for your Jewish Family. Make a list of all the different kinds of Jews that they know are a part of the Jewish family (secular Jews, jubus, atheists, ultra orthodox Jews, conservative Jews, eco-friendly Jews, Jews by choice, etc)
5. Now ask participants to draw a picture of a house with lots of different rooms (kitchen, livingroom, bedrooms, attic, basement, backyard etc.) Working on the assumption that Jews are a “family”, depict your relationship to all of the members of your Jewish family you listed above by placing them in different rooms of your home.

As they do this they should think about:

– what do each of the rooms represent to you?

-who is on the outside of your house and who is on the inside?

– who are Jews you socialize with, eat with (and who might live in places like the kitchen, livingroom or den)

– are any members of your family relegated to the attic or basement? Why?

6. Ask participants to share their drawings with each other. In the spirit of “collective Jewish belonging” have participants share which members of their Jewish family they would want to bring a little bit closer into their home.

Directions for Activity 2

1. Make a family tree. While the Jewish people are a large extended family, take time to learn about your immediate family first. Who are members of your family from as far back as you can remember? What characterized their Jewish lives (Philanthropic giving? They opened their house to guests? Observed the Sabbath? Valued Jewish prayer? Involved in Civil Rights?)

2. Ask parents and grandparents to fill out the picture of who your relatives were and what gave their Jewish lives meaning.

Note to Educator

Did the enduring understanding that you set out to teach surface during this activity?

Additional Resources:

Beit Hatefutsot Family Story Program

Wherever you go, there’s always someone Jewish

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Before You Get Started

Look at the list of enduring understandings, which one would you like to emphasize through this activity?

Goal

To explore the feelings of connection that Jews around the world may feel toward each other (through a catchy tune!)

Time Needed

30 minutes

Materials

Video clip, screening device and internet connection

Direction for Activity

1. Ask participants to share a story from when they traveled abroad and connected with being Jewish (either visiting a Jewish site, meeting other Jews, sharing Hebrew as a common language with a Jew in another country or some other story.)
2. Find and watch the clip. 
3. Ask participants to share their overall reaction to the song – do they find this feeling of connection to be true? Is it comforting? Or do they have a different feeling of disconnect?
4. Sum up the discussion and ask participants to share a question or idea they are left with.

Note to Educator

Did the enduring understanding that you set out to teach surface during this activity?