Who are the Jews?

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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

The aim of this activity is to provide opportunity for the students to define the entire Jewish collective of which they are a part – what, or who, are the Jews?

Materials Needed

Large poster for all to see, with list of terms (see #1 below) and for listing ideas during the discussion

Scrap paper and pens

Copies of piece by Smolenskin (see #7 below)

Time Needed

45-60 minutes

Directions for Activity

1. Give the students a list of the following terms:
   • RELIGION
   • NATION
   • RELIGIOUS NATION/PEOPLE
   • CULTURE
   • ETHNIC GROUP
   • CIVILIZATION
   • COMMUNITY
2. Ask them to think about how they would define the Jewish collective. Who or what are the Jews? They should choose the term that most defines the group to which they feel they belong as Jews. They can choose either one item from the list or an alternative definition for the collective that is not listed here. They do need to focus on the primary definition that they identify with. They should take a few minutes to examine why they have chosen that particular definition for the Jewish collective, and how they see themselves as fitting into it.They should also add if there are any conditions that would remove or exclude them from the collective according to that definition. For example, they may write:
   

   I feel that the Jews are a culture, because…I think that I fit into the cultural definition because I do…or observe…etc. If I stopped observing…or if I converted to another religion, it would take me out of the Jewish culture.

3. Let them share their responses in pairs or small groups, and question each other.
4. Bring everyone together and ask some of the groups to present what they have written. Challenge them if there are any contradictions in the positions that people have taken. For example, in relation to the above statement, you may ask why conversion to another religion would take a person out of a group that is not defined by religion but rather by culture. The aim here is to get the class to think about the complexities of these issues.
5. After hearing some of the positions in detail, list on the board each person’s choice. How many have defined themselves according to each definition? What does that say about the class? Are there any collective groups in the community (schools, youth movements, adult organizations etc.) in which they think that a different result might be obtained? Which groups? Why?
6. Write a separate list of the things that the students think would take them out of the collective, and discuss it. Is it, in fact, possible to take yourself out of the Jewish collective? Does conversion take you out? Does being a ‘Jew for Jesus’ take you out? Does acting in a treacherous way against other Jews take you out? Does acting in an immoral way take you out? You may like to link up the answers with the positions taken in the previous exercise regarding the criteria for living a Jewish life.
7. Now hand out the following piece for the group’s consideration. It was written in the mid-1870s by Peretz Smolenskin, a pre-Zionist ideologist of Jewish nationalism who had an enormous effect in Eastern Europe of the late-nineteenth century. We have chosen Smolenskin because he deals directly with the issues that we have mentioned, not because we feel that the students should necessarily accept his position.His essential argument, presented in this piece, was that the Jews must continue to see themselves as a nation open to Jews of all religious outlooks. Religious observance was a criterion neither for belonging to the Jewish collective nor for being seen to live a Jewish life. The essential criterion for a Jewish life was acceptance of the nation. Only a Jew who sinned against his/her nation should be seen as outside the collective and not living a Jewish life.
   

   The Jewish people has outlived all others because it has always regarded itself as a people – a spiritual nation. Without exception, its sages and writers, its prophets and the authors of its prayers, have always called it a people. Clearly, therefore, this one term has sufficient power to unite those who are dispersed all over the world. Jews of different countries regard and love one another as members of the same people because they remember that the tie that binds them did not begin yesterday. It is four thousand years old…Any sensitive person must feel that for four thousand years we have been brothers and children of one people. How can I sin against hundreds of generations and betray this brotherhood [by failing to acknowledge the rest of the Jewish people as mine]?

   …Thinking people understand that this unity is the secret of our strength and vitality. But such unity can only come from a fraternal feeling, from a national sentiment that makes everyone born a Jew declare: I am a son of this people…Those who may abandon some or even many of our religious practices, will nonetheless keep a share in the inheritance of Israel…No matter what his sins against religion, every Jew belongs to his people as long as he does not betray it…

   [There are those that say that we are united by our faith and our religion.] This proposition does not stand up under analysis…If many begin to disobey the laws of religion, [according to this position] how is the sense of Jewish unity to be maintained? These [irreligious] Jews will simply declare that the tie between them and the rest of the children of Israel has been severed. Having thrown off the yoke of religious discipline, they will regard themselves as excluded from a community which is united by it alone. Are we to exclude such people from the community?

   Peretz Smolenskin, It Is Time To Plant

8. The group should try to understand the idea that Smolenskin is trying to develop. What are the group’s views regarding his argument? Do they agree or disagree? Whichever position they adopt, try to challenge it. Once again, the idea here is to push the individuals of the group to develop their own way of responding to the ideas being presented.

Note to Educator

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

This activity was originally written by Steve Israel, for ‘Connecting to Community’, Peoplehood resources commissioned by the Jewish Agency for Israel.

My Role in Shaping Jewish Civilization

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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 tease out the different elements that make Jewish civilization thrive.

To think about every Jew as having the potential to influence and shape Jewish civilization.

Materials Needed

Video clip, screening device and internet connection

Materials for an exhibit

Time Needed

1 hour or over several sessions

Directions for Activity

1. One of the important aspects of Jewish civilization is that every kind of Jew can see him or herself as a contributor.  And every trend, ritual, book – also contributes to the ongoing evolution of Jewish civilization.

Andrew Lustig and his spoken word tribute called “I am Jewish”  created in January 2012 is one example of a contribution to “Jewish Art”.  While he speaks in the singular, he encapsulates many different kinds of Jews and aspects of Jewish civilization (language, holidays, life-cycle, land, and even things that are subversive – a tattoo in the shape of a Jewish star.)

2. Introduce and watch the clip

3. Create an exhibit of Jewish civilization today. Have students bring in or make (or draw) artifacts that represent various aspects of Jewish civilization.  Consider the following:

• Tease out these categories and some examples in each.  What additional categories would you add to reflect that Jewish civilization is evolving and current?
• What are the “categories” of Jewish civilization that are reflected in the clip (some examples, Israel, Jewish holidays, food, life cycle events.)
• What categories do you think would be the most meaningful/ representative of Jewish civilization as you understand it today? (Art? Food? Books? Something that represents spirituality? or “discourse around Israel” something else?)
• What artifacts or objects do you think should represent each of these categories?
• Does everyone in the group agree or are there dissenting voices?  If so, note that this exercise is an expansive one.  There are no “right” or “wrong” answers.

4. Reflect on what you learned from the activity. Is it hard to find different artifacts? Which categories most speak to your participants?

5. Create a space to talk about personal contributions to Jewish civilization.  Participants can reflect on their own unique contributions (a family tradition at seder time, or an initiative they have taken on in their community.)  Or they can research the personal contributions of others in the Jewish community. Give the students a list of Jews who are involved in actively contributing to the innovation and evolution of the Jewish community today. Examples may include  Nigel Savage, the founder of Hazon a Jewish environmental organization or Tamar El-Ad Applebaum, the founder of Kehillat Zion in Jerusalem ).  Do some research on them and find out what they are adding to the current moment in our evolving of Jewish civilization.

Look at resources like the Forward 50 and the Jerusalem Post’s 50 Influential Jews for inspiration.

6. Set up the exhibit and invite others to view and react to it.  Invite the viewers to see themselves in the exhibit as well (e.g. have a sign at the end that says something like, “And what do you want your contribution to be?”)

Note to Educator

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

Jewish Books

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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 expand our understanding of the “Jewish bookshelf”

To appreciate and learn from Jewish books!

Materials Needed

Video clip, screening device and internet connection

A book that inspired you

Time Needed

1 hour

Directions for Activity

1. Ask all the participants to bring in a Jewish book that had inspired or influenced them in some way.  Be ask expansive as you can! (Classic Jewish books, Yiddish literature, modern Israeli poetry, a book about Jewish sociology/politics/ current events, a book written by a Jewish author.)  If nothing comes to mind at first, dig deeper.  Perhaps a book from school or university?  Even a childhood book would be interesting to share.

2. Ask them to share, in a couple of sentences, what inspired them about the book and why they found it meaningful.

3. Now get learning! Ask each participant (ahead of time) to isolate one passage or set of passages that were particularly meaningful for them in the books they brought.  Put the books in the center of the room and have participants in pairs (or chevrutot) select a book to study/ read together.

Guided questions:

• Read through the text once to appreciate it.
• What moves you about the text?
• What questions do you have about the text?
• In what ways do you think this book might contribute to Jewish life/ identity/ community today?  Does it add something to the vision of how our Jewish civilization is evolving?

Note to facilitator – even if participants brought radically different kinds of books, the goal is to be expansive and find a place for all of them within an evolving Jewish civilization.  If there are “red lines” that are crossed and triggers some people in the group (e.g. books about Holocaust denial) use these triggers as an opportunity to explore difference in your community.  (See our section on Diversity and Pluralism to help frame a discussion about difference in your community.)   

If the participants want to learn more about one book or another, one of the outcomes of the session might be to start a book club!

4. To broaden the discussion about the meaning of Jewish books and literature, close by viewing Miriam Udel’s Eli Talk, “Discovering and Delighting in the Lost Arc of Yiddish.”

Shavuot friendly idea

At the end of the session build your own Mt. Sinai out of books!  Take chairs, boxes and whatever other supplies you might need to construct your Mountain and have it be a display for all of the books that have inspired and influenced you!  It can also be a great installation for the Shavuot celebration in your community.

Note to Educator

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

Additional Resources

Starting a book club with Israeli Literature

http://makomisrael.org/arts-resources/book-guides/

Jewish Food

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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 celebrate Jewish food!

To explore how food carries Jewish history, culture and values.

Materials Needed

Video clip, screening device and internet connection

Based on the activity you select, lots of recipes and food ingredients!

Time Needed

Depending on the activity you select, about 1 hour

Directions for Activity

There are so many different ways to celebrate food that we can’t limit it to just one! Below are a bunch of ideas.

To start off check out the different video clips to get you in the mood to experiment with Jewish food.

1. Buzzfeed’s: The Jewish Food Taste Test

2. Americans try Israeli Food
3. Gefiltefest at the London Jewish Cultural Center

Idea #1: Our Jewish Stories and Tasting: Ask participants to bring in a Jewish food dish that has personal meaning in their family. Share the food and stories that go with it.

Idea #2: Modern Jewish food

There are so many new cookbooks on the market that are bringing Jewish food into the 21^st century. Check out one of them (there’s a list below), pick a couple of easy recipes and make a simple, modern Jewish meal together. While you are dining, make sure to reflect on how modern Jewish cuisine might differ from traditional Jewish cuisine of your parents’ and grandparents’ generations. What sensibilities are taken into consideration nowadays? What does that say about how our Jewish civilization is evolving and the role that each of us, as chefs in our own kitchens, can play in helping that civilization evolve?

The Nosher

Leah Koenig’s Modern Jewish Cooking: Recipes & Customs for Today’s Kitchen

Yotam Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem: A Cookbook

Idea #3: Iron Chef Jewish-style

Inspired by Iron Chef, hold a Jewish food cook off, with either 2, 3 or even 4 chefs competing to make the tastiest dish (make sure you have enough space.) The simple way of doing this is to take a traditional Jewish food – like challah, and have each chef put their special “twist” on the food (for some great ideas check out: Shannon Sarna’s “A Year in Challah”.)

Another idea is to link the cook-off to an upcoming Jewish holiday and different Jewish ethnic traditions. Assign each competitor a traditional food connected to that holiday.   For Passover, everyone can make a different kind of charoset. Check out this article for ideas from the Philadelphia Jewish Voice, “Haroset Fun from Around the World.” 

For Purim, make different kinds of Hamantaschen. Check out this article for ideas about different kinds of hamantaschen you can make.

Be sure to share what you learn about these different ethnic traditions as you sample the results!

Note to Educator

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

Hebrew Language

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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 appreciate how knowledge of Hebrew is essential to creating a thriving Jewish community

To consider how Jewish illiteracy can negatively impact Jewish life/ community/ civilization in the future

Materials Needed

Video clip, screening device and internet connection

Copy of Wieseltier quotes

Time Needed

45 minutes

Directions for Activity

1. Ask participants to talk about the languages they already know and can speak.  What languages do their parents speak? And which languages would they like to learn?  Once they share their personal experiences, have them share what value there is in knowing another language.  How does it help them understand a different culture and the values within that culture?

2. Show participants the clip by Avraham Infeld speaking about the Hebrew language.

3. Ask participants to think of other Hebrew words they might know which do the same thing, some examples might include:

• Shalom (peace is from the root sh-l-m, to be “whole”)
• Teshuvah (repentance from the root l-sh-v, “to return”)
• Aliya l’Torah (honor in synagogue from root ah-l-ah “to go up”)

4. Consider the excerpts by Leon Wieseltier who is an American writer, critic and former editor of The New Republic.  In his article, “Language, Identity and the Scandal of American Jewry” (2011) he offers a biting critique of American Jewry for being illiterate in Jewish language and therefore not competent at accessing Jewish tradition and ill equipped to contribute in a significant way to Jewish life.

Our language is our incommensurable inflection of our humanity; our unique way of presenting, not least to ourselves, what our unique way is through the world. Our language is our element; our beginning; our air; the air peculiar to us. Even our universalism comes to us (like everybody else’s universalism) in a particular language…

5. Get reactions from the group – do they agree, disagree?  Can they think of examples when this played out in their own lives?

6. Broaden the discussion.  What is at stake if we lose our connection to Hebrew language?  Bring in the following perspective from Wieseltier’s and ask the participants for their reactions.

The American Jewish community is the first great community in the history of our people that believes that it can receive, develop, and perpetuate the Jewish tradition not in a Jewish language. By an overwhelming majority, American Jews cannot read or speak or write Hebrew, or Yiddish. This is genuinely shocking. American Jewry is quite literally unlettered…The assumption of American Jewry that it can do without a Jewish language is an arrogance without precedent in Jewish history. And this illiteracy, I suggest, will leave American Judaism and American Jewishness forever crippled and scandalously thin…the quantity of the Jewish tradition that is slipping through our fingers in America is unprecedented in our history. And it is the illiteracy of American Jewry that makes it complicit in this oblivion…

7. Put Weiseltier’s perspective in conversation with Sarah Benor’s JHub talk entitled, “Yiddish, Ladino and Jewish English: Do American Jews Speak a Jewish Language?”  Benor is a socio-linguist who argues that American Jews are creating their own language, a kind of Judeo-American and are contributing to the long tradition of Jews who have developed new languages based on the cultures in which they live.

Note to Educator

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

Additional Resources

Full version of Leon Wieseltier’s article, “Language, Identity and the Scandal of American Jewry” (2011)

Jewish Language Lexicon

God and Jewish Civilization

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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

When we understand Judaism as only a religion, belief in God is essential.  When we understand Judaism as a civilization, all Jews are included, even atheists.  In this activity we will explore what it means to be a part of the Jewish community without believing in a divine presence.

Materials Needed

Video clip, screening device and internet connection

Pen and paper

Time Needed

30-45 minutes

Directions for Activity

1. Have your participants complete the sentences:

As a Jew I believe….

As a Jew I do….

As a Jew I am…

2. Share their responses.  Was it a challenge to complete the sentences?  Did God feature on their list?  If not, and upon personal reflection, do they feel like they have a meaningful Jewish identity?

3. Introduce and share the video clip.  Ira Glass, the popular host of the NPR series “This American Life” took part in a discussion with Jim Henderson, a pastor turned “spiritual anthropologist.”  He recently developed a series entitled “Jim Henderson Presents” whose goal is to bring discussions about Christianity into the public sphere. Central to his approach is to give space to non-Christians to talk about what faith means to them. While Jim Henderson invites Glass onto the show, the self-described atheist Jew points out how being a Jewish atheist is not a contradiction in terms, much to Henderson’s surprise.  While Christians might see Judaism as solely a religion, Ira Glass has a different idea.

4. Discuss the clip using these guiding questions:

• Ira Glass says,“I’m a Jew whether or not I believe in God.”  Do you think being a Jewish atheist is an oxymoron?
• If you were representing what Judaism is to someone of a different faith, how would you describe it?
• What aspect of Jewish life do you find most compelling and why?

5. To close the activity, consider showing Avraham Infeld and his talk “Judaism is NOT a Religion!”.

Note to Educator

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

Communal Institutions

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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 learn about the essential institutions of Jewish community, in the past and to consider how these elements have changed for Jews today.

Materials Needed

Copies of Text from Sanhedrin 17b

Link to film Addes

Internet connection and screening device

Time Needed

1 hour

Directions for Activity

1. Ask participants to identify one Jewish institution, which is important for them to have in a city before they would make a decision to move there (a kosher butcher? A Jewish bookstore? Synagogue?)

2. Have participants read the text entitled “Building a Community – the central institutions of a Community” from Sanhedrin 17b . Ask them to pay attention to each item on the list.

3. Pose the following questions:

• What does each required element in a city mean and why is it important?
• What type of city are the rabbis saying Jews should live in? Do any of their elements surprise you, and why?

4. Ask participants to arrange the 10 elements into categories – what do you learn from that exercise?

5. Rewrite the text from a contemporary perspective. What kind of city should Jews live in today? What components would you replace today and what would you add instead?

6. What facilities are most important to you in your city environment? Are those things Jewish or universal?

7. Close the activity by watching the movie “Addes”, which you can find in the Media section for this theme. Consider the questions on the theme of Synagogue are Central Institution.

Note to Educator

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