The juniors’ class spent the December make-up session gaining new perspective on Hanukkah, its central symbols and mythology, and the ways that members of different Jewish communities celebrate the holiday through cooking and eating. After reviewing the Hebrew letters on the dreidel and their meaning for game-play, and learning the Yiddish commands that the letters signify (for example, nun stands for “nisht,” which means nothing), students played a rousing game of dreidel and enjoyed their gelt winnings. At the game’s end, the class learned about the other holiday meaning often assigned to the letters on the dreidel–the idea that nun, gimel, hey, and shin together stand for the Hebrew phrase “Nes gadol hayah sham” or “a great miracle happened there.” Students discussed the significance of the phrase in relation to the Hanukkah narrative, learning how the story of the oil that miraculously burned for eight days instead of one was added to accounts of the ancient holiday hundreds of years after the Maccabees’ victory. This led into a great conversation about why the story might have been added and how this new information did or didn’t change students’ feelings about the holiday. One student remarked that even though the story of the miracle of the oil probably wasn’t true, it is a part of our tradition and so still an important thing to celebrate.

From here, the class moved downstairs to the kitchen and transitioned to a cooking activity. Learning about how Jewish cuisine has always varied greatly from place to place in line with regional/national variation in food-ways, climate, available ingredients, et cetera, as well as how it has always retained continuities across great distances in the way that it is shaped by kosher laws and holiday traditions, students began to prepare two different kinds of Hanukkah pancakes–latkes and keftes de prasa. Latkes, the Ashkenazi Jewish Hanukkah pancake familiar to students already, were prepared with a classic potato, egg, and onion-based recipe from a cook with roots in Jewish Eastern Europe–where potatoes and onions thrived in the cool climate. Keftes de prasa, Sephardic Jewish Hanukkah pancakes made with leeks, came from a recipe from a cook with roots in Jewish Galicia and the Middle East, where leeks are a popular savory ingredient and the spices–cinnamon, dried chili pepper–that delicately flavor the batter were historically more readily available. Students chopped, grated, measured, mixed and sauteed, and especially enjoyed frying the latkes and keftes in lots of oil to celebrate the miracle of the oil we discussed earlier in class. After diligent work the class sampled their creations, and then tried their luck at some Jewish food trivia, defining “treif,” guessing the most popular Israeli street-foods, et cetera. It was a great end to a really fun, busy lesson!

Or Emet Juniors’ Class Summary–October

At the October session, the juniors’ class learned about Yiddish literature and Yiddish writer Sholom Aleichem. After some opening games/icebreakers, students watched an excerpt from a documentary focusing on the history of Jewish life in Eastern Europe–the milieu in which both modern Yiddish literature was born and the majority of its stories are set. They learned about Jewish shtetls in Russia, the restriction of Jewish settlement to “the Pale,” and the other restrictive laws and periodic pogroms that made 19th and early 20th century life so difficult for Jewish people in Russia. After discussing what they learned from the film, students listened to a presentation with accompanying PowerPoint that provided a short history of Yiddish literature and more background regarding Sholom Aleichem’s biography and writings.

Returning from break, the class split into small groups and began to discuss “Kaporos,” one of the Sholom Aleichem stories students had read in preparation for the session. One group drew pictures of story characters and diagramed their characteristics, while another group mapped out the story’s plot using string and descriptive markers and discussed story themes. Students were struck by the story’s humor, laughing at the narrative of a group of chickens that rise in revolt against a shtetl’s human residents because of their barbaric Kaporos practices–and ultimately carry the day. Segueing from here into a discussion of how many modern Yiddish stories provided the narrative basis for Yiddish theater classics, students participated in a series of theater games and improv exercises. The day closed with an extended improv sequence; students performed an improvised version of “Kaporos” and another Aleichem story they had read–“The Simchas Torah Flag”–with guidance from a student director.