The Beginning of Civilization in the Middle East

     Today we began class by talking about the ongoing US mediated peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. We used this article from the front page of The Times of Israel as a jumping off point to talk about some of the main issues that will need to be considered in an agreement: Jerusalem (particularly the Kotel/Temple Mount), refugees and borders (especially in the Jordan Valley). I also showed them a couple of flyers I saw at the bus stop on the way to Tzuba today.

Announcement about Shabbat

Warning about non-kosher tuna

     For those of us who aren't quite fluent Hebrew readers, the top one is an announcement about shabbat. It gives parshat hashavua (weekly Torah portion), which is Trumah, and tells what time shabbat "comes in" and "goes out". I've always loved the language with which we describe shabbat in Hebrew. It really gives a sense of the special atmosphere that comes with shabbat, especially in Israel. The second announcement is claiming that Starkist tuna puts dolphin and other sea creatures in their cans of tuna (I have no idea if this is true or not). This is not necessarily different from something you might expect to see in the US. In the US however, I imagine the person posting the announcement would appeal to the viewer's moral outrage over the idea of eating dolphins. Here, the announcement points out that dolphin is not kosher. While the goal may be the same (ie don't eat Starkist tuna), the reason is quite different. For me these sorts of every day things are what I think about when we talk about Am Yisrael and what it means to live in a Jewish state.
     We then picked up where we left off in the ancient middle east. After considering the authorship of the Tanakh yesterday, today we accepted the Tanakh as an established fact and tried to understand the milieu in which it was written/revealed. One of the easiest ways to start to understand where civilizations developed in the middle east is to look at a satellite image of the region. You can see clearly the huge swath of green that is the Nile Delta and the slightly less obvious green between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is today Iraq, but historically is known as Mesopotamia. I explained, based on Jared Diamond's book "Guns, Germs and Steel", that while the geographic conditions are necessary, they're not sufficient; you also need some good luck. The middle east, as opposed to America, for example, has many crops (wheat, chick peas) and animals (sheep, goats) that can be domesticated and can be used to create more calories per person (ever wonder why no one herds deer, which has perfectly good meat?). The creation of more calories allows for population growth and for some people to do something other than create food, which is the beginning of what we commonly call "civilization" (also a somewhat nebulous concept).
     In communities based on river agriculture (such as the ones in Mesopotamia and Egypt), one of the most important and earliest public works is the irrigation system. These systems need constant care, and this leads to the development of some sort of government and/or hierarchy, which is made possible by the increased agricultural production. You can easily imagine how an irrigation system leads to increased production and population growth, which leads to a larger administrative system, which improves or enlarges the irrigation system, which leads to increased production, etc. As more and more people are living in close proximity to each other a social order begins to develop (if you're interested in the development of social order I highly recommend Dr. Yuval Harari's book), which, in ancient times, was likely mostly based on their polytheistic religion.
     Having learned a little bit about ancient middle eastern culture, the students were then able to start to look at it in comparison to our own Jewish culture. To do this, they read Enuma Elish, the Mesopotamian creation story and compared it with our own creation story in Breisheet (Genesis). A really fascinating discussion ensued, but rather than share it here, I'll leave it to the students. What did you find interesting about the two stories? Are they similar? Different? How do the gods/God behave? Do you think the stories reflect the societies that believed/wrote them? If so, what do you think it says about those societies?

Tanakh as History

     Shalom all! Our second day of Jewish History in Kitat Kalanit was great. It seems like the students are starting to get over their jet lag a bit. Many of them have created and started updating their blogs. Check 'em out from the list on the right. For the first part of class we did a general overview of issues affecting Israel. I think an important part of spending a semester here is learning about issues that Israel, as a Jewish state is dealing with. I gave a brief overview of our neighbors: Lebanon (war-torn, home base to Hezbollah, a terrorist organization supported by Iran), Syria (in the middle of a three way civil war between long-time dictator Assad, original rebels, who were mostly secular, and Islamist rebels, like Al Qaeda), Jordan (ruled by a "benevolent" monarch, 50% Palestinian, friendly peace with Israel), and Egypt (one of the main "Arab Spring" countries, historically important because of the Nile and its large population). We also mentioned a few issues within Israel: the thousands of African refugees and what should be done about it (our obligation as Jews to help the less fortunate, especially given our own experiences trying to leave Europe compared with the economic and demographic difficulties involved in absorbing them), the divide between secular and ultra-orthodox (especially regarding ultra-orthodox men not working or serving in the army) and the Gaza blockade and a short discussion about which sorts of materials Israel should allow to enter the strip (construction materials being one contentious item).
     After spending yesterday trying to deal with the "Jewish" part of "Jewish History", today we started to deal with the "History" part. We talked about the difficulty (and probably impossibility) of "unbiased history." The obvious problem is that everyone has an agenda. An account of America's westward expansion will sound quite different from the perspective of an Iroquois. But even if that weren't true we'd still have to deal with the fact that we never get to see all the evidence. The materials that have made it to our generation (be it art, architecture, texts, oral traditions, pottery shards or anything else you can think of) are all we have to go on. So even if a certain type of pottery was quite rare, if it's what we've seen the most in archaeological ruins (perhaps because it survived best for some reason) we might reasonably conclude it was a prominent form of pottery.
     Having finally dealt with the name of the course (you can see why covering 4000 years in four months is so tough!), we had to decide where to begin. Even a much simpler question, such as "When does American history begin?" turns out to be quite complicated. Suggestions in class included Columbus's arrival, the Declaration of Independence and the Vikings brief visit years before Columbus. Instead of trying to give ourselves a firm start date we switched gears and tried to talk about which sources we might use to talk about the beginning of Jewish history. While there are a few external sources we'll refer to as often as possible (such as the Merneptah Stele, generally considered the earliest mention of "Israel" in external sources), the Tanakh is far and away the most detailed source for early Jewish history (and many aspects of Middle Eastern history in general).
     It's convenient for our purpose that the Tanakh tells us so much, but is it history? Some students had no problem using the Tanakh as history, despite some of the supernatural events (or divinely caused events, depending on your point of view). Others felt like it's a religious text, and as such can't be used for any modern conception of "history". Most students fell somewhere in the middle, accepting that it's an important historical source, while taking much of what's written with a grain of salt.
     To delve a little further into this question I had the students read the story of Noah (starts in Genesis 6 for those of you following along at home) in the Tanakh. Several of the students noted that the story seems to repeat itself, and it also has differing details in different sections. For example, is Noah supposed to bring two pair of animals or seven? There are hundreds of traditional explanations for these seeming discrepancies; perhaps the Tanakh is emphasizing certain points, or perhaps there should be two of some animals and seven of others. We then read the story divided in two (each verse is put in one version or the other, none of them are used twice) and I think some of the students were quite surprised to see that both versions end up being a pretty complete version of the story, something that certainly wouldn't happen with other books. The two versions also have different tones and somewhat different vocabulary. Given these facts the conclusion of most modern Westerners is that there are likely different authors, from different time periods and/or regions with one or more editor. This idea is known as the Documentary Hypothesis.
      For traditional Jews this is unequivocally blasphemy. And, as you can imagine, considering the amount of time traditional Jewish scholars spent studying the Tanakh, they noticed many of the issues I've mentioned (along with numerous other seeming inconsistencies, such as the fact that Moses, who received the Torah from Hashem, dies before the end of the Tanakh) and found solutions that don't involve multiple authors. For Reform Jews, the documentary hypothesis is both wonderful and extraordinarily problematic. On the one hand, we can use our modern analytical skills on our holy text. We don't have to feel like we left our critical thinking skills outside. On the other hand, if the Tanakh has multiple authors, isn't it just some book?
     Even though there's plenty of evidence pointing toward multiple authorship the case is hardly clear cut. In both Christianity and Islam Hashem's will is made known to the people through a central prophet/leader. In Judaism, by contrast, Hashem appears before all of Am Yisrael at Mt. Sinai (Genesis 19). If the Tanakh is merely a human creation, this story is problematic. At what point can you start telling the people that their parents or grandparents or great grandparents saw Hashem at Mt. Sinai? Wouldn't they wonder why their parents hadn't told them about it? Does this mean there's at least something divine about the Tanakh? Also, I feel confident we can all think of examples in which science was wrong (the world isn't flat, the sun doesn't revolve around the earth, atoms are not the smallest particles, nutrition is more than balancing carbohydrates, proteins and fats). So while the modern, rational, scientific perspective is an important and useful one for thinking about the world, it may not be the final word.
     After trying to think a bit about the origin of the Tanakh, I asked the students whether that really matters. Perhaps the mere fact that the brightest Jewish minds have been studying the Tanakh for thousands of years is enough? If so, would another book have served just as well? Also, there's other famous literature whose authorship is unclear. Homer may well have been compiled from many different sources. To this day there are arguments about who the real Shakespeare is. Their books have survived because they say something beautiful and/or true about the human condition. Is that enough to make a book holy? Does are central book need to be holy? Is it enough if it's divinely inspired but corrupted by inevitable human error? Does it matter?

The First Jewish History Class

Today we had our first day of Jewish History class, and despite some lingering jet lag I thought it went great. The main question we asked today is a seemingly obvious one; "What is Jewish History?" The "history" part, which we'll examine a bit more in depth tomorrow can be thought of as "the events that  happened in the past". While hardly an in depth explanation, it's at least a meaningful approximation. The other part of the phrase, "Jewish," is significantly more complicated. To try and get a better understanding, or at least a usable definition we did some word association, in which the students shouted out anything that came to mind when they hear the word "Jewish". Here's what they came up with (click on the image to enlarge):

What comes to students' minds when they hear the word "Jewish"

As you can see their responses really reflect the broadness of Judaism (though I'm still not 100% sure what Muhammad Ali has to do with anything). After this brainstorming the students, in chavruta, tried to organize this mess by putting these thoughts into categories. As you can imagine, they came up with many interesting ways to categorize the terms. One of the ways that I found particularly interesting that I had never considered was to categorize them as "secular" or "religious." At the end of class I explained that one common way to think of traditional Jewish identity is through a triangle of three ideas: Am Yisrael (literally the people of Israel, meaning the culture and customs such as Jewish foods, languages, humor, etc.), Toraht Yisrael (literally the five books of Moses, but here more generally including all of the religious aspects such as prayer and study) and Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel).
Clearly virtually no aspect of Judaism fits neatly into one category. Pesach (Passover), for example, definitely has religious meaning, and we're celebrating an event (the exodus from Egypt) that's mentioned in the Tanakh (Jewish Bible), but many non-religious Jews still sit down for Seder. And while my mother's matzoh ball soup is certainly delicious enough that it may well qualify as a religious experience, I think it probably makes more sense to think of it as cultural (or Am Yisrael) rather than religious (Toraht Yisrael). Similarly, the blessings we say over the candles, wine and bread are religious, but the reason we bless those specific items is because olives (from which olive oil lamps were made), grapes (wine) and wheat (bread) were the main agricultural products of ancient Israel, so the blessings are related to Eretz Yisrael as well. And how about the family that says the blessings for traditional or familial reasons? Should this act then be viewed culturally, rather than religiously? This view of Jewish identity raises many questions. Do you think in modern day America Judaism has cultural aspects? Are they more or less important than the religious aspects? Do you think Jews living in Israel would feel differently?

Bruchim Habaim! Welcome!

     Welcome to Kalanit! (that's the name of our class and a lovely flower). My name is Aaron Gertz, and I'm the teacher. As you may have inferred from the blog title I grew up in Tallahassee, FL. I went to college at Washington University in St. Louis and graduated with a degree in economics in 2007. Afterwards I came and worked as a madrich for EIE before making aliyah and becoming an Israeli citizen in January 2009. I did a 5 month ulpan (intensive Hebrew class) while teaching math for EIE and joined the Israeli Army as a Combat Engineer in November 2009. After being released from the army in May 2011 I spent a few months traveling in southeast Asia. I am now engaged, living in Be'er Sheva and taking the course to become a licensed tour guide.
     This blog, hopefully, will serve several purposes. First of all, I will briefly summarize what we cover each day in class. We have four months to cover 4000 years of history, with several breaks in the middle for things like Yam el Yam and Gadna, so hopefully having a short summary of each class will help keep us organized. Also, it's a great way for parents to see what we're doing. It turns out that even when high school students are thousands of miles away learning and experiencing amazing new things the answer to the parental question, "How was school today?" is still often just, "Fine." Here parents can get a slightly more detailed answer.
     Many of our class periods involve some sort of discussion. I'll often mention the subjects of those discussions here and sometimes require students to share their different views, especially students who are less likely to share in class. I would love for any parents (or other friends and family) who have something to say on the subject to feel free to leave a comment as well. One of the major goals of this class is to expose the students to the idea that there is a constant conversation among the Jewish people and to encourage them (and you!) to be a part of it.
     Another way the students will be a part of this conversation is by keeping their own blogs, for which you can find links on the right side of this page. Sometimes I will require them to blog about something specific: their thoughts on our most recent tiyul, or a response to an article from The Times of Israel or Mosaic Magazine for example. In other instances I'll encourage the students to write about whatever Jewish issue they'd like, whether it's a conversation they had with a madricha (counselor) about her experience in the army, a review of a Hebrew song they like, or a new appreciation for a biblical story. The students will also get extra credit based on the number of views and comments their blog receives, so don't be shy about sharing it!
     I look forward to forming a new community of learners with you this semester. If you have any comments or concerns please don't hesitate to be in touch with me. Let's have a great semester!