Experiments in Teaching Medieval Jewish History: Apples to Apples, al-Andalus Edition

I made a card game, similar to “Apples-to-Apples”, as a review for the final. Each card has a noun on it. That could be a place (Kairouan, Granada), a person (R' Yehuda ibn Chiyuj, Kahina), a group (Visigoths, Berbers), a sefer, a thing (Grammar, “Not writing sefarim”), or something unrelated to the course (the name of a girl in the class, the lyrics to the national anthem). Each player draws five cards, which she holds in a fan so that only she can see them; one more is turned over in the center; every player except the “judge” (players take turns being the judge, one per round) submits to the judge the card in her hand that she thinks is most closely connected to the card in the center. When all players have made their submissions, the judge lays out the submissions on the table for all to see and decides which is, in her opinion, the most closely connected. Each submitter has to argue her case. The player to whom the judge awards the round takes the card from the center; she who collects the most wins the game.

In other words, it's Apples-to-Apples, except that there is only one kind of card (fulfilling the role of both the red and green cards), and that you have to justify your submission (which means that your identity is not a secret). IMNSHO it is a much better game this way.

Thus, if the card in the middle says “Beauty”, one girl might submit “Greek culture,” because of its emphasis on beauty, one “R' Yehuda haLevi,” because he wrote beautiful piyutim, one “Elisheva Ploni,” because she thinks her classmate is beautiful, one “Cordoba,” because she thinks it sounds like a beautiful place, and one “Reconquista,” because she doesn't know what any of the cards in her hand are about, which means she has some studying to do...

There was much giggling, much learning, and much clamor to keep going after the class ended, which was nice.

This game works particularly well with this unit because there is so much variety but also so much overlap: everyone was a grammarian, a physician, a paytan, a diplomat...

Mnogo Bumagi: Experiments in Teaching Medieval Jewish History, Part I

Again, if I could take one resource on medieval Jewish history to a desert island, it would be The Chosen Path, but here are some sources I found and liked (whether or not I shared them with the girls) before I was aware of that textbook-cum-anthology's existence:

General

-A good map of medieval Europe. They can't go through life not knowing what the Iberian Peninsula is.

-One of the Many Chains of Torah Transmission – classic “aha” moment

-It wasn't so long ago – similar idea, more juvenile explanation

-Rav Hirsch's translation of para. 105 from Sefer Hasidim (his Collected Writings, Vol. VIII, p. 176). I like this because many people have a habit of reading mussar from the rishonim as if they're being yelled at. Here Rav Hirsch takes a passage from the Sefer Hasidim that could sound very scary, and translates it softly. I thought it was important for the girls to see this before I started giving them passages from rishonim to read.

-When I was in sixth grade, we each had to research a rishon and present the fruits of our research. I like this idea, and in consequence of it I still feel like the Ramban is “my” rishon – but, duh, you can't give people a research project if they don't have a library to research in.

-I had them make a timeline of world history, from Creation to the present, on which to plot the events of this course. In retrospect I would have them make parallel lines (maybe I'll give them different colors) for the events in Bavel, Islamic Spain and North Africa, Ashkenaz, Provence, Italy, and Eastern Europe.

-I photocopied, but did not get round to, the Ramban on “laasos” in Bereishis, which is a summary of world history, and the Meshech Chochma in Bechukosai about galus.

-I thought about taking a step back to look at how we know what we know, and showing them Rav Hirsch's analysis of Graetz's grievous errors in scholarship, but decided that it's not appropriate yet for this particular class.

Material slipped into various units along the way:

-Music for every unit, representative in some way of that time and place.

-The Routes of the Radhanites.

-The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela – I gave one piece in class, and offered extra credit for the rest.

-A drop-spindle and raw wool. (These are inexpensive.) Every woman in medieval times – I assume Jewish women too – carried one of these around with her and kept her fingers busy spinning. I passed spindle and wool around and let everyone try it. (Halacha: a married woman who can hire servants to fulfill all of her housekeeping duties is nevertheless obligated to spin, because having no work to do can drive a person crazy. Why is spinning the duty singled out as essential? Because it is the role of the married woman to make connections, to take raw material and give shape to it.)

-I made much use of T. Carmi's anthology The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse. He doesn't cite sources, only authors, which is maddening. The anthology is a curious mix of kodesh and treif, but I don't know where else to find the poems of Shmuel haNaggid, the Kalonymuses, anonymous medieval Jews writing about how much they miss their rebbeim &c., &c., much less with some English attached.

-The History of Jewish Costume by Alfred Rubens is also unreliable, but has some fun pictures. I gave the girls pictures of what Jewish women were wearing (admittedly at a much later time in history) in Syria, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, &c. and asked them which traditionally Jewish dress (with, like, five layers and cloisonne enamel and gold embroidery and pointy headgear) they think we should make the new school uniform.

-The Wall Chart of World History is a vintage production – as the girls noticed, it is very racist, very Eurocentric, and very Catholic - but very helpful. We got a lot of "aha!" moments out of it. (A Jewish version, the “Timechart History”, does exist, but it is blatantly not in keeping with the mesora, nor is it nearly as interesting, since it follows only one nation.)

Some Thoughts on Burning Man; or, What Is Good Art?; or, Some Thoughts on Tsnius

A friend once announced that she was looking for people to put together a Burning Man theme camp with her. I looked up Burning Man, decided I wasn't interested, and promptly forgot all about it.

This week, the name surfaced under piles of rubble in my mind, and I looked it up again. What is “Burning Man”?

Burning Man is a hippie utopia. For one week each year, tens of thousands of people encamp in the Nevada desert to engage in “radical self-expression”. No commerce is permitted: it is a gift-based economy. People bring their own food; they bring enough to share; some operate free restaurants. Burning Man is also a no-holds-barred arts festival. No cars are permitted to budge, unless they have been transformed into something other than a car – say, a flame-throwing octopus. There are a great many extraordinary art installations on the blank canvas of the desert floor – but they Leave No Trace. It isn't back-to-the-land-y, though: people bring generators and there is a great deal of electric and electronic display and racket, 24/7. The festival culminates in the burning of an enormous effigy of a man, for no particular reason; but the burning of the man has come to serve in the minds of many “burners” as a symbol of 'carpe diem, live intensely and immediately, because everything is exquisitely fragile'. Then they all pack up or burn their art and pick up every last fleck of glitter and get back in their cars and go back to what they call “the default world,” which is usually the Bay Area, or perhaps dear darling PDX.

Burning Man attracts a lot of spiritual seekers, artists, troubled souls, wandering Jews, and people who have completely lost their moorings and want to be loud about it.

I don't remember why I wasn't interested in Burning Man the first time I heard about it. This time I find the idea very interesting, but I won't be attending; one, because I have a low noise threshold (that includes trance music); and two, because when you invite people to a place with no rules, you get not only good art and catharsis but a great deal of cheap behavior. It doesn't sound as if cheap is exactly vanishingly rare at Burning Man.

Cheap is the pitfall of “radical self-expression” untempered by tsnius. (How shall I translate tsnius? It is sort of the anti-cheap, but a positive concept.)

Tsnius, save when it inheres in the self being radically expressed, is not one of Burning Man's Ten Principles. Cheap, like noise, is, at Burning Man, OK. And I don't think I would benefit from a week of it. So as much as I would kind of like, in some alternate universe, to open the one-woman Burning Man Community Kollel, I don't see it happening.

But there is quite a lot about Burning Man that I like the sound of – I have a thing for idealistic, creative people forming groups devoted to some end – and I was chewing over its principles, and as I got sleepier and sleepier the many other elements of it that I find attractive started to sound to me more and more like... lehavdil elef havdalos...

...well, it's Adar.

In two weeks there will be a day when the Jews dress up in costumes. And go about all day giving each other presents. And nichnas yayin yotzei sod, men will be dancing and singing in the streets and round each others' tables. And one of the themes of the day is not to be inhibited by self-imposed, artificial limitations. And it is all pretty crazy. My Purim is such that I can plan its details for weeks, but on Purim itself, I just wake up and say, Let's give food to everyone we know! And everyone we don't know! And it doesn't essentially matter what!

But the story of Purim is not one of straight “radical self-expression” – on the contrary, the joy of Purim comes out of it being a day of tsnius. Esther didn't reveal who she was. The old minhag of costume was to dress up, not like your inner martian, but like the enemies of the Jewish people – because things aren't what they appear to be. The megilla itself is about the Divine working invisibly – so much so that the name of G-d does not appear in the megilla. Cheap, on Purim, is not OK. The rules are not suspended: things get artistic, generous, and crazy, but the world of Purim is complex enough – through its being so very tsnius – to be truly exquisite. Intense. Immediate. Those things that people go to Burning Man to find.

 In two weeks, I will have that right here on my block. In my house. With an entire community of similarly Purimmy people.

35 by 35 Update: Pink, Respectable, Froofy, Ruffled, and a Doll.

8. Pink.

Color: Pink-and-white gingham.

Pattern: Simplicity 4709, view A. A baby dress.

I did all the sewing by hand, in waiting rooms and on playground benches.

Is It Suitable for Beginners? It was very easy, with the major exception of the placket in the back: you have to slash the fabric, spread the two sides, and talk that slashed fabric into thinking that it was always a straight line. I'm a bad liar. My placket doesn't believe me, and won't lie flat. Snaps might convince it.

Oddly enough, I could not find any but shank buttons in Jerusalem. The buttons I wound up with look like pink rock candy. My daughter loves them.

She also loves the dress rather more than I do – it's an empire'd rectangle. Loops is small for her age, and I think it's a rather juvenile style on her – but then, I cut it long; it's supposed to be size 18 months and she is quite a bit older.

I sewed an organza ribbon across the front. It is nearly invisible.

One can never have too much organza – I said to my husband that I want to start a kollel in northern Norway among the Sami; we will learn full-time as we herd our reindeer, and wear lots of organza. For some reason he thinks this unlikely.

9. Respectable.

Color: Grey. I think it's wool.

Pattern: Butterick 3134. View C, because I was in a hurry and it was the only one that didn't need modification.

Is It Suitable for Beginners? Yes, eminently. This would be an excellent first pattern. I sewed it on an airplane en route to the job interview for which I needed it. It is also very easy to adjust for size.

The dressmaker in the family says that hem ripples are one of those things that go away inexplicably with practice.

10. Froofy.

We attended a wedding at which Loops, who is a girly-girl, went around admiring all the clouds of satin worn by the bridal party.

“I want to wear a froofy dress,” she said.

“Froofy dresses are only for the chasan and kallah's family,” I said.

“Am I the chasan and kallah's family?”

So, I made her something a little bit froofy, for Sukkos.

Color: Loops picked a pink-, yellow-, and aqua-striped seersucker. I thought it looked like a lawn chair cover, but now that it's a dress I like it. When she wears it with white shoes she looks like something out of Gatsby, as if she's going to play tennis, it is so ultra-summery.

Pattern: Butterick 4054, view D.

Is It Suitable for Beginners? There were two challenges with this dress, neither because of the pattern. The first was cutting an uneven stripe – only the timely intervention of one of the family dressmakers, who was visiting, prevented me from getting it backwards (what do you mean? they're stripes, aren't they? – well, no, if you cut one side upside-down, you'll end up with two aqua stripes marching toward each other, with no pink between). The second was getting the fabric not to splurt out like a fountain at the bottom of the zipper. Turns out that when you use an invisible zipper – which is not the kind the pattern called for – you're supposed to insert it before you sew the seam it interrupts. I can't vouch for how this pattern might behave with an ordinary zipper.

I didn't think I would like the elastic in the sleeve wrists – for some reason elastic always strikes me as newfangled silliness – but the sleeves are cut very full, so some control was necessary. Time was short – I went with elastic. It looks fine.

This time I machine-sewed the dress, and discovered that yes, even allowing time to detangle thread, pick out mistakes, adjust clumping gathers (probably for want of a walking-foot), and hand-crank around tight corners, it is considerably faster than sewing by hand. I am hooked.

11. Ruffled.

I offered Loops the choice of a pinafore or a doll. She said she wanted a pinafore. With pockets. And ruffles.

Ruffles? Really?

Oh, well, I guess sometime in my life I have to learn how to make ruffles.

Color: White.

Pattern: Butterick 4054 again, view G.

Is It Suitable for Beginners? I couldn't figure out the instructions for the skirt corners – someone had to show me – and white is not nearly as much fun to sew as stripes. But it was easy.

For some reason, although the dress in this size fits perfectly, the pinafore is too big.

It's cute. It's actually very cute. Ruffles and all.

12. Doll.

I made Elizabeth Stewart Clark's “Great Auntie Maude's Favorite Cloth Doll”, the ultra-accurate mid-19^th century rag doll. Yipes – the shape is very fashionably stylized; the doll doesn't look like any human I've ever met. But that's what dolls of the time looked like, and the pattern works. The lesson learned this time was that it is more effective to stuff a little bit of stuffing at a time into a tight corner (in this case, through the neck into the head) than to push on stuffing with stuffing.

Unauthorized, Unsolicited Review of an Excellent Textbook

When I found out that I would be teaching medieval Jewish history this year, I decided that instead of using a textbook I would compile a source-book of primary sources and give the rest of the information orally. My students are literate: I can give them sources in the original language. I believe that's far preferable to telling them “and he wrote an important sefer called the Kuzari, but we're not going to read any of it.”

However, I had only two weeks to prepare the course. It would take me a few lifetimes to find all the passages I wanted. So I tried to take a shortcut: I went trawling through some textbooks.

To my surprise, I found that the textbook-writers had evidently sought out the same shortcut. They didn't cite primary sources; they cited academic secondary sources.

So I turned to those secondary sources, thinking that academics surely cite primary sources.

But they don't. They all cite each others' articles and books. So I ordered those books and looked at the bibliographies. Those, too, cite only secondary sources.

I tried tracking down, among other things, a particular halacha in the Sefer Hasidim. I have a Sefer Hasidim in my living room; I just wanted to know the number of the passage the textbooks were quoting. I tracked this halacha from bibliography to bibliography. And I discovered that no one in the chain of bibliographies had cracked the covers of a Sefer Hasidim since 1896, when Israel Abrahams wrote Jewish Life in the Middle Ages. For over a hundred years, academics have been citing this halacha to prove their theses, and not one of them has read it in the original.

If this were Jerusalem, I could knock on the twenty doors in my building like a meshulach and someone would know someone on the block who is fluent in every one of the primary sources I wanted. But this is not Jerusalem. So the clock was ticking and we were getting close to the beginning of the school year and it was looking like I was going to have to spend this entire year either trying to quickly skim every sefer ever written or else scrapping the idea of using primary sources, and both possibilities were greatly distressing...

and THEN...

...someone sent me a copy of The Chosen Path by Rabbi Binyamin Sendler.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Rabbi Sendler, so far as I can tell, actually did all that work that I could not do.

From his textbook, it appears that he went through everything ever written by the gaonim and rishonim, and excerpted the passages that are especially significant to Jewish history or that give a good picture of Jewish life at the time the sefer was written. He includes important excerpts from every work that I want my students to know about. He also includes relevant material from medieval non-Jewish writings and records. He did all the basic research that no one in the academic world has ever done (they all lean on Graetz, GAG ME WITH A SPOON who didn't do it either) and to top it all off Rabbi Sendler answers all the tricky questions about what is reliable and what isn't. He tells the story of history clearly. And he cites all his sources. Primary sources. The Chosen Path is my dream textbook.

The Chosen Path may be purchased here:

 HistoryWorks

What Kind of Glasses Do You Have?

Loops: Who was that?
I: The eye doctor. He helps people know what kind of glasses to get.
Loops: What kind of glasses do you have?
I: My glasses help me to see better.
Loops: Oh. My glasses have Shabbos in them.

... because hers are sunglasses, and I often tell her of a Friday that
when it gets dark outside, it will be Shabbos.

Sweaters for Penguins

Sweaters for Penguins

When I heard about this, I thought it was wonderful. I'm trying to pin down what it is about this -- aside from the ultra-cute-factor --  that I like so much.
I think what I like is that it is a successful grassroots effort. People from all over the world got in on it. It's a simple, creative solution to a problem. It was effective. And it allowed for originality.

The Adventures of Lemon Juice: an exercise for learning Hebrew

Once upon a time we had, every morning, a bottle of lemon juice on the table, with a Hebrew label: Mitz Limon Meshumar.
Mitz = juice
Limon = lemon
Meshumar = preserved (like shomer, shmirah, shomer Shabbos... it means guarded)
Preserved Lemon Juice.

Every morning, this bottle wound up on the table in precisely the same position, so that all we could see from where we sat was Mitz Limon Meshu...
We found different ways to finish the word.

It would make a good exercise for people learning Hebrew... only you'd better use a different label, as I think we've pretty much exhausted the possibilities of lemon juice.

Mitz Limon Meshumar... preserved lemon juice.
Mitz Limon Meshupatz... renovated lemon juice.
Mitz Limon Meshuga... crazy lemon juice.
Mitz Limon Meshuchrar... freed lemon juice.
Mitz Limon Meshutaf... lemon juice in a partnership.
Mitz Limon Meshulal... lemon juice captured as booty.
Mitz Limon Meshuneh... bizarre lemon juice.
Mitz Limon Meshubad... subjugated lemon juice.
Mitz Limon Meshupar... beautified lemon juice.
Mitz Limon Meshulach... lemon juice dispatched on an errand (usually fundraising).
Mitz Limon Meshulam... lemon juice paid for in full.
Mitz Limon Meshulash... triangular lemon juice.
Mitz Limon Meshukatz... lemon juice afflicted by vermin.
Mitz Limon Meshum... lemon juice made of garlic.
Mitz Limon Meshurar... lemon juice sung-about (I am not sure this word actually exists).

Rabba bar bar Chana and the Arabian Nights

Rabbi Geometry once mentioned a Gemara about a sea where metal nails fly out of ships.Say, said I, that sounds familiar. There is a sea like that in the story of the "Third Calender" in the Arabian Nights.

The Nights were set in writing c. 1450, but they are set in Baghdad under the Abbasid Caliphate in, oh, the 700's.

 It occurred to me the other day that the yeshivos of Sura and Pumbedisa were for a time located in the exact same time and place as the Arabian Nights -- occasionally one turned up in Baghdad itself -- so I dug my copy out of the basement to see if I could find any Gaonim wandering around in the perfumed gardens of Caliph Haroun al-Raschid.

While I was there, I got distracted: the stories of Sinbad the Sailor are so famous, and I never read them... so I read the first one.

HA HA HA HA HA.

The first voyage of Sinbad the Sailor -- or at least the nut of it -- is taken almost verbatim from the story of Rabba bar bar Chana and the whale fish, on Bava Basra 73b.

(Once upon a time, says Rabba bar bar Chana, he and some others went a-sailing on a ship, and saw what appeared to be a mossy island. They disembarked and began to cook a meal on it... but it was really a whale; and, feeling the heat of the cooking fire, it rolled over; and had they not been close to the boat, they would have drowned.

The first time I heard this story, it was explained as a metaphor for Jewish history: we land on what looks like a safe kingdom to live in... but we better stick close with the Torah!)

Fancy meeting you here!
In the end, I did not find any mention of contemporary Jewish society in the Nights (I only skimmed the Victorian children's version); but it is obvious that there was Jewish influence on them here and there.