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 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.)
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