Term 2, Week 7: But WHY isn’t Jesus in the Torah?

Having introduced the Torah as an object and as a concept, in this session I got the kids to brainstorm and tell me who, where and what is in the Torah. This was also a bit of a test, as I wasn’t sure if the children had sorted out in their minds the connections and differences between Judaism and Christianity, or the Bible and the Torah, so this was the first step towards clarifying that for them.

All the children go to Christian schools, many of them rural, which tend to have stronger links with the local church and have Christianity as a more overt part of the curriculum. In itself, I don’t see this as much of a problem; I would rather my child went to a faith school than a secular one, because I think it’s important to have a belief structure in primary education, even if that’s not the same one as all the children follow at home. However, non-Christian parents do need to make sure that their children are getting adequate religious input out of school so they are clear where their own family stands.

Something I’ve noticed with many of the Cheder families is that isolation from each other, a lack of contact with the Jewish community locally or nationally, and parents’ low confidence in their own Jewish education have combined to make it very difficult for the parents to give their children a sense of their Jewish identity. Most have tried, but it must be incredibly hard to keep up the impetus when you are so utterly isolated, and I imagine it often feels like a losing battle against the six hours their children spend every day in a Christian environment.

Now, the kids knew a fair number of people and places in the Torah, so they’d obviously grasped the link with the Bible. Predictably, though, one of the kids said Jesus, and I had to explain why Jesus isn’t in the Torah. Even with help from one of the parents, who is usually brilliant at explaining things to the kids, they were still looking downright sceptical! Getting this across to them is definitely going to be a long-term project.

Thinking about it, at their age I probably didn’t know that the Jesus stories were only in the New Testament and all the others were in the Old; it was all just ‘the Bible’! On the other hand, I wasn’t being brought up Jewish. I have so much sympathy for the Cheder parents, and a huge amount of admiration for what they have kept doing, often against all the odds. But how to explain gently to these kids that this hugely important figure they’ve been taught about doesn’t feature at all in our – their – religion?

We also learned a new song, Al Shloshah Devarim (On Three Things). The text is from the Talmud and says "The world stands on three things: On Torah, on service to G-d, and on acts of lovingkindness". After we'd talked a bit about the importance of those three things and how they balance each other, we had a go at singing it. The kids loved it, because it involved banging very hard on the floor and making lots of noise!

Translation

Upon three things

Upon three things

Upon three, three things

The world stands.

On the Torah,

And on service to G-d,

And on acts of kindness.

On the Torah,

And on service to G-d,

And on acts of kindness.

(by the way, this translates very easily into BSL - email me if you want details)

על-שלושה דברים
על-שלושה דברים
על-שלושה
שלושה דברים
העולם עומד

על התורה
ועל העבודה
ועל גמילות חסדים

על התורה
ועל העבודה

ועל גמילות חסדים

Transliteration:

Al shloshah devarim, (bang bang bang)

Al shloshah devarim, (bang bang bang)

Al shloshah, shloshah devarim,

Ha-olam omed.

Al ha-Torah, (bang)

Ve'al ha-avodah, (bang bang)

Ve'al gemilut khassadim. (bang bang bang)

Al ha-Torah, (bang)

Ve'al ha-avodah, (bang bang)

Ve'al gemilut khassadim. (bang bang bang)

Term 2, Week 6: Spring Half Term and Some Grumbles

As week 6 was half term and several families were away, we didn’t do anything particularly new, just made challah again (braided bread eaten on Shabbat, which we first made during our second ever session). Pedagogically, not very exciting. We did, however, encounter a problem when the adult education session ran late AGAIN. Very late, so we were hanging around downstairs for ages before we could get into the room to even get the dough started. Not only does this make for a disrupted start for the kids (whose behaviour is affected for the rest of the session), but it also meant we didn’t have time to finish cooking the challahs, so I had to trek around in the evening delivering them.

Now, this may seem like a fairly minor grouch, but it is symptomatic of a long-running lack of co-operation from the community in general and the committee in particular. At best, the committee is completely uninterested in what we do, which means we can get on with it without interference. Sometimes, however, the Cheder and the adult community have to encounter one another, and the Powers That Be just don’t make an effort.

Given that the shul premises are very small and that the Cheder doesn’t have the money to hire different premises whenever necessary, there does need to be a certain amount of consideration, if not support, and so far I haven’t seen it. The Chanukah party hosted by the Cheder was only attended by a tiny handful of people from the community; the sponsorship forms for the Holocaust Memorial Day charity event were largely ignored (and would have been ignored by some people who should know better, if I hadn’t knobbled them in public), and the Torah L’Am adult education group hijacked our Sunday morning time slot every fortnight for the whole Spring term.

On the one hand, the Torah L’Am course was booked and planned a few months before the Cheder was set up, so it wasn’t reasonable to move it. In theory, I had no problem with that. What did irritate me was the complete lack of interest when I tried to find a solution, and the way that almost every session ran over into our time, even though I’d explained that we couldn’t run late to make up the time (we had a breastfeeding mum who had to get home to the baby, plus families with young children who live a long way away). If it had been the other way around, you can bet they’d have been down on me like a ton of bricks.

So here’s the dilemma: How do you persuade a group of middle-aged and elderly people, who either have no children or whose children have long since grown up and moved away, that bringing families into the shul is important? It seems like a no-brainer, but apparently not…