Jerusalem

We've taken off and headed to Israel. First stop - Jerusalem.

Our class has been divided into travel groups. Each group is planning its own itinerary through the Holy Land. After a class-wide introduction to each city or region through books and videos, the group researches restaurants, hotels and tourist attractions and writes a report on their visit.

While researching restaurants, one student raised her hand and asked "What's falafel?" I learned that over half of our class has ever eaten falafel. So......I'm hoping I can get some parent support to create an Israeli cafe for the end of this unit. I can handle baking cookies with the class on my own, but definitely not frying falafel balls!

Go Fish!

Here we are practicing our numbers in Hebrew......

Rugelach!

Against all wisdom accrued in years of teaching and years of baking, I decided to try out a baking project with the class with no parent help and with no experience with the recipe. Foolhardy? Of course. Delicious? Just wait until you try them. Once you do, I'm sure you'll want the recipe - it's taken from Joan Nathan's website.

DOUGH

8 ounces cream cheese
2 sticks (1 CUP) unsalted butter
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
pinch of salt
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 large egg
1/4 cup crystallized or granulated sugar

APRICOT FILLING

1 cup apricot jam
2 tablespoons cake crumbs (optional)
3/4 cup walnuts, broken up

OR CHOCOLATE FILLING

1 cup shaved bittersweet chocolate (about 8 ounces)
1/4 cup sugar

1. Place the cream cheese, butter, confectioners' sugar, salt, lemon juice, and vanilla in a food processor. Add the flour and pulse until a very soft dough is formed. Refrigerate for at least an hour.
   
2. Mix the ingredients for the filling of your choice and divide the dough into 4 balls. Roll the balls out into 4 circles, about 1/8 inch thick and spread with apricot filling or chocolate filling.
   
3. Cut into pie-shaped pieces an inch wide at the circumference. Roll up from the wide side to the center. Beat the egg and brush the top. Sprinkle with the crystallized sugar and place flat on a greased cookie sheet. (Alternately, roll out each ball to a rectangle, 1/4 inch thick. Top with the apricot filling or chocolate filling. Roll each rectangle into a jelly roll and cut into 1/2-inch pieces. Lay flat on a greased cookie sheet. Beat the egg, brush the tops of each cookie, and sprinkle with the crystallized sugar.)
   
4. Bake on a greased cookie sheet in a preheated 350-degree oven for 25 minutes or until golden brown.

Yield: about 50 rugelach (D)

Crossword puzzles

We are concluding our unit on the religions of Israel with a veritable crossword puzzle fest. I don't think Last Thursday every student created a puzzle with at least 10 clues related to Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Today everyone had the chance to solve each others puzzles. I don't think Will Shortz has anything to worry about, but some of the puzzles were really well designed and executed.

Today we began our next unit - traveling through the state of Israel. To kick off our trip we watched a DVD of an aerial tour of the land shot from a helicopter. It gave only a few of us travel sickness. Thursday we'll beginning visiting and researching various regions and cities. Thanks so much to Rosie Tabachnick's moms who bought and donated a full set of Israel travel books to our class. We'll make good use of these over the next 2 months. Still moving along in Kedusha....

We'll be baking desserts for the class shabbat dinner - hope to see many of you there.

And Mohammed too!

Today we continued our brief unit on the religions of Israel with a lesson on Islam. We read about the story of Mohammed and some of the main beliefs and practices of Muslims. To conclude our unit I've asked every student to research holy sites in Israel of each of the three faiths - the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Dome of the Rock. This brief homework assignment is due next Tuesday.

We've moved on to the Shabbat Morning Kedusha and are zipping right through a prayer that I thought would be very tricky to master. It's a strong testament to how much everyone's reading has progressed this year.

Jesus visits our class

In an attempt to better understand the people who consider Jersalem their home, we're doing a brief unit on Christianity and Islam. We are reading excerpts from two read-alouds - What I Believe and One World, Many Religions. Students are filling out matrices to compare some basic information about Jews, Christians and Muslims. Some interesting questions came up about Christianity that I was not able to answer, but I did encourage the class to ask Christian friends and/or family if they wanted to know more.

We've begun the Shabbat Kedushah, the section of the Amidah when we rise on our toes singing "Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh." I explained to the class that this movement was intended to emulate the movements of angels. I asked students to demonstrate how they thought angels might move, and sing the same section with those movements instead. It was very.....spirited. Not so much how I imagine angels, but who really knows?

We met with the third grade class to prepare for Yom Shirah, our annual music assembly on February 11th.

Shabbat Shalom-
Amy

Welcome Sarah Rose and Isaiah

We've started 2007 with 2 more students. Isaiah has returned from Oaxaca (with a great Mexican accent to his Hebrew) and Sarah Rose has joined anew. The more the merrier!

We are tying up a few loose ends from before vacation. We read about the seige on Masada, and took a web tour of the archaeological site. We'll be reading about the battle in depth in a read-aloud by Neal Waldman that we started today, although I'll be doing some selective editing of the very detailed account. At the end of the day we set up an archaeological museum in our classroom, with a display of Jewish coins from the period of the Judean revolt, that each student designed out of Sculpee.

We took time today to review the prayers we've learned so far, and will start to tackle the shabbat morning kedushah on Thursday. I'm trying to fit in a little more modern hebrew into our week as well. Today we read a story about a tricky crow with dove envy.

I hope to see all of you at our class Shabbat dinner in a few weeks. I plan to bring my own kids as well.

Morah Amy