"This innovative curriculum provides lots of information in a creative way. It also includes activities such as a Crypto-Jewish seder, which we performed in the dark with candles. It was a big success with our students. They learned what it was like to be a community in hiding that must risk its safety in order to be Jewish"

 

Elana Ponet, director of the Hillel Children's School at Yale, New Haven, CT.

 

                      LOOKING AT OUR LESSONS          

   

 Our lessons are self-contained workbooks for children that can be easily understood and followed. Students can:

 

    • decorate an old Spanish synagogue and become one of the architects who borrowed from the elegant Moorish style for their own houses of worship

 

    • learn the differences between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews

 

    • practice some Ladino words and see how close this 500-year-old Jewish folk language is to the Spanish they hear all around them - and why 

 

    • meet famous Jewish women in history they may have never encountered before

 

    • create their own plays and TV newscasts that bring long-ago events to life

 

    • understand the origin of certain Sephardic names                      

 

    • listen and sing along to the music of the Jews from Spain and other lands    

 

    • celebrate a Seder meal or Chanukkah party with customs and recipes from the Sephardic world

 

    • follow the fascinating journeys of the forced converts known as conversos, anousim or crypto Jews and discover how they kept their Judaism secret

 

    • find out how Jewish immigration in the history of America began a lot earlier than most of us realize - and in Caribbean islands we don't usually associate with Jews

 

    • and by exploring our teachers' guide ... teachers will quickly see how easy it is to enrich their classrooms by making Sephardic Jewish education -- the story of Jews from Mediterranean lands -- an integral part of the Jewish historical experience. For, in truth, it is the background of so many of our families, even the ones who came from communities like Poland and Russia  we traditionally associate with Ashkenazi culture.

       

       

                                  Below is a sampling of two of our offerings:

 

 

                                           Introduction to Lesson 1, Book III

 

 

READ OUT LOUD

 

Those keys - large iron keys in the old Spanish style - lay in drawers and boxes, gathering dust, getting lost among clothes and cooking pots, sometimes for years until the family moved or someone died. Others were hung proudly above the front door; reminders of a culture they had loved and hoped to maintain.

 

Some years ago an Indiana University professor named Joelle Bahlou wrote an article in a journal that told of a rabbi in New Jersey whose ancestors lived in Spain. One summer, the rabbi went back to the city of Toledo and tried to fit the family's ancient key in the door of the house where they were supposed to have lived before Jews were expelled in 1492. According to rabbi, it fitted the lock perfectly! But of course, these are legends. We don't know for sure. As symbolism, however, his gesture was very meaningful. The presence of the key really did "open" the door to memories and traditions of the past, allowing later generations to learn about the old customs. In the process history was being restored, and with a sense of pride and identity.

 

But there were also practical reasons why the departing Jews took those keys into exile. In Girona, a town in northeastern Spain, documents have recently been discovered that suggest some of the local people who bought houses from the departing Jews agreed to give them back - provided the Edict of Expulsion was lifted within one year. Those keys could have helped to identify the owner in the days when few people knew how to write.

 

And, indeed, when the Jews were first expelled in 1492, many of them really did expect to return. Kings and queens were always issuing decrees that later had to be withdrawn, often because they caused more trouble than anyone had expected. But id di not happen in this case. Jews were not officially allowed into Spain until the 20th century - a banishment that lasted for 500 years.

 

Task 1

 

Discuss: Does your family have any legends? Do they tell stories about your ancestors or about the places where the family used to live? Or even about the way they lived or some of the things that they did? Write down a few ideas and then discuss them as a class. What might you have taken along to prove that the home you now live in once belonged to your family?

 

(The lesson continues from here...)

 

________________

 

 

Introduction to Lesson 6, Book II

 

 

READ OUT LOUD

 

As we learned in previous lessons, the Jews who stayed in Spain and Portugal after the expulsion had no choice but to convert to Catholicism.

 

But...

 

They did not give up. Many continued to practice Judaism in secret while others returned to their Jewish faith whenever they escaped to other lands where it was safe to do so.

 

A few went on to become the most distinguished Jews of later centuries.

 

Here is the story of one of them. Her name was Doña Gracia Nasi. She was a woman who felt so strongly about the agony of the converted Jews - who faced discrimination by the rest of the population even if they did not continue to practice their Jewish rituals - that she spent her life and her fortune helping them. It also shows how even 400 years ago certain women could rise above their domestic status to become successful business and community leaders. Her deeds were so outstanding that she was often compared to Queen Esther in the Bible.

 

Sephardic grandmothers like to tell this story to their granddaughters. Let's look in upon Estrella, a grandmother in Seattle, as she begins to tell the story to her 12-year old granddaughter Sarah.

 

(The story opens here... where it can become a play with students reading individual parts...)

 Click here for Order Form.