Today is the first day of school. It’s a very exciting and busy day, there was a flurry of emails and WhatsApp texts the past few days, from the school office, the parent WhatsApp groups, the teacher’s WhatsApp information group, etc. There were a few iterations of the health attestations that need to be filled out every day, and instructions for how to do it online (which I have yet to figure out). The boys needed to wear their white, school logo, shabbat shirts to school because the first day is a special day. (The girls could wear normal school clothes – a school logo T shirt and skirt.) And the drive to drop them off in the morning is always so cute. The whole city is alive with excitement. Everywhere you look parents are walking in the streets with their children with little backpacks grasping their hands. All the crosswalks are full of little ones crossing the street, and older kids acting as crosswalk guards to stop traffic. The traffic is extra slow, which would be annoying if you weren’t aware and mildly in awe of the coolness of the whole thing.
This year all the kids are in all of the regular classes, and they get extra help as needed (as opposed to last year where their only real subject other than hebrew, was math, because they had ulpan (hebrew language) classes most of the time.) For the boys, each 6th grade class is split into two “capsules” which meet in separate rooms so they are only half the size. They will be meeting every other day in person and every other day by zoom from home. For the girls, each 8th grade class is also split into capsules. For the first week they are meeting only half days; alternating one capsule in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Then they will be every other day like the boys.
And in case you were wondering, they just sent out a 1 minute video message from the mayor of Ra’anana wishing us a safe, happy, and successful new school year – to all 17,716 students in the city. That’s a lot of students. I just checked and the total population of Ra’anana is 68,300.
Anyway, I was impressed with the boys’ 6th grade books this year, so I took some pictures to show you:
We’ll start off easy. This is their English book:
Moving on from English we have “Tarbut” or Culture.
In the title of the book they’re using the hyphenated word “Jewish-Israeli,” but grammatically each one is a stand alone word – its not like in English where “Jewish” would be just an adjective describing the word “Israeli.” In this usage, each is parallel and the same. You could teach a whole course on that decision alone, but its nice that they’re getting both. Each word is distinct but yet here in this country they’re hyphenated together…
This is a random page in the culture book. The bold-faced text at the top is a quote from a midrash (rabbinic story in order to elucidate a point about something in the Torah), It says (don’t quote me on it, it’s my own translation…)
“Rabbi Yehoshua explains in the name of Rabbi Levi, “The two of them took the ground and the two of them took their property. About what were they arguing? One said, in my area the Temple will be built. And the other said, in my area the Temple will be built. And from that it is written, “And Cain rose up to Abel his brother, and killed him.”
Then the questions below say, “According to the midrash, about what were Cain and Abel arguing? Why was this issue so important to the brothers, that they were fighting as “extremists?” Also in our days people argue about things. Give an example…”
I guess we have social studies in the US, but I don’t remember a specific “US culture” class like this. I went to an orthodox Jewish day school through 8th grade and I learned a lot of Torah, but I don’t ever remember reading the primary text of a specific midrash, breaking it down like that and then applying it to modern times. It’s just seems sad that we have such a rich culture which has so much to teach about modern times and yet it is almost entirely missed by most Jewish kids outside of Israel. And this isn’t even a religious textbook – its just regular, “secular” Israeli culture.
OK, next there’s science…
Followed by Israeli geography:
Next we have History:
And finally we have Language (which means Hebrew, as in for native Hebrew speakers – like “English” would be in the US)
This page from the Language book is talking about the holiday of Succot. The subtitle (in orange letters at the top of the page) says, “What is the source of the different names of the holiday?” Then it says, “In the Torah it is written: …..” Then it goes on to quote from the Torah a few verses about the holiday. You can tell because they use vowels when quoting from the Torah since the pronunciation is different than modern Hebrew. Then it lists the four names, then it asks you to find words from the verses in the Torah with the same root as words they probably already know in modern Hebrew. And again, this is not a religious book. It’s just the regular secular language book.
…
OK, everybody made it safely home from the first day. The boys had a good day overall, (despite the fact that it was horrible just because it was school…🙄) And more importantly, while not understanding every word, they were able to get the intent and meaning of all the Hebrew stuff the teacher was saying. They did not say (as they definitely did last year) that they just sat there staring at the wall not understanding anything. So that’s something…☺️
And the girls had a good day as well. They are in separate classes now, and each one had a new english speaking immigrant (new olah) in their class; one from New York and one from Toronto. And apparently they’re going to have a special ulpan class occasionally for all of them.
All in all not bad for day 1, year 2…