URJ Heller High

Teaching the Biblical Period and Building a Foundation for Jewish Identity

by David Alon

Most of us remember the bible stories we learned in Hebrew school and file them away in our memory, bringing them out once a year on a particular holiday to remind us why we are feasting or fasting.  We often learned the G-rated versions of the actual text, but they became ingrained in us none the less.  In our early years, our Jewish identity developed as a conglomeration of all these bible stories, and for the multitude of Jews who don’t live strictly according to halacha, this is what came to define us.  That is until we reach the age when we are old enough to learn in graphic detail about the horrors of the Shoah.

When I was in 7^th grade and attending bar/bat mitzvot every weekend, I had an impactful experience when my synagogue required us to take a year long class studying the Shoah.  For the next few years, I came to define Jewish identity as our duty to remember the six million, causing me to push aside all the lessons from the Tanach.  Later on in high school, especially in NFTY, I got a healthy dose of tikun olam, learning about the Jewish responsibility to repair our broken world and fight for social justice.

Now, years later as a Jewish history teacher at Heller High, I see firsthand when our students arrive that they are already well versed in tikun olam and Holocaust education.  I’m grateful that the Reform movement is excelling in these areas, and they are certainly essential to modern Jewish life.  However, it brings me back to the question of Jewish literacy.  Are we doing enough to engage on a daily basis with our ancient sources?

The Heller High Jewish history curriculum is designed to teach Judaism as a civilization over a four month semester in Israel.  On the first day of class I ask my students to nominate different moments that we might define as the beginning of Jewish history:  Creation, Abraham, 12 tribes, slavery, Mt. Sinai, King David, etc.  Some even suggest jumping ahead all the way to 1948.  There’s enough material for four months that comes from the modern period, so let’s just focus on the State of Israel.

Well, I explain to them, the Tanach is our owners manual.  If we want to operate this complex thing we call Jewish identity, it’s probably worth reading the instruction book.  When we open up the Tanach and read it class, we’re seeing and discussing these words for the first time as adults.  It’s not just a bunch of kids’ stories!  In Genesis 29, Jacob doesn’t lift up Leah’s veil to see he’s been tricked, he finds out when he sees her in bed the next morning!  For the first time our students read the stories of Judah and Tamar, and David and Bat-Sheva.  In the first two weeks of the curriculum, we endeavor to make the bible come to life, and understand it as the foundation of the Jewish people.

One of the more meaningful discussions we have, especially this time of year in Elul, is the meaning of tshuva.  We challenge our students to look at the behavior of Jacob, Moshe, Devorah, David, and Solomon and understand the essence of this concept, and why we demand it from our leaders both in ancient times and today.

Perhaps the most complex topic we teach when studying this time period is the idea of avoda zara, idolatry.  We see it at Tel Gezer where the Canaanites erected monoliths and an altar to make sacrifices to their gods.  We encounter it in the biblical book of Judges when the Israelites continually reject the God of Israel to worship the foreign deities Baal and Astarte.  We see it in artifacts uncovered in excavations at Ir David (the city of David) in Jerusalem, figurines of a fertility goddess that our ancestors prayed to.  Yes we teach what avoda zara means in the biblical context, but equally important is defining what that means today.  Is the one-dimensional pursuit of money and status avoda zara?  Is being on your iphone at the family dinner table avoda zara?  Is cyber-bullying a form of avoda zara?  Is a smoking addiction?  We don’t always come up with definitive answers, but it seems in a way that asking the question is more important.

There’s no question that studying the Tanach gives us a far better understanding of the modern State of Israel in which we see ourselves as the continuation of an ancient people in our homeland, speaking our ancient language.  A group of our students once summarized this is a letter they wrote at the end of the semester:

Every day in class we learned an immeasurable amount of history which we internalized as part of our identities.  Through the lessons, the history became a part of us as we began to see ourselves as part of the Jewish people.  Our tiyulim [field trips] tied us to the land even more, and we were able to connect the class lessons to the Land of Israel.  Before coming on this program we were distantly connected to the Jewish texts, and felt uncomfortable with the connection between the Tanach and the modern world.  However, we now see the relationship between our lives and this literature.  The Jewish people, faith, territory, and language have all greatly influenced our identities, creating an unbreakable chain between us and the Jewish literature of antiquity.  We are now able to understand how these texts have influenced Israel in today’s world, and created a resurgence of the Jewish culture in Eretz Yisrael.  This new awareness of our Judaism wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the Jewish history class.

I am so grateful for the incredible opportunity to share with the students a love for Israel that is deeply rooted in the Hebrew Bible.  I learn as much from them as they do from me!

Tiyul to Ir David in Jerusalem

by Shay Orentlicher,     11^th grade,     Indianapolis

No teenager likes getting up extra early, but at Heller High, it tends to be worth it. When we stumbled out of bed at 6:25 am, it wasn’t an early wakeup for no reason; it meant that we would be going on a tiyul, or a fieldtrip, to Ir David that morning, with a packed schedule of learning and fun ahead of us. No matter how groggy I am or how many times I yawn, I know the excitement of the tiyul will energize me and get me ready for what is guaranteed to be an amazing morning.

For the first part of our morning tiyul, we split into our two Jewish History classes so our teachers could give us the day’s lessons in the sites where it all actually happened. We took notes on the story of King David while facing Area G, the remaining ruins of an ancient house that was under the palace. We learned about his complicated legacy while standing where he would have stood at some point, our cameras capturing the same views that he too once admired. Two students dressed up in costumes in a silly imitation of the biblical story of King David and Batsheva, right by the palace where that story actually took place. Learning about these ancient events where they actually took place provided a whole new layer of depth for me that even years of Jewish studies didn’t give me.

my classmates Ashley and Micah acting out the biblical story of David and Bat-Sheva

When I was standing on top of thousands of years of Jewish history in Jerusalem, it made it infinitely easier to understand why King David would want his capital there. Although part of me logically understood the political implications of a centralized capital that’s not in any tribe’s territory, another part of me was caught up in the holy feeling that also played a huge role: this was the place where the Temple was built, where its one remaining wall still stands. There’s something special about Jerusalem, and it’s particularly palpable in Ir David. It makes sense that King David could use such a city to unite the Jewish people into one kingdom, and it makes sense that this was where God would want the Temple to be built.

One thing in particular that stood out to me in our learning was the story of Batsheva. As a kid, I was taught sugarcoated versions of Jewish history. War and murder were glossed over, flawed Jewish figures were glorified, and everything was painted as relatively black and white. This story destroys that notion by breaking down one of the most revered figures in Jewish history in a story of him doing something awful. According to the book of Samuel II, he sleeps with Batsheva, a married woman, and when his attempts to pass off the child as her husband’s don’t work, he sends her husband to war so he will be killed. This attempt is successful, and as punishment, King David will not be the one to build the Temple, the child conceived from the affair will die, and David’s family will be plagued by scandal. King David is one of the greatest figures in Jewish history, and to see his worst flaws laid out before us like that was a complete shift in perspective for me. The notion of this man, who was supposed to be a great leader of the Jewish people and a follower of God, committing such a terrible deed destroys the pedestal I’d always imagined him on and makes him just like anyone else; human. His bad deed was more extreme than most, but then, so were his good deeds. More importantly, he did תשובה tshuva (repentance). Through the story of his sin, I was able to enrich my understanding of him and every other flawed Jewish figure.

Area G at Ir David with remains from the First Temple Period

After our lessons, we merged back into one group and went down to Hezekiah’s Tunnel. This tunnel was used to transport water into Jerusalem, and it now is open for tourists to walk through. The tunnel is a little over 500 meters long, with water up to the ankles most of the time. As we always do on tiyulim, we had plenty of fun with it, singing some of our favorite pop songs and laughing together as we made our way through the tunnel.

our Jewish history class emerges from walking through Hezekiah's water tunnel

Near the end of the tunnel, there was a plaque commemorating an amazing discovery in the place that it was found: a tablet written in ancient Hebrew that stated, “The tunneling was completed... While the hewers wielded the ax, each man toward his fellow... there was heard a man's voice calling to his fellow... the hewers hacked each toward the other, ax against ax, and the water flowed from the spring to the pool, a distance of 1,200 cubits...” This discovery provides historicity, or corroboration for what the Tanakh says. The Tanakh mentions this water system, and the ancient Hebrew text means that it was in fact real, a concept we’ve been focusing on a lot in our tiyulim to historical sites.

By the end of the tiyul, we were all thoroughly exhausted, but it had been an amazing experience. I felt like I had learned so much about King David, Jewish life in Jerusalem, and Jewish history in general. Even as I collapsed into my seat on the bus, I felt just as much accomplished as I did tired. From the lessons about King David and his mistakes to the exhausting ten-minute climb up a steep hill to get back to our bus from the tunnel, I’d been challenged to learn and grow in every aspect. It truly was a rewarding, eye-opening experience.

The lookout point at Ir David in Jerusalem with a view of the walls of the old city

(First Blog Entry of the 2019 Fall Semester)

Tiyul to Sataf JNF Park in Judean Mountains

by Daniel Wellerstein,     12^th grade,       Northern California

This past Wednesday we went on our Tiyul to Sataf, a JNF park with an ancient biblical farming village located just a short walk away from Kibbutz Tzuba where Heller High is. While there, we learned about the method of farming known as “terrace farming” where different levels of crops are separated by walls of small stones used for irrigating water. This allowed for an easily regulated amount of water trees without constant management. to flow down the levels and properly hydrate crops without rains and constant management.

classmates walking on an ancient agricultural terrace at Sataf JNF Park

During our first stop at Sataf, we read pages out of the book of Joshua in the Tanach, and learned about his siege on the city of Jericho to continue conquering the land of Israel. There, they were instructed by God to march around the city walls for six days, before the seventh when they would sound their shofars and the city’s walls would fall before them and allow them entry. Once inside they were told to slaughter the population, but leave just the concubine Rahab and her family, as she was the spy assigned to gather information for the Jewish people about the city. Following the book of Joshua, the book of Judges recounts the internal struggles of the Jewish people, and the problems in leadership they were dealing with. After Moses’ death, the issue of who should be the next person to lead the people came into question. We learned about the progression of the Israelite kings, specifically Saul and David. An important quote of our class was “yes repentance tshuva, no foreign worship,” which denounced the practice of idolatry amongst the Jews.

remains of an ancient village at Sataf that we "made fall" like the wall of Jericho.

At the second stop, we learned about the many different types of agriculture that were prevalent during the time (1200 BCE); those being: grapes, olives, dates, pomegranates, wheat, barley, and figs. Additionally, the Tanach recounts the “land of milk and honey,” but as we learned, the honey referred to in the phrase actually implies the honey of dates instead of bees. Moreover, the reason so many Israelites are said to have become farmers is due to the rain that is believed to have been the result of their prayer to the Canaanite god Baal. The heavy showers led to the theory that if trees had more water, they would produce much larger and better produce. This gave way to the addition of man-made water irrigation systems coming from a large cistern fed by a cave system.

Me with a water jerrycan and my classmate Gavin at Sataf JNF Park

At our third and final stop, we learned about the conquest of the Jewish people against the army of Sisera. Deborah, a prophet in the book of Judges, instructed Barak to lead a fight against a commander of the Canaanite army known as Sisera, as well as giving him knowledge of the 900 chariots of iron the Israelites would be struggling against. During the battle, Sisera fled away on his feet to the tent of Yael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, because there was peace between Sisera and Heber. In the night, while Sisera was asleep, Yael brought with her a mallet and tent spike and drove said spike into Sisera’s temple, killing him, and effectively winning the battle for the people of Israel. We were also given the opportunity to venture into the cave that the ancient Israelite farmers drew their water from.

My classmate Max inside the Sataf water cave (mayan in Hebrew)