Catching up - the Shema - preparation for Pentecost

These past two weeks, I worked with the older children, 11 altogether last Sunday - two classes combined, to learn the Shema and also to add American Sign Language to the singing.  It was a good session. All the children, including this 67 year old were able to learn each word in ASL and to combine them in Hebrew with the Music.  The ASL was developed for us by one of the teachers who will now shepherd the children to their singing as part of the service at Pentecost.

The divine name

Today was another day of singing and teaching in the four Sunday School classes. Good long sermon so I got to all four and had ample time to get back to choir even in time for the general confession.

Today's lesson included singing the Shema as well as teaching some tone matching to the youngest classes. In the older classes, we explored the Divine Name in detail - Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh; where in the song we sing Adonai = Lord.  But the divine name can be written - and we wrote it

יהוה

then we wrote Adonai

אדני 

and we talked a bit about the differences, about vowels and consonants, and about practices including the name (Hashem) as a substitute.  And in line with this morning's leaflet, we talked a little about Israel and how the nations have been gathered into the promises that are given to Israel, creating the oneness that we celebrate. (All this at roughly 5 minutes a class).

The children remember all the words of the song and their usual English glosses. Here are singers, and translators for the future ...  I expect the older children could learn another song too - maybe next time...

The letter zayin

Today the lessons are brought to you by the letter zayin in four classes, linked to זכר zkr (to remember) - as in Zachariah (Yah remembers).  I quizzed the class (depending on age level) about who Z was and who was his son. Each class also sang the shema - some from memory, and each class (except the 2-year-olds) linked the name יהוה YHWH to the sentence in Moses at the burning bush.

You remember it, I am sure: Exodus 3:15. The music based on the te'amim is here.

Teaching the Shema

It was a full and satisfying morning for Sunday School classes today. I went to four classes and in each taught the Shema, the words from Deuteronomy 6:4. As is my practice, here is my record of my impressions.

We sang to the traditional tune and will continue to use that tune. Each class responded completely, the youngest to tone-matching and all eventually just to following and singing together, some children even following my hand signals.

These 6 words never fail to impress me. The text above is how I usually render the meaning in English, but there are other possibilities: Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.  Or it might be parsed as Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. Cythia Miller in her book on The Verbless Clause in Biblical Hebrew, Linguistic Approaches gives even another possible parsing: Hear O Israel, our one God is the Lord, the Lord.  

No complex linguistics in Sunday School classes though - we just concentrate on one word at a time: Hear - and the children's fingers go to their ears; O Israel, and a teacher might comment on how deep into history our tradition goes or for older students, how Israel is a canonical example, or we might briefly relate the story of Jacob's wrestling match at the ford of Jabbok (Genesis 32:22 where Jacob received the name, Israel); Adonai - and we can have a lesson on a name comprised of vowel sounds (Yhwh) that no one pronounces; and one - that God is one just like the circle of students and teacher are one; and our God can begin an introduction to Hebrew grammar. If we read these as poetry, we are aware of the repetition of יהוה and that it surrounds Elohenu. Perhaps this allows Hear O Israel and One to be considered as acting as if in parallel. This could lead to a lesson on Paul's use of the Shema in Romans 3:29-30 and his challenge to the Roman churches to be in unity with each other, or Jesus prayer in John 17:21 a reflection of these words, or to more music from Psalm 133:1 and the unity of kin celebrated there on the 14th step of the Songs of Ascent.

In the classes this morning, many (not all) of these lessons came out, one in one class and another in another. With the older students, the teacher drew out the name of Israel and our historical continuity with this tradition. In another class, the teacher asked the students if Joseph (whom they had been studying) would have known these words. What a great question, leading us to define the five books of Moses and recognize that Joseph lived earlier than Moses to whom these words are attributed. (But there's more to this question than first meets the ear.)

Later at coffee, I had a brief discussion about the music (chironomy or sign language) embedded in the text of the Hebrew. You can see the signs in the text below. In this case the specific signs \, /, ^, and | below the letters. They correspond to G#, F, A, and E respectively. Here is the music as interpreted from these marks of taste or te'amim (thought for the last 1000 years to be punctuation interpreted as linguistic and grammatical conjunctive and disjunctive signs!) 

שְׁמַ֖ע יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ יְהוָ֥ה אֶחָֽד

This music does not resolve the linguistic question. 

November Biblical Studies Carnival

Cross-posted from Dust. At the link you will find my Biblical Studies summary of posts worldwide in the month of November 2012.  You might enjoy scanning the 350 or so posts.  I reflected on the experience here.

Book Announcement

(Cross-posted from Dust) It was the Sunday School teaching that helped me learn Hebrew - nothing like teaching to learn...

Friends, a most exciting day. My catalog page is now available up at Energion Publishing.

Seeing the Psalter
Release date Jan 18, 2013
Click to order

525 pages and ready to be read,

ready to stimulate the questioning mind about language, poetry, drama, coherence, story, translation, and life in this part of the conversation we have with ancient authors, musicians, poets, and cultures,

Bob at home, picture taken by Diana
Tapestry by Wm Morris
The Tree of Life

and ready to support a reading of the psalms that opens up possibilities for transformation.

If you look under authors, you will find me too.

Please take a look - and you can order the book. There's a 30% discount for orders placed in November via Energion Direct - and free shipping for Canada and the US. With a release date of January 2013, it could even be a late Christmas present for someone.

I am really excited about this.

Hiney Ma Tov

The first words of Psalm 133 are a great song and I introduced it to the two younger classes today. It is rhythmic and repetitive and they caught on quickly.  The class could work up a dance as well.  Even one in the youngest class recognized the Roman Numerals in my Hebrew Bible - a curiosity, CXXXIII, equivalent to the Hebrew numbering symbols קלג qof-lamedh-gimel.

שִׁיר הַמַּעֲלוֹת לְדָוִד הִנֵּה מַה טּוֹב וּמַה נָּעִים שֶׁבֶת אַחִים גַּם יָחַד

1

A song of the ascents of David Hey! How fine and how pleasant it is for kin to sit as one

The words of the first verse relate to both verses we have looked at recently - Genesis 1 and Psalm 136 about the good, and also the Shema, where the word one occurs.

The word I translated as hey! is the traditional behold! - It can mean - look at me! The very thing that youngsters sometimes sing.  I told them the story of the 15 rising steps of the temple and the Songs of Ascent of which this is one (Psalms 120-134).

An example of the sound of the music and a full translation for the psalm is here.  (I did not have full orchestra available.)

Hard work for the older students.

I had two in the older class today and I had several things up my sleeve as possible lessons: continuing Acts, working a little on the Spirit in the Old Testament, and learning how to read a psalm.  I chose to present to them from my presentation on three tools for reading a psalm.  See the post here for a brief summary.  We talked a bit about gardening tools and the three tools for 'seeing' a psalm and therefore learning to 'hear' also. I used some of the slides from my presentation (PDF here)that I will give at the University this week (Wednesday at 10:30 at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society - if anyone is interested.)

What struck me about 'teaching' was how critical it is to learn how to hear and how to see (think Isaiah 35:5 which strikingly uses the same language as Genesis 3:7) before one is into teens and twenties. Being a slow learner myself, or else too much running on momentum all my life to stop and think,  it took me till age (somewhere between 40 and 66) to get this lesson clear. (Of course, such obedience of faith is a lifelong process.)

Anyway - my two students stayed awake and were very polite. They answered the questions I asked them during class, and after my call from the choir leader (to whom many of the psalms are dedicated) to come back for the anthem, they both remembered the big words for three tools... parallelism, prosody, and recurrence.  They likely thought this was more like school than usual for Sunday morning!

New year in Sunday School

It has been some time since I have done regular posting on this blog. But perhaps the time has come again. After 5 years of learning Hebrew, it is a joy to share a bit of it with the students.  I think this model could be followed elsewhere also.  Compared to the first year and the first word I taught to a class in age range from 4 to 13, today I taught the first word to a class of 7 in a very much more focused age group - 7 to 9 (or 10), and also I was able to teach something of the Spirit's work in Creation to the older class (11-14) learning the Acts of the Apostles.

The first word was again ki-tov, for it is good. The original lesson is in the archives here. I used a new handout, but the content is very similar. Some of the children remember earlier lessons and I can build on them. So I included another use of the phrase from Psalm 136:1.

Psalm 136 is roughly To-dah le'adonai ki-tov, ki le'olam chesedo and the Genesis verse vayareh elohim et-ha'or ki-tov.

After introducing this word and the sound of the Hebrew, we sang the alef-bet song. It was the first time for many of the children, but they caught on quickly.

In the older class, one student had just read Peter's defense in Acts 4:8. To begin at the beginning we read the first two verses of Genesis and the role of the Spirit / Breath of God in Creation brooding over turbulent waters, even as Peter and all of us have to deal with turbulence in our lives. There were some very attentive faces in the older class.  Some of them are completely new to Hebrew, so there was some mystification also.  But they too will learn quickly how much fun this is.

Psalm 34 in Hebrew planned for tomorrow

Last week we had a full class and 50 solid minutes of Hebrew. At the end of the class, every child and young adult was able to write his or her own name using Hebrew letters.  After our opening prayer, we sat around the table and worked through the first three exercises in my 22 page Hebrew workbook. I had 7 copies printed and they all got used - one being given away during coffee.  The workbook is full of exercises and little tidbits of strange sounds that seemed to capture everyone's attention for the whole class - from age 6 to 15 + two adults.

I hope to build on it tomorrow. I have two extra workbooks printed in case someone new shows up.  But it's summer, so who knows.  The psalm 34 text that I will use is available here.  We will use it for 'teaching' - the first letters of verses 2, 12, and 23 spell aleph. אֲבָרְכָה לְכוּ פֹּדֶה  I will bless, walk, ransom. So perhaps it was written for teaching.

The Seven Swords, Easter and Pentecost

Some weeks ago I asked if anyone knew the identity of the seven swords of the Dawn Treader. Here's one possible suggestion.

We are in the period known as counting the Omer, the 50 days between Passover and Pentecost, the Jewish feast of the first-fruits of the harvest. From this week's excellent commentary here on current events in this context, I noted this paragraph

The counting of seven weeks came to reflect seven character attributes associated with key divine qualities, each of which we emulate in fulfilling our creation in God's image: Chesed (Love/Grace); Gevurah (Discipline/Rigor); Tiferet (Beauty/Compassion);Netzach (Victory); Hod (Glory); Yesod (Foundation/Righteous Loyalty); and Malkhut(Majesty/Leadership). All seven weeks and all seven days of the week each correspond to a different attribute. This results in a seven-by-seven grid of virtue-pairs, traits we must cultivate in preparation for reliving our ancestors' spiritual elevation as freed slaves receiving the Torah and becoming both "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Exod. 19:6).

On the question of the origin of the name Easter, I came across this article showing several possibilities. There's a cute story about the venerable Bede who may not have been so venerable in his surmise on this question. Finally the article suggests this:

Scholars who study the history of languages have established that the roots of the word "Easter" are found in the Proto-Indo-European language, the prehistoric language that is the common ancestor of nearly all European and Southeast Asian languages. The Proto-Indo-European word "aus," meaning "to shine," gave birth to the Proto-Germanic word "austra," which, in turn, gave life to the Old English word "Easterdæg," the predecessor of our modern English "Easter." In short, the origins of the word are found in a verb meaning "to shine."

Salt Sunday

I regret that I myself will not be available Palm Sunday in the afternoon, but the whole idea of salt I have spun into a post at my Dust blog here. You may find it of interest.

Lenten ideas for the three to five minutes of Hebrew

Scripture in blocks of wood

This first Sunday in Lent, at Jasmine's request, I prepared a brief lesson on the bitter herbs.  (My lessons and songs are never as complex as this post implies, but the realities are always under the surface of the play, the singing and the movements.)

In response to Jasmine, I picked Exodus 12:8 and realized that one could focus on this one verse for the entire period of lent.

The Pascal feast will point us directly to Christ our Passover who was sacrificed for us (1 Corinthians 5:7).  This one verse of Exodus has innumerable lessons and like a fractal reflects the patterns of the whole of Scripture.

The institution of the Passover meal – Exodus 12:8

וְאָכְלוּ	And they shall eat [perfect]
אֶת־הַבָּשָׂר	the flesh [of the lamb]
בַּלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה	that night [in the night - that one]
צְלִי־אֵשׁ	roasted with fire
וּמַצֹּות	and the unleavened bread
עַל־מְרֹרִים	with bitter [herbs]
יֹאכְלֻֽהוּ׃	they shall eat it [imperfect – 'story' tense]

Roughly, the Hebrew reads: ve-akalu et-habasar balylah hasah tsly-esh umatsot al-mrorim yokluhu


Notice how it begins and ends with the same sound. This is typical of the poetic structures of Hebrew (and even in this case in prose instructions - Our Lord loves poetry.)

Eating – psalm 22, together with worship - see this post and the accompanying links here and here for the place of eating in worship in this psalm. It is quite surprising.

the flesh – of the lamb who in his own body bore our sins. See also (or perhaps first) John 6. Especially John 6:51.

that night – not to be delayed, in that same night it is to be done, the night in which the blood is put on the lintels of the door. (verse 7)

roasted with fire – there is one fire, of love and of judgement. The fire forms one of the themes of the Davidic psalms - see e.g. psalms 7, 21, 140.

and the matsot – the bread that has no time to rise. Unleavened bread also reminds us of the Eucharist. But here it reminds us of the haste with which we are delivered. The psalmist often prays that the Lord should hurry to help. And so it was done.

with bitter things – all our bitterness absorbed. This was the word we took for the first lesson yesterday. It reminds us of Naomi's change of name from Naomi (pleasant) to Mara (bitter). See also Psalm 90 for a lovely play on words between dwelling place (Mo-an) in verse 1 and pleasant (Na-om) in verse 17. The whole poem is framed by a palindrome.

Eating – encloses the verse – the different tense means that it goes on and on. So it is that in our worship we eat every week.

Postscript: for those I was asking, the Shema is in the New Testament only in Mark 12:29. Perhaps he is the first gospel after all.  We cannot fail in this unity per the prayer of John 17.

The Sunday school was very full and besides Hebrew, we had a lovely interaction in the language of Vanu-atu also thanks to the returning Nelson who with the younger class spontaneously moved us with this different tongue and interpreted for us.

Some pictures from the family service

Saturday afternoon and the church is decorated and set up beautifully. Here are some pictures of the stations before and during the service and of our dinner afterwards.

Now this is a target fluency

Video was no longer available - there are lots online - quite complex; e.g. this one.

Pictures of the picnic

From Collages

Here are some pictures of our morning. Enjoy. Also a set of individual ones.

From 2010-06-20

Catch the foxes - a new game for children

I have created a game for Sunday - description here. I will bring the props. If anyone has any cuddly stuffed foxes - bring them along too.

Music for the Shema

In case anyone needs it, the music for the shema is here. I will be back to Sunday School next week.

Holy Spittle Batman

There - does that get your attention! We began a study of Mark's gospel today with the Dawn Treaders. Bob set out an outline in Latin as a game to note how many sections there might be in a gospel. Mark has about 118 out of 365 total divisions of the fourfold gospel as note by Kurt Aland in his parallel gospels. You can see all the breakdowns of the texts here. Our lesson of course did not go that far this morning but the children did see a far distant horizon and a rich set of possibilities.

We concentrated for 20-25 minutes on the healing of the deaf man with a speech impediment. Jesus takes 7 actions in this story and each action is visible - as they would have to be for a deaf man to hear them. So not Latin, not Hebrew, not Greek, not Aramaic, but sign language - seven significant actions

• taking him aside from the multitude privately, - personal, one to one
• he put his fingers into his ears, easy to see - pointing to the problem
• and he spat - easy to see
• and touched his tongue; - perhaps he spit into his own hand and touched the tongue with the spittle
• and looking up to heaven, - here is the source
• he sighed, - pray and listen to God's sigh also
• and said to him, "Eph'phatha," that is, "Be opened." - a visible language - say it EF-PHA-THA lip readable

 I encouraged the children to look for the ways that Our Lord will speak to them in their own personal language this week. I told them also to ask him for a hint.

We also discussed briefly the Messianic secret that is evident in the first half of the Gospel. Summary: personal prayer, real healing, and mystery. I told them we could from this first lesson spend much more time than 20 minutes examining the relationship of this short passage to the whole Scripture. I encouraged them to read the whole Gospel. Next week Ella will prepare chapter 1.

Reference: Synopsis of the Four Gospels, Greek-English Edition of the Synopsis Quattuor Evangelium, Edited by Kurt Aland (6th edition) - available in the UVIC library.

Ten choices from the Gospel of Mark

Here are 10 of the sections of Mark - a set of suggestions. Each student will prepare one for one selected week. (Note you can see all the parallel passages for the section in the other gospels by finding your chosen section on this post).

Ten choices in the Gospel of Mark

1. Healing the deaf mute, Mark 7:31
2. Preparation for ministry, Mark 1:1 – 1:13
3. Calling disciples, Mark 1:16
4. Jesus and Family, Mark 3:19
5. Herod’s opinion and the death of John, Mark 6:14
6. Walking Trees, Mark 8.22
7. Peter’s confession and the transfiguration, Mark 8:27
8. The Rich Young Man, Mark 10:17
9. The fig tree, Mark 11:11
10. The Son of David, Mark 12:28, 12:35