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.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Sunday, January 27, 2013
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.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
November Biblical Studies Carnival
Friday, November 9, 2012
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.
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,
and ready to support a reading of the psalms that opens up possibilities for transformation.
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 |
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 |
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.
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.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
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.
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.)
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.)
Sunday, October 9, 2011
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!
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!
Sunday, October 2, 2011
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 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.
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