Yeast

We are learning about Yetziat Mitzrayim, specifically the part where they don't have time for their dough to rise. We started talking about why they couldn't have waited, why weren't they prepared, and then how to make bread in the first place.

When I was in 5th grade myself I read a biography of Betsy Ross (the designer of the American flag) which talked about her family of Quakers, who did everything from scratch, and how when she got married, she took a piece of her mother's sourdough with her. Something about taking the dough stuck in my mind, although I had never seen real live "sourdough" myself.

I told my students about this, and they were immediately fascinated by the idea that dough rises itself, and we decided to try it ourselves. I turned to my friend Google, who as always had 10 million hits from a cult of people who actually do this, and learned that all you need is flour and water in a glass jar and to stir and add some flour every day for a week. Our EQ for the whole unit on the 10th plague was "Faith and Trust take time and energy to develop," and so soon our sourdough was nicknamed "Faith."

It was a lot of work. It continues to be a lot of work, as I struggle to remember to take it home and feed it in the evenings, and help the students do it in the mornings. Like our own private Shema, it constantly pushes in our faces the idea that the good things in life take time, that in a world of instant gratification, sometimes slow does win the race.

I am sitting in my house now, baking bread from an extra bit, a test run of what we will do tomorrow, and realizing that I have taught all of this, in addition to finally pulling them in to the world of 3000 years ago, all without actually opening a text or teaching a single word. We have learned this by virtue of something we have done, not talked about, and I am content.

I am happy that I finally feel like we have walked in the footsteps of our ancestors, that we have re-enacted Mitzrayim, and surprised that we didn't need a book to tell us the point of the whole story: Bnei Yisrael had to leave behind the leavened bread that was the invention of Mitzrayim, and walk with faith in the shadow of God into a desert filled with matzah, and then manna, until they learned to trust. They learned then by giving it up, we learned now by creating something from almost nothing, and I have learned that something we can touch is the most powerful teacher of all.

The Siren

Three years ago, on Yom HaZikaron of my first year at Pardes, we were sitting in the Beit Midrash about four minutes before the siren. Suddenly a group of about 10 students start sneaking out, and for some reason I go with them. I find myself on the roof, looking out at the corner of Pierre Koenig and Rifka, and before I can say anything the siren starts.

The siren has always dug into me, the same as a shofar, pulling at my heart and making me feel like I'm both sinking and flying at the same time. But that year I just couldn't settle into it. It felt intrusive to be watching the tiny people down there privately mourning, and it felt even more uncomfortable that one of my rooftop companions was videoing those people with his camera, as if we all were up on that roof as tourists and not as humans who shared the country's pain.

This morning in school we held our ceremony, hosted by the 6th graders and including a videotaped siren. When the moment came, I stood, expecting the famous footage of Har Hertzl that most American schools use. And then on comes the video of my corner, our corner, Pierre Koenig and Rifka, the bus stop, Kinyon Hadar, and the falafel guy. You can even hear the wind rushing and roaring in the silence, the way it always does up there. Suddenly I was inside that moment, only dalet amot from the corner of the camera's eye, on that roof. That roof where I tutored Neima's kids, where I spray painted a model Mishkan, where I snuck up to spend time on my novel.

After the ceremony, the principal approached me, pleased as punch that she had sponsored a trip down memory lane to my 'old hometown'. "Can't you just feel like you're in Jerusalem?" she said. "Didn't you feel like you were almost there?" I was there, I told her, so close that I half expected to see myself in it, caught in a storm of secret anxiety over the making of that very video.

In truth, seeing that that video was like reading an old diary entry and smiling now at the worries I had then. Three years later, the siren (and the ceremony) is no longer for me, but for my students, and I am finally glad the video was made. Five thousand miles away now, that snapshot gave my students the experience of an Israel that is my second home. And it gave me back my lost moment of siren-mourning, three years old, and the gift of thankfulness, knowing where I've come since then.