A People Remembers: Key Stories in Judaism — Abrahamic Religions 2 (C1)

THE ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS · LESSON 2 OF 5

A People Remembers: Key Stories in Judaism

C1 (B2–C2) · 70 minutes

Six objects

Task Every object below belongs to a story that Jews still tell. For each one, guess the story, and guess one way it might still be remembered today. Wrong guesses are welcome.

A basket of reeds, floating among the rushes at the edge of a river

1

2

A bush on fire that does not burn up

Flat bread, baked in a hurry before the dough could rise

3

4

Two tablets of stone

A scroll read aloud while the listeners make a loud noise at one name

Harps hanging on the branches of trees beside a river

5

6

Where the objects come from

The baby Moses, hidden by his mother and found by Pharaoh's daughter (Exodus 2).

1

2

God calls Moses from the burning bush (Exodus 3).

Matzah: the Israelites leave Egypt in haste (Exodus 12:39). It is eaten at Passover.

The covenant at Mount Sinai (Exodus 19–34). Remembered at the festival of Shavuot.

3

4

The exiles in Babylon (Psalm 137). Some Jews still say this psalm before grace after meals on weekdays.

5

The book of Esther, read at Purim. The name is Haman's.

6

A

TEXT A

Out of Egypt

Task Read Text A. Prepare to tell the story to your partner in 2 minutes without reading it out: what happened, and how it is remembered today.

Exodus opens with Jacob's descendants enslaved in Egypt. A Hebrew baby, Moses (Musa in Arabic), is hidden in a basket by the river and raised in Pharaoh's household. As a man, he meets God in a bush that burns but is not consumed, and is sent to demand the people's freedom. Ten plagues follow; at the last, the death of

Egypt's firstborn, God "passes over" the Israelites' houses. They leave so fast that their dough has no time to rise (Exodus 12:39), and they cross the sea on dry ground.

At Mount Sinai, God makes a covenant with the whole people: a binding agreement with duties on both sides.

A

TEXT A · CONTINUED

Out of Egypt

Its content is the Torah, "teaching", beginning with the Ten Commandments. Orthodox Jews hold that God gave the whole Torah to Moses; many Conservative (Masorti) and Reform Jews see it as inspired but humanly written.

Each spring the Exodus is retold at the seder, a ritual meal on the first night of Passover. The youngest child asks four questions; the family

answers from the Haggadah, the seder text, and eats matzah. The Mishnah teaches that in every generation each person must see themselves as if they had personally come out of Egypt. Most archaeologists find no trace of an exodus on the biblical scale; for many Jews, the story's force has never depended on that.

B

TEXT B

Exile and survival

Task Read Text B. Prepare to tell the story to your partner in 2 minutes without reading it out: what happened, and how it is remembered today.

In 586 BCE the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple, the centre of Judah's worship, and deported many of Judah's leading families to Babylon. A people had lost its land, its king and its Temple at once.

Many historians see the exile as a turning point. Without the Temple, Jewish identity came to rest on things that could travel: the Sabbath, circumcision, food laws and, above all, sacred texts.

B

TEXT B · CONTINUED

Exile and survival

When Cyrus of Persia took Babylon in 539 BCE, he allowed exiles to return, and a Second Temple was completed around 515 BCE. But many Jews stayed. Clay tablets from a Babylonian village called Al-Yahudu, "Judahtown", show exiled families renting land and paying taxes for generations. Babylonia later became a great centre of Jewish learning, where the Babylonian Talmud was compiled.

The book of Esther is set in this

diaspora, the dispersal of Jews beyond their land. In Persia, the royal minister Haman casts lots (pur) to choose a day to destroy every Jew in the empire. Queen Esther, who has kept her Jewish identity hidden, risks her life to stop him. The Hebrew book never mentions God. At Purim, Jews hear the scroll read aloud, drowning out Haman's name with noise, send gifts of food to friends and give gifts to the poor.

Escape and exile

Task Tell your partner your story in 2 minutes, without reading. Then answer questions 1 to 4 together for both stories, and finish with the last question.

Question

Text A: Out of Egypt

Text B: Exile and survival

1. What threatened the people?

2. Who or what saved them?

3. What did the people lose, and what did they keep?

4. How is the story lived today?

Last question: One story ends with a people heading for a land; the other shows how to live without one. Which is more useful to a people scattered across the world?

By the rivers of Babylon

Task Read the opening of Psalm 137, written in the voice of the exiles. Answer together:

PSALM 137:1–2, 4 (KING JAMES VERSION)

"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. ... How shall we sing the LORD'S song in a strange land?"

1. What does it show about how the exiles felt?

2. Whose experience of the exile does it leave out?

3. The psalm has nine verses. What do you think the last verses say?

The rest of the psalm

Verses 5–6 are a vow: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning" (137:5, KJV). At many Jewish weddings they are said before a glass is broken, to remember Jerusalem amid joy.

Verses 7–9 turn to anger. They ask God to remember Edom, which cheered Jerusalem's fall, and call happy whoever repays Babylon, even by dashing its little ones against the stones.

One story, three tellings: Moses

Task Read the three cards. For each tradition, choose the word that fits its Moses best: liberator, lawgiver, prophet, or another word of your own. Then decide: in which telling is Moses most important, and in which is he most human?

Judaism

Christianity

Islam

Jews call him Moshe Rabbenu, "Moses our teacher". Deuteronomy says no prophet arose like him, whom God knew face to face (34:10); yet he dies on Mount Nebo, in sight of a land he may not enter. The traditional Haggadah names him only once: the Passover story is God's and the people's.

In the Gospels, Moses appears with Elijah beside Jesus on a mountain, at the Transfiguration (Matthew 17, Mark 9, Luke 9); in Luke they speak of Jesus's coming "departure", in Greek exodos (9:31). John's Gospel says the law came through Moses, grace and truth through Jesus (1:17).

Musa is the prophet named most often in the Quran, about 136 times. His mother, inspired by God, entrusts the baby to the river (Surah 28:7); at a fire in the valley of Tuwa, God calls him (20:9–12) and speaks to him directly (4:164). Many Sunni Muslims fast on Ashura partly in memory of his rescue.

Why does a story last?

Task Read the four explanations. Choose the strongest and the weakest, and defend your choice. Then discuss two or three of the questions.

A

The table: the story is acted out at home, for children, every year.

B

The law: daily practice marks people out as a community wherever they live.

C

The pressure: hostility from others held the community together.

D

The pattern: each new crisis looked like Egypt, Babylon or Persia again.

Why does a story last?

ONE FIGURE

In Israel, 93% of Jews, including 87% of secular Jews, said they held or attended a seder at the last Passover (Pew Research Center, 2016).

1. Can a ritual matter to people who don't believe its story literally happened?

2. Is a story told at the table more powerful than one taught at school?

3. Which stories are retold every year where you live, and how?

4. Should communities quietly drop verses, like the end of Psalm 137, when they recite old texts?

5. Is it easier to keep an identity in exile or at home?

Private reflection

Task Choose one prompt and write privately. Nobody will read what you write. Sharing afterwards is optional.

Prompt 1

Think of a story you first heard as a child, from a book, a film or your family, that still comes back at a certain time of year. Why has it lasted?

Prompt 2 (lighter)

Which of today's six objects would make the best opening shot of a film, and why?

Before Lesson 3

This week, notice one story that a meal, a festival or an object keeps alive where you live.

Note what the story is, who tells it, and what the object or meal adds that words alone would not. Sharing it next week is optional.

Next lesson: Key Stories in Christianity: the stories Christians retell, and how the Christian year keeps them alive.

TEACHER'S REFERENCE · SKIP OR DELETE BEFORE CLASS

Answer key

ESCAPE AND EXILE suggested answers

1 Threat: Text A, slavery in Egypt and Pharaoh's refusal. Text B, the Babylonian conquest and the loss of land, king and Temple; then, in Esther, Haman's plan to destroy every Jew in the Persian empire.

2 Saved by: Text A, God acting through Moses: the plagues, the passing over, the crossing of the sea. Text B, Cyrus's permission to return; in Esther, Esther's own courage (the Hebrew book never names God, though Mordecai hints that help may come "from another place", Esther 4:14).

3 Lost and kept: Text A, they lose Egypt (and slavery) and gain a covenant and the Torah. Text B, they lose the Temple and, for many, the land; they keep the Sabbath, circumcision, food laws and texts, and many remain in Babylon by choice.

4 Lived today: Text A, the seder, matzah, the four questions, Shavuot. Text B, Psalm 137 before grace on weekdays (some communities) and at weddings; Purim, the scroll, noise at Haman's name, gifts of food and gifts to the poor.

BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON points pairs may raise

1 Grief, homesickness, humiliation (in verse 3 the captors demand songs), and a refusal to perform their sacred songs for their captors.

2 The Judeans who were never deported and stayed in the land; and exiles who settled and did well in Babylonia, as the Al-Yahudu tablets show (tablets dated 572 to 477 BCE, so well after the return was allowed). The psalm also gives the Babylonians no voice.

3 See The rest of the psalm: a vow never to forget Jerusalem (5–6), then a cry for revenge on Edom and Babylon (7–9). Popular settings, like the 1970 song, keep only the opening.