Lesson video

Hello, I'm Mr. Hutchinson, and welcome to our RE lesson, where we're learning all about Judaism.

We've already learned so much about this very interesting faith, which is over three and a half thousand years old.

One of the oldest religions, the oldest monotheistic religion, and in today's lesson, we're going to be taking it into the present day.

So, we're going to be asking the question of how Jews express their faith today.

Now, spoiler alert, there isn't just one way that Jews express their faith.

There are all sorts of different ways that people in general express their faith, their religion, their beliefs, the way that they behave, how it influences their life, how it influences the things that they do, the books that they read, the art that they create, all sorts of different things.

And so I'm just going to give you a bit of a taste today of some different ways that we might see Judaism being expressed, but it's just a taste, there are all sorts of different ways that Judaism can and is expressed.

So, in today's lesson we're going to embrace that diversity within the religion of Judaism, there is a huge diversity within Judaism.

We will look at some traditional Jewish clothing to see how a faith can be expressed through the clothes that you wear.

We'll then look at, we're going to watch a video all about Charlie, who is a Jewish boy living in England, and see how his faith impacts on what he does.

And then I'm really excited because we have a special guest interview, where we'll be joined by one of my friends, Adam, who is a member of the Jewish faith, and we'll be talking all about what being a Jew means to him, and how it affects his day-to-day life.

We'll finish with a end of lesson quiz to lock in all of the new knowledge that we've learned and recap some of the previous knowledge.

Let's get started because there's lots to do.

So, first of all, diversity, I'm going to show you some photos of some people, here they are.

So looking at those photos, which of those people do you think is Jewish? What did you say? The answer of course is we don't know.

You don't know just by looking at somebody what their faith is, you need to talk to them to find out what's important to them, what they believe, what they don't believe, and all of these people or none of these people could be Jewish.

There's a huge diversity within the faith.

Having said that, there're awesome traditional Jewish communities, sometimes called Orthodox, that's not quite the same, who dress using a kind of traditional dress, a kind of dress that people have dressed in for a long, long time, in a way that's kind of according to some of their scripture, and some of their teachings from the rabbis, and so you might see people dressed in these kinds of suits with these huts, wearing their hair in a particular way.

And so we do have some traditional dress that can help us to identify people who are members of the Jewish faith, and want to express that outwardly using the clothes that they wear.

Some of those are a tallit, which is like a kind of shawl.

Now this is usually used for prayer.

So it's a kind of a usually a white shawl, or almost like a blanket that goes over the shoulders.

It can go over the head as well, and can be used during prayer for Jewish people.

You may see Jewish males wearing what's called a kippah, which is a kind of, it's sometimes called the skullcap.

It's a small hat that goes usually on this or back of the head here, in some denominations of Judaism women wear kippah or wear a kippah as well, in Orthodox Judaism it's just the males.

And then you might also see a kind of like white robe, it's called a kittel.

So these words are Yiddish words.

Yiddish is a kind of, it's kind of influenced by Hebrew and German, and some Aramaic, different kinds of ancient languages, sort of rolled into one, and it's a sort of Jewish language used within the Jewish communities in different places actually.

So, the kittel might be worn on special occasions, especially festivals, and it can be used to go to synagogue as well.

And these are all items of Jewish clothing.

So let's see if you can remember which was which, I'm going to test you straight away.

Can you match the Yiddish names of kippah, kittel, and tallit with the English translations, the type of clothing that they are.

Pause the video, and see if you can write out the Yiddish name next to the correct English translation now.

Great work, let's see if you're correct.

So I'm going to match these up, you can give yourself a tick if you've got them right, well done.

So a kippah, was that little like skullcap, a kittel, was that white rope that's worn on festivals, sometimes the synagogue, and the tallit, was that kind of shawl that goes around the shoulders and sometimes around the head.

So, we've seen a little bit about how there's diversity within the Jewish faith, people express it in different ways, they might express it through clothes that they wear, which might also help them to practise their faith.

We're going to now hear from a boy called Charlie, who is an 11 year old boy and who is a Jew, and he's going to talk a little bit about how he expresses his faith.

Hi, I'm Charlie.

I live with my mum and my dad and my sister, Sarah.

We follow the religion of Judaism.

There've been followers of Judaism for nearly 4,000 years.

Judaism has a rich heritage of law, culture and tradition.

I follow a lot of the rules, I'm quite spiritual.

There are lots of Jewish festivals, my family get together for these.

Family is really important to me.

We often play games.

This is a dreidel.

At Hanukkah, we take it in turns to spin the dreidel to win chocolate coins.

My dad is so competitive.

Playing games is fun, but the best thing about Jewish festivals, is they usually involve lots of food.

As well as eating, I enjoy playing sports, especially football, hockey, and tennis.

Of course, if you play lots of sports, you need lots and lots and lots of trainers.

I'm proud to be Jewish.

My question for you now is, how did Charlie identify as a Jew? How did being a Jew affect his identity, the person that he was, what was important to him? How did it impact on how he lives? So I'm going to give you now a chance to write down everything you can think of in terms of how Charlie identifies as a Jew, what's important to him, and how his faith impacts on how he lives.

Then once you've finished, I'll show you what I wrote and we can compare.

So, pause the video and write down as much as you can answering those questions.

Great work, great writing, you're amazing, you rock, you're working really hard.

So, this is what I wrote, let's compare.

I wrote, Charlie said that he's quite spiritual and follows lots of the rules set out within Judaism.

One of the best parts of Judaism for Charlie is the food.

He especially likes how it brings family together, because Charlie says that family is the most important thing.

Football and tennis are also important to Charlie, and so are trainers.

You can give yourself a tick if you've got any other similar ideas, you might have put in some extra bits that I missed from the video, if so, well done, great work, really impressed.

So, now it's time for a special guest interview.

We've heard from a child, who's a Jew, now we're going to hear from an adult who's a Jew, who's an Orthodox Jew and his name's Adam or Mr. Boxer.

And so I'm going to introduce you on the video now.

As you watch this video, what I'd like you to do is have your pen and paper still out, or your book still out if you're writing in an exercise book or notebook, and make a list of all the things that Adam does, that he talks about, which are influenced by his Jewish faith.

So how his Jewish faith impacts on his day-to-day life.

So watch the video carefully, and make that list as we are watching.

Hello and so welcome to Adam, or as you might know him, Mr. Boxer, because Adam is one of our teachers at Oak National Academy, he's a science teacher and he's also Jewish, and he's going to talk to us all about what it means to him of being a member of the Jewish faith.

So, Adam, welcome and thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you very much Mr. Hutchinson, glad to be here.

I wonder if you could just walk us through what a week would be like for you, and how your faith impacts what you do sort of day-to-day.

Okay, so I am immediately identifiable.

It's very obvious that I am Jewish, because I wear a kippah on my head, and Orthodox Jewish males will wear a kippah, Orthodox Jewish females do not wear a kippah.

From other denominations, sometimes people will sometimes won't, in reform they have no difference between men and women.

And so men and women would wear a kippah, but most of them just choose not to anyway, but I'm very obviously Jewish because I wear a kippah.

Day-to-day I do exactly the same thing as anybody else would do.

And in fact I didn't wear the kippah, you might never know unless you spoke to me, that I was Jewish.

I pray three times a day, and I just went downstairs to get some props.

So in the morning, I do a service in the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening.

And in the morning I put on these things caused tefillin, which often translates it to phylacteries or prayer boxes.

And it's a little box that looks like this.

So I've got two of these, one of them goes on my arm, and one of them goes on my head up here.

I'm not going to put them on now because it's a complicated process, there's straps involved.

And I have a tallit as well, which is my prayer shawl.

So I put on my tefillin and my tallit every single morning and I pray.

And I pray by myself, I could choose, I can't at the moment because of the virus, but I could choose to go to the synagogue.

And the morning service is about half an hour to 45 minutes, afternoon service again I pray by myself, but I could choose to get the synagogue and it's 10 minutes.

And then the evening is also about 10 minutes.

Food is also something that is very obvious about Jews.

So I don't eat pork, which is the one that everybody knows about, Jews only eat meat that has what we call split hooves, and choose the cud.

So we're talking beef and lamb, that's the two main sources of meat, and then we also have chicken and turkey as well, we can have those, we don't mix meat and milk products together.

So I would never have, you know, chicken or meatballs with like cheese on top.

So again, I'm talking as an Orthodox Jew by the way, so other denominations would do things differently, but I would never eat meat mixed with cheese.

If I had to meat meal I wouldn't even have a milk meal, or dairy product on much later on that day.

The Sabbath is pretty distinctive.

Other than that there's not much day-to-day that would appear different.

We have a mezuzah on the door, which is like a little tiny of a box, I can show you a picture of one of those at some point, and those found on the doors, every Orthodox household will have a mezuzah, and almost all Jewish households, regardless of their denomination will have at least one somewhere as a cultural signifier, as a cultural thing.

Other than that day-to-day you wouldn't notice much difference to be honest, the Sabbath or Shabbat is a big one, so that's on Saturday.

So from Friday afternoon about an hour before sunset.

So we're now in talking to and now at the end of July, the Sabbath comes in close to nine.

We normally bring it in a bit earlier anyway, from that point till sundown the next day, which at the moment is about 10 o'clock, no electricity, so all the phones go away, there's no TV.

We can put the lights on, but we don't turn them on and off on Shabbat.

So I could either turn them on, leave them on for the whole of Shabbat, or I have a time switch at home, it's a special box where I can say, well, the lights come on at this time and go off at that time.

We don't cook food, so again we do that beforehand.

We might heat up, but we wouldn't cook it.

We tend not to walk too far, and in many places we wouldn't carry things outside.

No cars, we do a lot of prayer on Shabbat.

Sometimes most people will go to synagogue for a couple of hours in the morning, lots of foods, big meal, Friday night, big meal Shabbat lunch, again, that's really culturally important.

So a lot of people who maybe don't eat kosher foods, or don't actually keep Shabbat will still have a Friday night dinner together as a family.

So day-to-day those are most obvious things.

I think that something that has really come through for me as I've be talking to and learning more about this, is the sense of togetherness and unity being quite important.

And even though there are certain differences, there's a real feeling of sort of like a family, a group of people who all share a sense of identity in different ways and doing different things, but there's something that sort of brings everybody together, is that right? Yeah, like I said, it's some kind of sense, you know, I have very little in common with say ultra Orthodox Jews living in Israel.

You know, we both keep the same rules, but we have very, very different beliefs about them, and we have very different practises, but they're still part of my family, and I feel a sense of connectedness to them.

And I like to think that they would as well.

And I think most Jews, like I said, most Jews do not abandon the term pure, even if they abandon many of the practises.

So, there is, get this, it's a bit like ethnicity, you can't suddenly decide that, you know, I'm not going to have white skin or black skin.

It's, a part of you, and, you know, I feel personally connected to the other people who are Jewish.

Well, Adam, thank you so much.

I definitely think that I understand the Jewish faith a little bit better and need to make sure that I'm really careful to feel comfortable with the complexity.

I think that's what I need to do, even though it's really complex, don't rush into making general statements.

Yeah, definitely, and also just a general rule is when you're talking about Jews just say many Jews do this, or some Jews do that, you know, you're always getting into dodgy ground if you say, Jews do this or Jews do that, but if you always quantify it and you say that, oh, lots of Jews will do this, you're Jewish, do you do that? I think that's a much better way of thinking about it.

Adam, thank you so much for speaking to us and helping us to learn even more about Judaism, our fascinating religion that we've been learning all about, and I'll see you soon.

No problem, see you soon, bye now.

Bye.

Well, I don't know about you, but I found that so interesting.

I actually spoke to Adam for ages about Judaism.

I couldn't put all of it in because it would go on for so long in our lesson, but I wish I could include even more because he spoke so much about how he expresses his faith, and about how Judaism impacts what he does, what he thinks, what he believes, the literature that he reads.

He talked about reading lots of books by Jewish authors, especially recent books, novels, literature.

It was really, really interesting.

And I also found fascinating him talking about this difference between being an ethnic Jews, or being born as a Jew, so coming from this line of Jews, and the beliefs of Judaism, and how those two things are slightly different.

So there could be some people who are Jewish, even if they don't hold the beliefs of Judaism, because of how they were born.

It was really interesting, I'd love to learn even more, and just find out more from Adam all about his faith.

I'm sure that you wrote down lots and lots of things that Adam did and what his day-to-day life was like, and what a week was like, and how in many ways it would be completely identical to what somebody who isn't a Jew would do.

And in some ways different as well.

And that you now have a much better understanding of the Jewish faith, the things that are different, the things that are similar, the hugely different ways that people express their faith, 'cause there's not just one way to do it, and know a little bit more about our religion that we're learning all about Judaism.

That's the end of our lesson.

You've worked really hard.

I hope you've enjoyed learning from Jewish people about their faith and how they express it, and I'll see you in our next lesson.