conceptual development

Chana has a few more pages left to Vayikra.  I happened across a gemara yerushalmi this week, and it pointed out something that Chana had noticed in this parsha.  She noticed that shlishi is very, very long.

This gemara (Tal. Jer Megila 3:7) says that you don't stop (for a new aliya) during the klalos, the curses.

אין מפסיקין בקללות א"ר חייה בר גמדא (משלי ג) אל תקוץ בתוכחו אל תעשה קוצים קוצים א"ר לוי אמר הקב"ה אינו בדין שיהו בני מתקללין ואני מתברך א"ר יוסה בי ר' בון לא מטעם הזה אלא זה שהוא עומד לקרות בתורה צריך שיהא פותח בדבר טוב וחותם 

בהדבר טוב

There are two reasons given why not, and I thought it might be interesting to discuss it with Chana.  So today, instead of Chumash, I said I wanted to talk about this gemara.  I read it to her and translated it.  

She wanted to know a) if this will be instead of or in addition to chumash.  (I said "instead of" and she looked immediately more cheerful.)  b) how long it would take (I said 15 minutes and she said okay).

I'm finding that either because of inclination of because of the way I taught, I spent more time teaching Sarah how to analyze and question than I did with Chana.  Very possibly because during the years when Chana's brain matured to that point, age 6-12, I had 3 little boys in quick succession.  During the years when I taught parsha, I always paused for Sarah to think of questions.  I think that with Chana, we were doing Chumash and I was focused more on translation than on questions.  

Chana had difficulty analyzing this conceptually, but I think it was an enjoyable experience for us to discuss it.  

The important thing is that it was enjoyable.  I hope to find more opportunities to improve her thinking skills in the coming years.

_______________

If you are interested in the types of analysis we did.

There are 2 answers.

1. Hashem said, "It's not "b'din" (appropriate?) that my children are being cursed while I am being blessed."

Why isn't that appropriate?  Does this make sense or not?

Did Hashem actually say this?  Is this d'rabanan or d'oraisa?

How do we feel blessing Hashem while reading about the curses?

If Hashem is good, then aren't the curses good for us as a nation?  Then why is it not appropriate to bless Hashem while reading the curses?

(Actually, looking back, she did a pretty decent analysis.  But it is much clearer as I write it than when she was actually thinking about it.)

2. When you stand publicly to read the Torah, you have to start with something good and end with something good.

Why is that important?

Chana suggested because it shows that Torah is good and Hashem is good.

I would have liked to do some analysis as to why there are two answers, and is it a machlokes or not, and what the machlokes is.  But time was up and I suspect that is better for after age 15, anyway.

How to make it more interesting..

Tonight Jack wanted "leaf" Torah.  We talked about what bracha a leaf would be.  Elazar suggested "ha'eitz," which I wonder about, since leaves are not normally eaten.  I then asked about basil, mint, and lemon balm, all of which we grow, and Elazar said "adama."

Then Jack asked if we can eat bugs.  Elazar said we can (physically), but it's not kosher.  Jack asked if we are still Jewish if we eat bugs.  I said yes, but we are over (not keeping) the mitzva.  He said he wanted to not keep the mitzva.

Then Elazar told me to choose Torah.  I told him the story of Yona, since it has choosing (the lottery).  He recognized the story when I got to the fish.

Then I was thinking about how Chana thinks Kedoshim is so boring, when I think it is a fascinating Parsha.  I was thinking that if I think it is so interesting, then how can I show that to Chana?  She doesn't like analyzing or asking questions when we are doing Chumash.  I remembered a class a friend of mine gave, almost two decades ago, about "Vahavta L'reyacha Kamocha."  (Probably reminded by "re'ah.")  It was a simple enough concept, but he led us through asking questions to the point where it was a really interesting process.  Maybe I can think of something that we can ask questions about that Chana will find interesting.

While I was musing, Elazar mumbled, "More Torah!!"  He told me to pick.  I chose the se'ir l'Hashem and l'Azazel and the lottery.

I'd like to think of a good bunch of pesukim in Parshas Kedoshim for Chana to ask questions about.

One possibility is (19:3): A man should fear his mother and his father, and keep my Shabboses; I am Hashem your Gd.

Another (19:37): And you should guard all my statutes and all my mishpatim and do them; I am Hashem.

Another (20:3): And I will put my face in that person and I will cut him off from his nation, because he gave from his children to Molech, in order to tameh My mikdash and to desecrate My holy name.

I guess I'll see how it goes..

Metaphors

Revi'i of Ki Sisa was completely frustrating to Chana.  She started out in a bad mood.  We had a bit of a time crunch today, with a lot going on.

The entire aliya is anthropomorphic, about Hashem's honor crossing over and His palms covering Moshe to protect him and showing His back but not His front.  Chana expressed frustration numerous times that she didn't understand it.  I attempted to explain basic pshat, and she got more frustrated.

And yet she does not want to sit through an explanation of the metaphor.

I often find that my kids have a lot more energy about the question than they do to find the answer.

I feel it's better to leave it as a question than to try to sit them down and give an answer.  Without an answer, the question will hopefully burn brightly in their hearts.  Maybe one day they will be motivated to search hard, and to work until they understand.

questions on vayigash rashis that chana has, that bother her every time she does them and she asks them:

why would yaakov not kiss yosef?  if you didn't see your son for a long time, wouldn't you kiss him?  why did he say shema?

why does rashi wait until now to tell us that the "hey" at the end is like a "lamed" at the beginning, when that "hey" has come up many times already?

why do they say they are worried that binyamin will die on the trip just as his mother died on the trip, when rachel died in childbirth, not from travel?

on answering questions and is the era of tantrums over?

chana doesn't really understand a lot of the rashis we do.  aside from reading and translation skills, there are often deep points in rashi and she frequently realizes that she doesn't get it.  and then i realize that 1. she is right; it's a lot more complicated than i realized and 2. she doesn't have the conceptual sophistication to get it.

i like chazara (i've mentioned before) because she realizes new things from reading it again, and it gives her time to brew the different issues.  we had been doing the rashi of yosef coming to the house to do his "work."  she asked me today if i thought yosef intended to be with potiphar's wife; she didn't think so.

she realized today that she didn't understand what it meant that hashem was going to send the bear to bother yosef.  she's read that 3x, but today it hit her that she didn't understand it.  i explained to her a couple of times that the bear is eishas potiphar.  but today she asked me about it again.  and yet, to have a discussion about the psychology of being in a leadership position and grooming himself and how that leads to potiphar's wife noticing him is not something she is interested in.

but i do think it's important to respect that she doesn't understand it.  we are so quick to push answers.  i sometimes think that sitting with the question is more valuable.  if you answer the question, then it stops bothering them and they stop thinking about it.  or, what happened to me a lot when i was a kid, you get the sense that you are supposed to not have the question anymore after the answer and so you accept it, even though it doesn't quite answer the question to your satisfaction.

also, something that i read in r' saadia gaon (maybe) is that people don't realize that thinking and drawing conclusions and finding answers takes effort and work the same way growing crops does.

another thing i was thinking about is that chana hasn't tantrummed in a while.  that's another oddity about homeschooling.  instead of worrying year to year if your kid is "caught up" (caught up to what, anyway??), you can take a long term view of a bunch of years.  i would have thought that my kid ought to have been mature enough to not be tantrumming about her work 2 years ago.  after all, she would never do that in "real" school.  but yet, here we are, and i suddenly realized today that she has the maturity to express her dislike of chumash and express when she is overwhelmed without the tantrums. 

chazak vayetze!

we finished vayetze. now a week or more of chazara of all the aliyos and the rashis.

there are 13 rashis that we did on the parsha.
that doesn't seem so much and i wonder how she will do on them.

as chana was reviewing, she asked a question: why does it say the God of avraham your father but then just the God of yitzchak (not "your father")?

another question: why did yaakov say hashem will be his Gd when hashem is everyone's hashem whether they believe in Him or not?

she put 20 min on the clock for rishon. and finished with 7:40 left. she also paused the timer every time she had a question or when i had to get up and deal with one of the boys. i like that it was from her own self that the clock runs for the time she is actively translating, not the time she is spending sitting with the chumash. when she paused the timer for questions, it gave us time to be relaxed and discuss.

so.. how did rashi go...

we decided to do the first 3 rashis. (even though it's "rashi day" acc to chana and we ought to be intensely focusing on rashi. the fact is that she finds it very difficult and gets frustrated very quickly). the good news is that she remembers the content of the rashis. beautifully.

the not as good news is that she is having plenty of trouble with the words and the translations.

i asked her if she wanted to start with the nekudos version but then she'd have to make her way to competently do it without nekudos. she declined.

when i told her she has to redo some of them, she said, "i didn't do it with nekudos because i didn't want to do it more than once!" i said it is not about amount of times, it is about competency.

she said she hates rashi and hates chumash.

and did i mention that aharon is having an extremely crabby day. he will neither play happily nor go to sleep. he is not very content being held, either.
.......
ok so we took a 15 min break. chana tried to maintain that she would only read but not translate. i said she won't read and translate more than 4x. she said she wanted to do only the first rashi and do the rest at 8pm. i agreed. we did it 2 more times. tonight at 8 we will do the first 2 lines and then the 3rd rashi.

when we finished, i muttered, "torture." she said, "you're not the one being tortured." ha. yes, i am, too.

i also hate not being finished and having it on my head to come back to it at 8pm tonight.

given how yesterday and all of chamishi has gone, i've been tempted to ditch chazara altogether and just run through the pesukim like i did with sarah. but chamishi was just a really tough aliyah. shishi is back to normal.

yesterday, when chana saw that hashem spoke to lavan, she was shocked: hashem is going to help lavan??
(she then saw that he didn't).
her opinion is that the rashi that "even good of resha'im is bad w/ tzadikim" needs rashi.

also, we looked up when rabbenu gershom lived (around the time of rashi) because chana wanted t know when they stopped allowing 2nd wives. (i didn't mention sfardim). she thought 4 is rather a lot. and felt she wouldn't want to be in that situation.

we did 2 new mini rashis and chana had a minor hissy fit because it was 2 new ones. in practice, it went very quickly.

she woke up early to do chumash to go to robotics and then spend the rest of the day playing with her friend.

ah, friday. homeschool is always a bit tough on a friday, especially if i have to cook and especially if i'm having company and especially especially if i'm having company for both meals. and especially especially especially if it's someone i never had over before (though i am determined to keep the menu low key). anyway, jack is a late sleeper and aharon is napping and elazar is busy. so it's a perfect time. for me. but we all know that chana does not like to work first thing in the morning.

so a bit of back and forth. we started vayetze. and then she'll have a break and then do shishi to herself. but first i hope to chap in a rashi if i can find a good one.

chana asked 2 excellent questions. first of all, how can hashem be standing on the ladder? i said it's a dream. she said, yes, but how does hashem represent himself in the dream with no form (not in exactly those words). does he make a malach represent him? but a malach not like the other malachim in the dream? (because she remembered that other times malachim carried a nevua, i think to hagar for example, and said "i am hashem.")

the other good question was more of a statement. when chana makes an observation, i often say, "good question." and she says, "it wasn't a question." but it sort of is. as she translated "i am the Gd of your father avraham" she muttered "and the Gd of everybody else." which is an implied question: why say specifically the Gd of avraham when hashem is the Gd of everybody?

i'm off to find a rashi now and to coax her to do it.

today part II and III

we did it in 2 stages. 1. the 5 new pesukim and a 2o min break and then 2. the rashi.

chana asked 2 good questions: how did rivka know eisav hated yaakov, if it was in his heart? good. i had her read "ruach hakodesh" in rashi. and why would both of them die on the same day? also good. because that was the rashi i had intended for her.

she was a little bad-tempered during these 2 phases, but although her teeth were clenched she didn't raise her voice too badly. i saw she was making an effort to control herself.

so we did rashi phase one with the nekudos (and only half the rashi--8 words; i chose only the part that deals w/ pshat and not the medrash). she mostly translated it today and didn't really read it in hebrew. by the way, that's what she usually does. she doesn't really read the hebrew, just straight translates it. except when she doesn't know a word at first glance; then she reads it. so tomorrow will be emphasis on reading correctly, and another run at translation.

there are a lot of steps in rashi. aside from reading it correctly, she also has to translate the words, and then she has to understand the basic meaning of the rashi, and then she has to understand the commentary he is providing on the pasuk. it's a lot.

and back from pesach. i was lazy because i didn't make pesach this year, so theoretically the days leading up we could have done chumash. but i didn't.

chana's questions: why is it important that hashem spoke to avraham in a dream at NIGHT.

and how old was avimelech? because isn't sorah like 80 here??

chana noticed that lot calls the people of sedom his brothers. she wondered if they treat all visitors the way they are treating these men. she wondered how lot became accepted into sedom if that's how they treat visitors. did lot move in before they started doing that?

i told her that she was going to be upset by the new pasuk. because it's hard? she asked. i said no, because of content. she was a bit perplexed as to why lot would offer his daughters. the pasuk was complex enough that i had her do it twice, which she doesn't like to do.

then she took a break to play a one-minute game on the computer. then she did rashi. then she blitzed through sheni chazara. (actually, she's still in the middle of it right now, but she told me to write that).

ps there are a few words that chana just doesn't remember each time. i think those will be a wash. "kala" is finish "yasaf" add etc.

chana asked why it says hashem left when he isn't subject to space or position. i said it means he stopped giving nevua to avraham.

:-)

so this morning we did 2 new pesukim with minimum fanfare. chana didn't understand how there were 2 words for "fear" (and hashem will place the fear of people on the animals) and so i substituted the word "terror" for one of them. she also noted that people do not eat grass.

then, instead of chazara, i decided to do a grand rashi chazara today. we went through all the rashis we've done since the beginning. they are:

bereshis
4:22 dh "naama" (which has the word 'ishto' in it, chana's kryptonite).
6:6 dh "and He was sad to His heart" which she is still in the middle of
6:14 dh "make for you an ark" (chana did not remember that ק"כ was 120)
7:13 dh "in the middle of this day"
8:22 dh "they will not cease" which she is still having trouble with pronunciation

i was pleasantly surprised how much she remembered and how generally accurate her pronunciation was.

i decided to give her a 4 hr break and do chazara later. hopefully we will get to it.

she brought up again about hashem knowing everything and knowing the future (i can't remember now why she brought it up) and i said that's the rashi we are doing. and she remembered that sarah answered the question and with more thought she even remembered sarah's answer. (another nice thing about homeschool is that sarah was around when chana was doing the rashi and it became a discussion amongst the 2 of them). i remember now. chana was imagining hashem creating chava from adam. and imagining the rib. and thinking it was gross. and figuring that it probably floated out of adam's body (because if hashem took it out, He probably just floated it with telekinesis) (and she fluttered her hands, making a floating rib). and then she said that hashem, if he had known that all this was going to happen, could have made a different adam. and i said that is an excellent point. and THEN we got into hashem knowing what is going to happen. or something like that.

then i said i would give her an enormous break. of 4 hours. is that satisfactory? and she said no (kidding). and i said what would be a good break. thinking she'd say til tomorrow or til after rosh hashana. but she said til she died. and then i guess i made a sad face and said, really? it's sad to me to think of you going your whole life til you die and not learning any more torah. then she started crying and hugging me and said she was kidding. and i hugged her back and thought that was an excellent opportunity to point out that so many times i'm kidding and she takes me very seriously. and that now that i understood it was a joke, it was clever. and we talked a bit about how i want her to know torah and that's why i teach it to her. and she said daddy told it to her (when he used to do parsha stories in the evenings) and she knows it already. curious, i asked her if she thought i knew all of torah (figuring if she said yes, i'd ask her why she thinks i keep studying it, hoping to lead into a discussion about basic knowledge of torah and infinite knowledge of torah). and she said no. and i asked her if she thought she knew all of torah. and she said no. but she knows a lot.
then she started asking about hashem's favorite. i wasn't sure who she meant. avraham? yaakov (yaakov is chana's favorite). no, it was moshe. and did moshe know the whole torah. and i said yes that moshe knew the whole torah.
but then i told her 2 stories that i remembered from the gemara about moshe rabbenu and rabbi akiva. one about moshe being in r' akiva's shiur and not understanding it, and hearing that it was halacha l'moshe misinai. chana asked a couple of times how it could be that moshe was dead and in r' akiva's class. i explained it didn't really happen, it's a story to explain something. (she did not ask what it meant that r' akiva was teaching something that moshe didn't understand and quoting moshe, and i didn't push it). then i told her the story about moshe seeing hashem drawing the crowns on the letters and asking hashem why, and hashem saying that r' akiva will learn things from them. then we went to google and google imaged "crowns on letters torah" and found a picture of klaf and were able to see a bunch of words with crowns on them. chana got a big kick out of the little crowns.

wondering

chana wondered if ducks survived the flood, seeing as they can fly and swim. and she wondered why noach sent so many birds.

back to the grind

so before we hit the circus today, chana read the rashi 4x (and what a battle that was). actually, she ended up reading it 3x and negotiated to do a previous rashi (easier) once. she remarked the other day that she's a better negotiator than i am, and now it often diffuses our arguments when we start getting heated and i use the word negotiate, like "i see you are negotiating..." so that was that rashi, which i hope to have her do again a couple more times before shabbos. we have basically let go the one about chanoch, and i'm having her read the noach one a lot because there are words i want her familiar with like "shelo, ba, lo, v'hu, and lahem." she is nowhere near the ability to translate. actually, after she read a bunch of it this morning i said it out loud and asked her to translate it (because she's used to me speaking hebrew, she can do it more easily auditorily than if she's reading it) and she pitched a fit that this is not rashi. and i said, yes it is rashi; rashi is reading and understanding. hmph. we're still in negotiations about that.

(pitching a fit is in general a sign that i'm pushing her; whether or not i'm pushing her too much and should back off or whether it's just her crying out as i properly expand her abilities and "brain muscle" so to speak, has to be determined in every single instance).

then we went to the circus, and now we're doing chumash. the names and generations are over, so we are back to the slower pace of harder translation work. it happens to be that this next bit is not terribly difficult to translate, but very cryptic.

at this point, chana isn't troubled much when she doesn't understand it. it's a little sad to me. she's taking up so much energy getting through the labor of literal translation, that she has little inclination to enjoy the oddities of the text and what puzzles they are revealing. (she did wonder why anyone on earth would name their child "name." it's odd that the sons of elohim (we translated it as officers as per rashi and onkelos) married the daughters of adam. isn't everyone the children of adam, including the officers? what does it mean that hashem isn't going to fight (rashi, not onkelos) w/ adam anymore because he is meat? chana started puzzling that, but it got too complicated.

these 5 pesukim are taking us quite a while with breaks. we did the first one, then break. then the second one, then brak. then the third one, then break. then the fourth, and i didn't want to do a break, but chana desperately wanted to go to the playground so she negotiated. so now we have one very long pasuk left and then hopefully some rashi. (but i'll bet a break in between...). then we are up to the maftir of parshas bereshis! go, chana!