today chana translated the rashi. then we started with shishi. she did it nicely. then she did that last bit of chamishi. she still gets stuck on a about 5 or 6 words, but i have a feeling that she's going to be stuck on those for a while and it pays to just move on. i was reminded how much trouble she used to have with "your son" "his son" "his father" etc and happily she seems to have gotten a decent grip on that.

we did one new pasuk (we were doing all this in the car, which i love to do). then chana felt the second new pasuk was too hard and since i hadn't looked it over, i had her read it to me in hebrew and i said she could do it at home. which we did.

i think it's time to move on to the next rashi. she doesn't know a few words "shema" (lest), "hareni" (here i am--which i think she ought to know but she never does), "samuch" (close--she never remembers it), and maybe another one i can't remember offhand. but she learned some of the numerics of the letters (kuf = 100), and perek and da'ag. and she'll remember the concept and the general flow of the rashi. so overall it's a success.

i used to feel that i wanted her to get it 100%. why move on until she remembers all of it perfectly? but there is a point of diminishing returns in terms of her enjoyment. it's demoralizing to do the same thing over and over and it is interesting to the mind to do something new. so at this point, when i see those last few words that she keeps missing, i'm inclined to move on. even though the perfectionist in me wants to linger.

good observations

chana asked if yaakov would have been rich if he would not have gotten the bracha.

she asked why yaakov said he was eisav "your bechor" when eisav had sold his "oldestness" to yaakov. i said it seems eisav still thought he had the bechora even though he sold it.

she said yaakov was being too nice in his impersonation because he said "get up please" and eisav didn't say please. i looked and sure enough she was right.

i did point out that eisav spoke in 3rd person to his father, which was extremely respectful, treating him like a king.

chana gets annoyed by grammar such as "barcheni gam ani" which literally means "bless me also me." why does the pasuk say "me" twice? and i know she's going to get annoyed at the next pasuk when it says "and he said" and doesn't say who. she says that the torah puts extra pronouns in when they aren't necessary and then when you want to know, it leaves them out.

she was confused about the pasuk where yitzchak didn't know what happened but then said "gam baruch yehiyeh" without saying "yaakov did it."

luckily, we chapped rashi before i took the boys out this morning, so that was already done. she read it in the hard chumash and i translated it.

a little vort

today i warned chana well in advance that when jack goes down for his nap, it's chumash time. instead of doing the entire chamishi (which is very long), we just reviewed the last bunch of pesukim that she needs a bit more work on. then we did yesterday's 2 pesukim, which, not surprisingly, she didn't remember too much of. though she did remember some. yesterday, btw, she said, "his cursers will be cursed and his blessers will be blessed... hmm... i know that already. where do i know that from?" and i said, "avraham."

(and that just reminded me that everyone always says that eisav got the money and yaakov got the bracha of avraham at a different time. but it seems like at least this portion of avraham's bracha "blessers will be blessed and cursers will be cursed" was supposed to be for eisav (had he merited), ie whoever is running the govt.)

chana remembered the part about being the prince over his brother, because we discussed that yesterday. which just goes to show you that context aids memory.

so for rashi, today was the big transfer to the other chumash. w/o nekudos. well, chana balked. and tried to wiggle out of it. but since i didn't overload her on translation, she hadn't hit saturation point and she didn't collapse when i insisted.

and seeing the difference between the rashi w/o nekudos and the one in the chumash we usually use, i am reminded again why i prefer the more difficult rashi. first of all, it had "amar rabbi" as an abbreviation. which chana dislikes, but i like her to see so that she'll know it. and it had the ages as hebrew letters "kuf kaf gimel" instead of written out. and less punctuation. all of which irked chana, but i prefer her to learn on that.

but i think it's been a nice method to start on the easier one, with everything all spelled out, and then to transition to the more difficult layout, after she's already familiar with it.

i'm not sure what deal we made, but chana was supposed to do double chumash today. i traded the double chumash for one chumash and one rashi.

i did milim for chamishi, but she still had to do 7 pesukim reading and translating, and she ran out of steam and began whining. i only had her do 2 new pesukim because they are a bit complicated, but chana completely wound down by the second half of the second one and didn't want to do anymore. we wrangled back and forth and she finished it, but she didn't quite understand it and she didn't want me to review it.

we used google images to look up "dew." we had a bit of fun when chana realized that yitzchak thought he was telling eisav he was going to be a "gvir" over his brother, but he was actually telling yaakov. so chana asked, did yaakov end up a gvir just because of the bracha? but didn't hashem help him? i explained that it was a nevua. and hashem was letting yaakov know he was going to be a gvir, even though yitzchak thought he was telling eisav he would be the gvir.
chana wanted to know what it meant to be a gvir. i said if eisav was the gvir, then he would be in charge of running the country. but chana said they ended up being different countries. and i said yaakov's country would be in charge of eisav's country.

chana still didn't want to read rashi w/o nekudos (but i think either tomorrow or the day after we will attempt that). and she didn't want to translate it. but she was able to summarize extremely accurately the main points. there are a few words she won't remember, but that's ok.

another fine day. chana ate first. then we did milim. we are finally seeing the end of a very loooooong chamishi. chana noticed today that it says "yitzchak his father" when we already know it's his father. she is unclear why the voice is the voice of yaakov if (as per ramban) they had similar voices.

we did 4 new pesukim today. chana asked why yaakov wanted the bracha. why did he want wealth. why did eisav want to be part of the jewish ppl if he didn't want to keep the torah.

i just traded chana that i won't do chumash with her on sunday if she does the last pasuk in the aliyah and does our rashi. she agreed. she read and translated, and then read rashi again.

what a difference a meal makes

today we didn't do chumash until after chana had ample play time in the morning, and she had eaten 2 plates of mac n cheese. also, i decided to just do spot word definitions. so i picked out a few words from revi'i, and words from chamishi until we got to the pesukim from yesterday and the day before. so she was in a fine mood. she asked why rivka had to dress yaakov and why couldn't he dress himself. her mouth opened wide when yaakov said he was eisav the bechor. she said, "ha! i knew it took too short!" when yitzchak asked yaakov why he was so quick. she asked what was going to happen when eisav finally came. i said she would find out. she asked when. i flipped two pages ahead. she is looking forward.

rashi: we did a rashi with the nekudos (it is too darn tempting to use those nekudos rather than have her hack through it w/o. i'm selling out on my principles). she had numerous questions on why a person would think about his own death within 5 yrs of his parents' deaths. i kept saying it's just the way a person feels. she said, "what if he didn't have time to think about his own death?" and i said he will think about it within 5 yrs of his parents' death. and she asked, "what about if the parent died in a car accident?" i still think a person would think about it. but i agree it's not as compelling as if they died from a disease or age.

after chana did it once, i told her to mentally prepare herself to be very angry and then let me know when she's ready. she took some deep breaths, closed the chumash and turned to look at me. i told her i'd like her to read that rashi 2 more times. she protested mildly, but then read it again. the second time was much better. she wanted to just do it next week, but i said too much time passes and it's too chopped up. then, for the 3rd time, i suggested that i read each phrase and she translate it. she said absolutely not. she'd much prefer to just read it again. i was delighted that she was so willing to read it a 3rd time. i asked her if she wanted me to translate each phrase, and she said yes. and that's how we did it.

i truly have to be more on top of rashi if i want her skills to improve, though. on the up side, i think she still remembers some of the rashis we have done last year.