There’s no real conclusion to the post, and it’s impossible to get back the same feeling I had while writing it, so here it is, in the raw.

Yesterday was my last class before the winter break, three full weeks of sleeping in on Sundays and no rushing to class on Tuesday afternoons.

Tuesday classes are always the bigger challenge. The children have been in school all day, and the last thing they want to do is learn for two more hours. They are always more active, less patient, rowdier. On Sundays, I get them at the beginning of their day, not at the end. Sunday is a breeze.

This year’s class is the best-behaved class I have ever had. They’ve gone two and a half months without a single negative point. (I give and take points which the students can trade in for prizes throughout the year).My previous classes are a bit jealous and tend to pooh-pooh the current class as a bunch of goody-goodies, but that’s not the case. They’re a small, tight-knit group of six, and there are only two boys. I’ve noticed that the recipients of most of my negative points over the years have been boys. Oh, the girls get them too, but not nearly as often, and when girls get negative points, they tend to stop the behavior that brought it on–as opposed to the boys, who effect bravado and challenge me to give them more. It is a mistake to challenge me, particularly if you are a nine-year-old child challenging my authority. I always win. Especially since, as I suspected all along, none of the boys really wants to be known as the child who got the most negative points ever. One came close, last year, until it was pointed out to him that his father would likely ground him if he got any more points (we were on our way to negative fifteen, and he was lying on the floor underneath the table, kicking his legs in glee every time I raised the point score).

The boys in my current class happen to be of the generally well-behaved variety. One of the girls likes to be a wiseass, and has come very close to being the first in the class to get a negative point, but a side-effect of having zero negative points has arisen: Nobody wants to be the first one to get a negative. The mere threat of that brings instant good behavior.

I have sweetened the pot by awarding them five points for every month they go without a negative. Eight months of class, five points per month, and that’s the equivalent of one free prize per student. This is probably the best the system is ever going to be, and a year for the record books. I know the children in third grade; no way is it going to be a negative-free year next year. So I’m enjoying this class while I can, and, well, I’m enjoying them very much.

Since yesterday really wasn’t an easy class day, we did a lot of review, some game-playing, and had a bit of free time. I gave them the last few minutes of class, and they wanted to sing Chanukah songs. They started singing the Dreidel song (with the multitude of verses we learn in music class), broke down quickly, I started to help, and then they improvised. Instead of “I had a little dreidel, I made it out of clay,” they started using their names, which gave rise to the problem of things like, “What rhymes with Ben?” Before I knew it, I was making up rhymes for one of them, and suddenly each of them stood in front of me in turn, jumping up and down and saying, “Me! Now me! Do my name!”

And they discovered another hidden talent of Ms. Yourish: She can improvise rhymes with very little effort. I have a habit that very few people know about. I make up lyrics to various tunes that pop into my head, and the lyrics will not only match the task I am currently doing, but will rhyme as well. And I sing these songs out loud. The meter isn’t always on, but Tig and Gracie aren’t very critical. Neither are the children who have been privy to my improv routines. In fact, my students loved being the stars of their very own dreidel song rhyme.

I know my long-time readers will remember that there was a point when I couldn’t afford to buy a used laptop to replace the one that was dying on me, and my readers came through with hits to the tipjars (which no longer exist, since I don’t need the help anymore). When Gracie was sick years ago, her medical bills put a huge strain on me. You helped me out then, too. (She turns fourteen on Tuesday.)

I think I finally found the answer to whether or not I’m going to continue doing what I’m doing on the blog. Ten years is a long time, and my readership has stayed pretty static for the past few years. I have less and less time to write for the blog, and sometimes less and less interest. Things never seem to change for Israel and the Jews. It gets tiresome, writing posts on almost the exact same subjects now as I did nine, eight, seven, three, two years ago. Really, I could just cut and paste an old post to a new one and I swear you’d never be able to tell the difference, because Israel’s enemies are unchanging, the anti-Israel media is unchanging, and about the only thing that changes is the names of the victims. But—

Yesterday, I went to a b’nai mitzvah that was held at the Virginia Holocaust Museum. A set of twins from my last year teaching had it there because their grandfather is a survivor. One of my other former students asked me during the reception if I would escort her around the exhibits, because she was afraid to go by herself. So we went through the museum, and I explained a lot of the exhibits and history to her.

We stopped at the survivors exhibit as requested (see below) and saw the picture of the twins’ grandfather. He looked to be about ten years old in that picture. He grew up to become a rabbi. When I first moved to Richmond, he was co-editor with me of my synagogue’s newsletter for several years. Rabbi K. would come over to my apartment, and we’d put together the newsletter. Actually, I’d put it together in Microsoft Publisher and print out the pages. Rabbi K. would edit, proofread, correct, and play with Tigger. (My cats have always been partners in my volunteer editing/writing work; Tigger the first entertained Neil Clarke while I wrote the user and sysop manuals for his 2AM-BBS software.)

The b’nai mitzvah program had a note on it from the twins:

Thank you for coming to our B’nai Mitzvah. Please feel free to tour the museum while you are here. Be sure to look for our grandfather on the wall in the Displaced Persons Camp. And whenever you are near the Nazi flag in the floor, give it a good stomp.

That we did. Several times. And while I was touring the museum with my former student, I remembered what I discovered about teaching religious school—that I was making a difference in Jewish life, one child at a time. I can’t teach at the moment. I can’t take the time away from my job. But I can still blog.

That’s why I blog: To inform the world that there is another side of the story about Israel that they are not hearing. To make a difference. To change minds. To get the truth out, no matter what.

I used to say that my job was an anti-Semite’s worst nightmare: Teaching little Jews to become big Jews. Well, this blog disturbs their dreams, too, I am happy to report. I intend to continue to piss them off on a daily basis. Of course, my very existence is enough to piss off the Jew haters, and, well, that actually makes me smile. Pissing off the Jew haters is one of the perks of writing this blog.

One of the things I taught my students was this way of summarizing many Jewish holidays: “They tried to kill us. They failed. Let’s eat.” A slightly altered version of that would make a good secondary tagline for this blog. (I won’t be changing the tagline, though.) Something like, “They tried to kill us. They failed. Let’s blog.

I have some plans for my life for the next few years that, if they succeed, will change my life in even better ways. And considering that the reason I am out of debt, have a great job, and own a home is that I worked my ass off to achieve those goals, I think that five years from now, when I’m on the cusp of my fifteenth blogiversary, things will be even better. I hope they will be better for Israel, too, but I won’t make any predictions. Well, except for one: In every generation, they rise against us. But the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hands.

They tried to kill us. They failed. Let’s blog.

And here’s one of the current Tig, as a baby:

He’s about three months old in that picture. And yes, it made me go “Awwww.” So did the picture of my fourth graders, all of whom are (sigh) turning 13 this year.

Time passes. I stopped teaching in the spring of ’08. I do miss it, but I can’t give up that big a swath of my time anymore, either.

I hadn’t seen them in about a year. They are tall and pretty, and tall and handsome, and still the same cheerful, happy children they were three years ago. They did a magnificent job. Services today were like old home week for me—there were ten of my students from two different years there, as well as their parents. The kiddush lunch was a great time to catch up with everyone, and solidified my decision to have a daled class reunion Chanukah party this year.

I miss teaching. I really miss the kids. It was nice to find out that they still think of me, as well. The twins’ father told me today that they told him I was their favorite Hebrew school teacher. And that’s three years after they were my students.

Those six years were sometimes extremely difficult, sometimes a lot of fun, but overall, I think the six years I taught Hebrew school were a gift. To me, not to them. Jamie told me last night that she and Zack, one of the twins’ classmates, were bored and trying to figure out what game to play. “Let’s play Daled ball!” Zack said. That’s a game I made up three years ago to try to keep bored fourth graders learning while also giving them recess. We’d stand in a big circle and toss the ball. You had to say something that had something to do with Judaism or you couldn’t pass the ball. It could be a Hebrew word, a letter, the name of a holiday, the name of a prayer, almost anything. And the fact that three years later, Zack still wanted to play it—well, like I said. It’s a gift.

I saw Zack today. He had a big grin and a wave. And he talked me into getting him some chocolate cake from the grownup’s dessert table. (I’ve always had a soft touch, and they all know it.)

The children have, over the years, taught me at least as much as I taught them. And now they’re growing up into amazing young men and women. My first class is in their junior year in high school. They’ll be off to college soon.

I think it’s time to go back to teaching, at least as a substitute. I can’t take Tuesdays off from work any more, but I don’t think I’d mind being around children on a Sunday morning, teaching them to read and write Hebrew. Especially now that my little ones are growing up.

In New Jersey, the Battle of the Books needs money. Like to read? This class teaches students just how to do that.

Help first graders learn about real American heroes, not celebrities—donate money to buy these books for a poor school in rural Virginia.

Give the gift of music. Did you learn how to play the recorder in elementary school? I did. Did you have to pay for it? I didn’t. Buy thirty recorders and remember how incredibly painful the sound of a recorder tooting “Mary Had A Little Lamb” can be, and then be glad that you don’t have to hear it. Then think about that child ten years from now, and how wonderful the music will be.

Fourth graders, my favorite year: They need a new microscope. And how cool is it that a digital microscope can take a digital picture and then print it out so that you can actually see a picture of that amoeba that you had to draw way back when?

These kids don’t even have the right size chairs. This is pathetic. Children can’t concentrate if they’re not comfortable. There are a few things I learned teaching fourth grade, and that’s you can’t teach hungry children, and you can’t teach children if you can’t get them to pay attention because their classroom surroundings aren’t right.

Feel free to browse your state and post the URL in the comments. Although you may need to go to tinyurl.com if you don’t know how to make it an href.

A quick HTML lesson: Use the angle brackets instead of regular brackets, but create a hyperlink like this:

[a href="URL_Goes_Here"]Text goes here[/a]

That would turn out like this:

In any case: Choose. Donate. Post, if you want. You don’t have to tell us how much. Just that you picked one. I’m not teaching this year, but I can still help students. Via Sarah.

The Purim mentality is not confined to Zionist opinion formers, but would seem to be shared (and passed on) by many ordinary Jews such as teacher and blogger Meryl Yourish, who under the heading Teaching Little Jews to be Big Jews, tells us:

I’m a Jew-hater’s worst nightmare: I teach little Jews to be big Jews. I may not have children of my own, but I’m doing my part to propagate the Jewish nation. That knowledge gives me great satisfaction.
…I pass it on to my students. I’ve taught them that one way to piss off a Jew-hater is to chant “Am Yisrael Chai” (“The people of Israel live”). I’ve noticed that if you start that chant at an anti-Israel protest, it really torks off the anti-Israel protesters. This always leads my students into chanting the phrase for a minute or two in class, which they love. They also like it when I say things like “Purim is the holiday where the Jews kicked the crap out of the Persians.”

Don’t even think about debating with the like of Ms Yourish, since she tells us that her website is a No-Israel Bashing Zone.

I’ve no doubt that she and her students will be cheering on the bombs and missiles, if and when they start falling on Tehran.

So, should I consider it an honor that I’m on the front page of a Holocaust-denying, Jew-hating site? Or should I just laugh at them and continue to do what I’m doing, as it’s obviously working.

I think I’ll just laugh. Poor, pitiful people. Their feelings of inadequacy are so large, they have to blame someone for their failures. And hey, why not blame the people who have the largest per capita representation in Nobel prizes, in the arts, literature, and science in the world? Why not blame the people who have invented the cure for polio, instant messaging, drip-irrigation technology, and a thousand other things that helps humanity thrive? Why not blame the people who have defied the odds to remain not just in existence, but thriving in every nation they comprise a significant population?

Clearly, the Jew-haters have issues. Psychiatry might help. But their hatred is so deep, I suspect it’s incurable.

Like I teach my children: They tried to kill us. They failed. Let’s eat.

Am Yisrael chai.

Or, to put a more modern turn on it: In your face, assholes.

Four months after harrowing accounts of discrimination against Ethiopian students, Ynet has reported that the parents’ associations of the three largest state religious schools in Petah Tikva plan to shut down these aforementioned institutions next week to protest what they call “outright discrimination by private schools in the city as well as the Petah Tikva municipality.” Other state religious schools might also join in this boycott.

On Sunday, the school day at the city’s three major state religious schools will begin at 10am, and starting Tuesday, the Petah Tikva Parents’ Association has announced that it would suspend studies indefinitely to protest the fact that religious private schools in the city are not accepting their fair share of Ethiopian pupils. The boycott will affect the Morasha School, Ma’alot Chaim school, and the Kfar Ganim School which have a total combined number of 2,000 pupils.

This is shameful. Refusing to accept Ethiopian pupils? And the reason would be….?

I’d love to say this is a one-time thing. But there appears to be a pattern of discrimination against Ethiopian Jews by certain religious schools in this town.

These Ethiopian immigrants were consequently placed in a separate classroom at the very end of the school corridor. One teacher alone was allotted for teaching them all of the various academic subjects. Moreover, the girls were assigned different recess hours to their peers, and given cab fare home so that they would not “overly socialize” with the rest of the girls.

The girls’ parents immediately noticed that their children were lonely, depressed and less than eager to go to school. “We do not understand what we did wrong, what crime we’re guilty of. Is this only because we are black?” they asked Ethiopian activist Daniel Uriah, who tried to speak to the principal on their behalf and was unceremoniously kicked out of the school building. Uriah then met with the director of the education administration, who told him that “the school in question is elitist and the girls must learn how to behave if they would like to fit in.”

Uriah next turned to Deputy Mayor of Petach Tikva, Paltiel Aisenthal of the National Union-National Religious Party. At a joint meeting with the girls’ parents, Aidenthal glibly stated: “Don’t worry about it. We know what is best for the girls. It is no big deal if they are separated from their peers.”

Unacceptable. Unacceptable actions, unacceptable answers.

I normally do not write about subjects like this. There are more than enough Israel-bashers out there, and while I read all of the news, positive and negative, I prefer not to get into the disagreements on various subjects (particularly the “Who is a Jew” argument). But this? If there is anything other than racism behind this story, I’m at a loss to figure it out.

A Jew is a Jew is a Jew. The Ethiopians are black-skinned? That won’t stop Hamas and Hezbullah from murdering them because they’re Jewish.

So this morning, I am up before the alarm goes off (mostly due to going to bed at a reasonable hour and, well, being tired enough to sleep). While I’m deciding whether or not to get up, the phone rings. It’s a familiar voice asking if I’m someone else. “Nooo,” I tell him, and try to continue as he apologizes. “Michael… Michael, it’s Meryl!” (It’s another member of my congregation, who had my number written on a piece of paper and thought it was the other one.) We chat a bit, he apologizes for calling so early, I tell him I’m already up, he says his daughter has an 8 a.m. basketball game, and I’m wondering why he’s talking to me at 7:45 when he should be driving to the game. We hang up, I do my morning routine, get downstairs, can’t figure out how my computer got to 9 a.m., change the clock, start writing a post as I have a ton of time. 8:30 rolls around, and I get a phone call. It’s my madrich.

“Um, Ms. Yourish, did you forget to set your clocks back last night?”
“What?”
“Did you forget it’s Daylight Savings Time?”
“Holy crap! It’s 9:30?”
“Yes. But it’s okay, we have a Purim lesson we can do until you get here….”
“No, wait. We have music at 9:30. Take the kids to music class and I’ll get there as soon as I can. And tell someone.”
“Okay.”

I no longer have a leisurely breakfast (but I have breakfast), get to school at about five to ten, sign in, and discover that no, the kids don’t have music class, because the music assistant is not in today. I hurry to class and find the principal monitoring my madrichim, who are teaching the children abour Purim. I thank her, we finish the lesson, and go on with the day. Of course all the kids had to ask me why I was late.

Well, that was embarrassing. But at least I know my assistants have really moved forward in giant steps. They were scheduled to have a Purim lesson later in the day (crafts and games plus the story of Purim), and they just pushed the story part into the first half hour of class. They did a great job, the principal told me.

I feel guilty. But I feel well-rested. It evens out.

This year, I decided to teach my students the Hatzi Kaddish, which I used to think was too difficult for fourth graders. We also worked on Mizmor l’David, Mi Chamocha, and the Bar’chu. Believe it or not, that last gave them and me a world of trouble. They kept mixing up the melody of the lead and the response. But we finally got it right by the Tuesday before we were due to lead, and I went to services on Friday night feeling confident. The rabbi was out of town for the weekend, so the principal of the religious school and I ran the show. I had my students up for everything but the Amidah. The principal and I sang along sotto voce, but not to help the kids—they didn’t need our help at all. They were letter-perfect on just about everything, and when they sang the Hatzi Kaddish, I was prouder of my students than if they’d been my own kids. They were great.

Instead of a sermon, we played, “Are you smarter than a fourth grader?” and asked their parents and congregants questions about Judaism. If they didn’t know the answer, they picked one of the students, who did. Of course I skewed the questions to ones I knew the children could answer. But it was fun. When one of the congregants got a typical Ms. Yourish holiday question (“Tell me three things about Purim”), he answered, “Haman, Esther, Mordecai.” I had my students follow up after we all stopped laughing. Every year, they learn whether or not a holiday is a three-line holiday (“They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat!”). Then they go on to tell me who tried to kill us, and what special foods we eat.

Now here’s the really special thing about learning the Hatzi Kaddish this year. We have only one page in the Siddur with the transliteration, and it’s for the Saturday morning prayer service. My fourth graders are not fluent in Hebrew, and I believe in letting them use transliteration until they learn the words, then move onto the Hebrew. Not only does it help them learn their prayers, but I think it improves their Hebrew skills as well. So I brought in Post-It flags for them to put on the page with the transliteration, because it takes a nine-year-old child a lot longer than it takes you or me to turn to page 324 (and even with the flag, one of the students took a while getting to the page). They read from the transliteration, they did well, and that, I thought was that.

The next day in Sunday school, the third grade teacher asked me to help her students prepare for their turn to lead services at the end of the month. (We have our classes together the last 45 minutes of Sunday for another project, and we’re playing to each other’s strengths during that time.) So I asked them if they’d like to learn the Hatzi Kaddish.

“No! It’s too hard!” was the response.

“Tellya what,” I said. “Let’s just all do it—Daled class will show you how, and you can just listen if you like, you don’t have to sing along—and at the end of the prayer, you decide if you want to try it for your service.” We turned to page 324. My students led, third graders sang along, and by the end of the prayer, they decided yes, they would like to make the Hatzi Kaddish their special prayer for their service (they’ll be with the kindergarten, first and second graders due to a scheduling change).

But we’re still not at the punchline to this story. Third and fourth grade practiced the Hatzi Kaddish on Sunday and again on Tuesday afternoon early. Tuesday near the end of class, we met with the rest of the school (grades five through seven) for T’filah. The principal called for the Hatzi Kaddish. It was on a page without transliteration. I walked around the children, listening intently to the third and fourth graders. They were singing along. With all of it. They were looking at the book, at the Hebrew. All of them.

These are the moments a teacher lives for. The third and fourth grade can chant the Hatzi Kaddish in Hebrew, and they didn’t even know they could do it.

I am so moving on to Mizmor L’David for third grade on Tuesday.

And amid all this hype, Winehouse’s representatives said late Friday that she won’t attend tonight’s Grammys in Los Angeles. Although she resolved her visa issues with the U.S. Embassy, she’ll still appear via satellite from London. Winehouse apparently decided not to stray too far from the very place she sang about never entering: rehab.

The New York Times tells the story of
a new principal at a troubled high school. (h/t Shalom USA.)

On his first visit, in October 2004, he found a police officer arresting a student and calling for backup to handle the swelling crowd. Students roamed the hallways with abandon; in one class of 30, only 5 students had bothered to show up.

Who is he?

Junior High School 22, in the South Bronx, had run through six principals in just over two years when Shimon Waronker was named the seventh.. . . “It was chaos,” Mr. Waronker recalled. “I was like, this can’t be real.”

Teachers, parents and students at the school, which is mostly Hispanic and black, were equally taken aback by the sight of their new leader: A member of the Chabad-Lubavitch sect of Hasidic Judaism with a beard, a black hat and a velvet yarmulke.

“The talk was, ‘You’re not going to believe who’s running the show,’ ” said Lisa DeBonis, now an assistant principal.

Not surprisingly, not everyone has accepted him, though it seems that most of the critics are no longer with the school, so it might just be that they have an ax to grind.

When an etiquette expert, Lyudmila Bloch, first approached principals about training sessions she runs at a Manhattan restaurant, most declined to send students. Mr. Waronker, who happened to be reading her book, “The Golden Rules of Etiquette at the Plaza,” to his own children (he has six), has since dispatched most of the school for training at a cost of $40 a head.Flipper Bautista, 10, loved the trip, saying, “It’s this place where you go and eat, and they teach you how to be first-class.”

In a school where many children lack basic reading and math skills, though, such programs are not universally applauded. When Mr. Waronker spent $8,000 in school money to give students a copy of “The Code: The 5 Secrets of Teen Success” and to invite the writer to give a motivational speech, it outraged Marietta Synodis, a teacher who has since left.

“My kids could much better benefit from math workbooks,” Ms. Synodis said.

Mr. Waronker counters that key elements of his leadership are dreaming big and offering children a taste of worlds beyond their own. “Those experiences can be life-transforming,” he said.

One of the themes in the report is that Mr. Waronker has a personal touch. For example:

So when Emmanuel Bruntson, 14, a cut-up in whom Mr. Waronker saw potential, started getting into fights, he met with him daily and gave him a copy of Jane Austen’s “Emma.”“I wanted to get him out of his environment so he could see a different world,” Mr. Waronker said.

My guess is that despite the problems, Mr. Waronker is having some success. And it comes from his seeming religious commitment to the school.

Back in Crown Heights, Mr. Waronker says he occasionally finds himself on the other side of a quizzical look, with his Hasidic neighbors wondering why he is devoting himself to a Bronx public school instead of a Brooklyn yeshiva.“We’re all connected,” he responds.

Gesturing in his school at a class full of students, he said, “I feel the hand of the Lord here all the time.”

* Yiddishe Nachas could be translated as “Jewish Pride.” It’s something I get when I read of someone like Shimon Waronker, but not a spoiled, self-destructive pop-singer.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.