“The People of the Book” Elementary School Educators' Guide

To mark Rabbi Sacks’ fourth yahrzeit, we invite you to participate in the Rabbi Sacks Global Day of Learning celebrating his life, legacy and teachings.

This year’s theme, 'The People of the Book', reflects a concept that Rabbi Sacks cherished – a commitment to learning, dialogue and the power of ideas.

This theme is particularly meaningful as Rabbi Sacks’ personal archive arrived at the National Library of Israel this year. His landmark speech, The Home of the Book for the People of the Book, was delivered at the foundation stone laying of the new National Library building, excerpts of which can be found on this source sheet.

It is powerful to know that people of all ages across the world will be exploring the same ideas from Rabbi Sacks, something you may wish to point out to your students.

This is a suggested outline of what you may wish to explore with your students, but feel free to adapt it to your students’ needs.

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Aims

• To introduce your students to Rabbi Sacks as a person, a Rabbi, and Jewish leader.
• To encourage them to learn some of his Torah in his memory.
• To explore the idea of The People of the Book and how it was explained and explored through the thought of Rabbi Sacks.

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Who Was Rabbi Sacks?

Show this short video about the life of Rabbi Sacks, entitled A Teacher, a Leader, and a Moral Voice:

Discuss the video.

Select some general questions for discussion, such as:

• What are your general impressions of Rabbi Sacks from this video?
• What did you learn about Rabbi Sacks?
• Share something you noticed in the video that interested you.
• Share something you noticed in the video that surprised you.

Choose some more analytical questions for discussion:

• Discuss what the following descriptions of Rabbi Sacks mean to you: Teacher / Leader  / Moral Voice
• Who did Rabbi Sacks impact, in each of these three roles?
• Which locations (countries and places) did you notice in the video? What can we learn about Rabbi Sacks from these?
• Which famous people did you notice in the video? What does that tell you about Rabbi Sacks?
• What titles did Rabbi Sacks have, and what do they mean?
• How many books do you think you saw in the video? What does that tell us about Rabbi Sacks?

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Why Are We Learning in Rabbi Sacks’ Memory?

(5 minutes, approximately)

EXPLAIN that when someone we hold dear passes away, there is a special mitzvah to learn Torah in their memory.

This is a way to always remember them, and to show Hashem how much we miss them, and ask Him to look after them in heaven.

It is especially meaningful to do this when the words of Torah actually came from them, as in this case with Rabbi Sacks.

SHOW this video of Gila Sacks, the daughter of Rabbi Sacks, who explains that Rabbi Sacks was always looking to learn from every person he met, and he would do this through conversation.

Today, we will have conversations in our class to learn from each other and to learn together an idea that Rabbi Sacks taught.

DISCUSS how they can learn something from every person (you may wish to share with them the Mishna in Pirkei Avot (4:1) where a wise person is defined as some- one who learns from all people) and help them to take in the fact that they can learn from every single one of their classmates using the following questions:

• Can you learn something from every single person?
• What can you learn from your classmates today?
• Why is conversation a good way to learn from other people?

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Optional Activity

Ask every student to find a partner and ask them to share with each other something they have learned from them. This can be repeated with different partners.

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The Question

The first source we are going to look at is an excerpt from a famous essay about the Jewish people, written by the American author Mark Twain. His essay ends with an important question which we will be exploring today.

This is a thought-provoking source to begin exploring the idea of the Jewish people as The People of Book, and the impact Jewish learning has had on Jewish history. Mark Twain asks the question, “What is the secret of his immortality?” or in the words of Rabbi Sacks, “What is the key to Jewish continuity?” This is a great discussion opportunity that can frame the study session for your students. For Rabbi Sacks, as we will see, being the “People of the Book” goes some way to understanding this question.

You may wish to read this Mark Twain piece to your students, or have them read it, or you could find a video presentation of it for your students to watch rather than read, such as this one (Disclaimer: this video was not produced by the Rabbi Sacks Legacy, who bears no responsibility for its content.)

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Source 1: Jewish Resilience

If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous, dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s greatest names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning are also way out of proportion to the smallness of his numbers.

He has made a marvellous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendour, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains.

What is the secret of his immortality?

Concerning the Jews, Mark Twain

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The Secret to Jewish Continuity

(20 minutes, approximately)

Let’s see how Rabbi Sacks answers this question. In his book Will We Have Jewish Grandchildren?, he quotes a story from the Talmud in which King David is protected from dying by learning Torah. You may wish to explain to your students that this is an aggadic story, and not necessarily a historical text. It was written by the Rabbis who wished to leave us with an educational message. Our job is to try and understand what their message may be.

In the second source, which you could read out, project on a screen, or print out for your students, from the book Will We Have Jewish Grandchildren? Rabbi Sacks shares what he thinks the story comes to teach us. He explains that Jewish learning and Jewish education is what will protect us, not only as individuals but as a nation. Learning our Jewish texts even during the dark and difficult years, allows us to continue to stay connected and grow as a people. You could read this out, or tell it as a story to your students.

If the students are particularly advanced they could learn this in the original form, which you can find in the Middle School resource sheet. You can also find the larger context of source 3 there for your information.

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Source 2: King David's final days

King David was old and tired, and wondered how long he had to live. One day, he asked Hashem to tell him when he would die. Hashem replied to him “I never tell anyone how long they will live!” “Well then,” said David, “just tell me what day of the year I will die (as in, what date in the year)” But Hashem refused, repeating “I never tell anyone when they will die!”

“Well then” said David, “just tell me on what day of the week I will die.” Hashem finally agreed to tell David something, and revealed that he would die on a Shabbat. David asked Hashem to change this decree, and asked to die on a Sunday, so that the honour of Shabbat would not be spoiled by his death. Hashem replied, “if I postpone your death by even one day, then Shlomo your son will be king for less time.”

David decided that every Shabbat he would sit and learn Torah all day long, so that he could not die, because he knew that learning Torah was a good protection against death. One Shab- bat the Angel of Death came to carry out his mission, but he was blocked because David was continuously learning Torah. But the Angel of Death was devious and hatched a plan. He went into the palace garden and climbed a tree and shook the branches. David was distracted from his Torah learning and went to investigate the sound. As he went along the stairs that led into the gardens, the stair broke beneath him and he fell and died.

Adapted from Talmud Bavli, Shabbat, 30a-b

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Source 3: Interpreting the Talmudic story

The Talmudic story of King David and the Angel of Death is nothing less than a metaphor of the people of Israel and its fate. David stood for Israel, the warrior turned scholar. So long as he carried a book, not a sword, he would be immune... so long as their mouths did not desist from study, the Angel of Death would have no power over the Jewish people. The Jews might have lost the battles with Rome but they would win the war against mortality. Individual Jews would live and die but the Jewish people would be eternal. With the hindsight of history, we now know that they were right.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Will We Have Jewish Grandchildren? pp. 38-39

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Source 4: The People of the Book

Books, and the acts of reading and writing, studying and teaching, interpreting and expound- ing, are all things absolutely fundamental to Judaism… What is the most important thing for Jews? It’s schools. It’s learning… Therefore, when the Koran calls us the People of the Book, that is one of the understatements of all time. We are a people only because of the book.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Home of the Book for the People of the Book

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Concluding Video Activity

• Watch the video (2 minutes)
• Discuss the video (10 minutes)
• Option to then ask students to participate in the 'letter in the scroll, chapter in the story" project (15 minutes, and then an ongoing project family members to participate in, and students to continue for a lifetime)

Source 5: Being Jewish

This animated video, using audio recorded in 2010, explores the powerful message on Jewish identity that Rabbi Sacks presents in Chapter Four of his book “A Letter in the Scroll”. He asks us to understand that every Jew is a letter in the scroll, a link in the chain of Jewish history and heritage, and he challenges us to consider what chapter we will write in the book of Jewish history.

After showing this animation to your students, ask them how the ideas in the video can help them be part of the “secret of Jewish continuity”?

You could even create booklets for your students, with their names on the spine/front cover, as seen in the video, with some information in the first few pages about the Jewish journey so far, and then some blank pages at the back. Ask them to write in them their family history, their thoughts on being Jewish and their ideas on how they can help to keep the Jewish people alive. You may also wish to ask them to use the booklet to ask their parents and grandparents to do the same.

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To mark Rabbi Sacks’ fourth yahrzeit, we invite you to participate in the Rabbi Sacks Global Day of Learning celebrating his life, legacy and teachings.

May the soul of Rabbi Sacks be elevated in merit of the learning we will do in his memory.