Weekly Wrap Up

On My Blog

Photo memes:
- White Series for Today’s Flowers
- Birdhouse for Ruby Tuesday

Mesorah Project III, thanks again Mrs.S.

Weekly Recipe: Hraymi

New Dictioanary

Brainstorming: Devarim

Elsewhere in the JBlogosphere

Keep the Heat Out of Your Kitchen This Shabbat, a post with some interesting and mouth-watering comments by Mother in Israel

The Jew and the Carrot remind us of a food survey carried out by The Jewish Museum in Maryland, for Americans only

We’re Not Immune to Stupid Just Because We’re Jewish, ProfK discusses health warnings in mikvaot

Telling the Kids… or Not?, a moving post by RivkA with a capital A

Leora posts two beautiful photos for Skywatch Friday

Agreeing to Disagree, Rachel writes about a controversial issue and attracts numerous readers

Shabbat Shalom!

Brainstorming: Devarim

We will soon start reading Devarim, the fifth book of the Torah. So I want to try and challenge myself to post about each of its eleven portions. I also plan to write a few things to introduce it before July 25th – the Shabbat when we’ll read the first parshah of Devarim.

However beforehand, I’d like to ask you a question: what does Devarim evoke for you? Feel free to write whatever comes to mind, or even to ask questions. I don’t promise to answer them but another blogger might.

New Dictionary

As I was having trouble sleeping last night, I listened to a podcast I had downloaded on my mp3 player. It dealt with a new book in French, Dictionnaire de la Shoah.

This dictionary was published last April and supervised by four historians: Georges Bensoussan a French authority on the subject, Jean-Marc Dreyfus who lectures in Manchester, Edouard Husson – a specialist of Nazi Germany – and Joël Kotek who teaches at the Free University of Brussels.

The idea behind this dictionary was to help the people who are interested in knowing more about the Holocaust to find their way through the vast array of books which have been printed on this topic. Thus Bensoussan reckons that a dozen books are published each month on the subject in the USA, Israel, France and Germany alone. Similarly as many as 2,200 books deal with Auschwitz.

The historians who contributed also wished to emphasize the specificity of the Shoah in a world where relativism is politically correct. Bensoussan reminds us that in no other genocide were old people, children and adults alike brought in trains from the four quarters of a continent to be murdered in gas chambers.

As this dictionary sounded both interesting and essential for a Jewish teacher, I went to the local bookstore and was lucky to find it. It contains an introduction, a detailed timeline, some maps, a bibligraphy and 420 entries which constitute the core of the book.

I am sorry that the links I provided and the book are in French but I found tha,t because of its topic and quality, it was worth a blog post.

Hraymi: Spicy Fish

I was near Paris yesterday for the end of year exams. On the way back, I stopped in Sarcelles, known as Little Jerusalem because a large number of Jews have settled there, for a meal and ate Hraymi. Hraymi is a red spicy fish dish that is popular among the Sephardic Jews of Libya. The photo is a bit blurred as it was taken with my mobile.

4 pieces of white fish
Lemon juice
Olive oil
Tomato sauce
½ spoon salt
2 chopped garlic cloves
½ spoon harissa
½-1 tsp.paprika
½ spoon cumin (optional)
Chopped cilantro or parsley

Sprinkle the fish with lemon and salt. Leave to marinate for about 30 minutes.
Put some oil in a pan, heat it up then fry the garlic in the oil until it only just begins to color. Add the tomato sauce. Leave for 5 minutes then stir in the harissa, paprika and cumin. After 10 min, add the marinated fish to the mixture and poach for 15 min.
When ready to serve, add the cilantro.

Birdhouse

On Tuesdays, just post any photo you like (it must be one of your own) that contains the color RED and then link to this blog.

White Series

After the Pink Series the Yellow Series and the Mauve Series, here are some white flowers blooming in my garden at the moment.

For more flowers from around the globe, Today’s Flowers is hosted by Luiz Santilli Jr. and managed by Santilli and Denise bc.

Mesorah Project III

Mesorah is usually translated as “Jewish tradition”, but its literal meaning is “transmission”.

Tractate Avot, which is devoted to Jewish ethical conduct, opens with a brief history lesson:

“Moses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, and Joshua to the Elders, and the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets transmitted it to the Men of the Great Assembly.”

We are told that each generation passed the Torah – both the Written Law and the Oral Law – on to the next generation.

Our commentaries wonder why Tractate Avot begins in this fashion.

One answer is that the act of transmitting the legacy is just as important as the legacy itself.

Jews around the world are familiar with the famous Biblical verse:

“Torah tziva lanu Moshe morashah kehilat Yaakov.” (“The Torah that Moses commanded us is the heritage of the Congregation of Jacob.”) (Deuteronomy 33:4)

In an article written in honor of Yom HaAtzma’ut, Rav Yechiel Wasserman notes that this verse employs the word, “morashah” (heritage) rather than the more common, “yerushah” (inheritance).

Rav Wasserman cites Rabbenu Bechaye, who explains that yerushah refers to a gift which comes with no strings attached. In contrast, a morashah must be subsequently bequeathed to future generations.

As committed Jews, we are challenged with the responsibility of preserving, protecting, and safeguarding the Torah while simultaneously bequeathing it to the next generation.

May we be privileged to discover the proper means to transmit this legacy to our children in a way which is meaningful to them yet does not detract from our heritage.

American-Israeli blogger “Mrs. S.” (ourshiputzim.blogspot.com) made aliyah from the United States with her husband and kids eleven years ago.

Thanks Mrs.S. for this insightful contribution and for reminding us of our responsibility in the transmission of the Torah.

- Mesorah Project I
- Mesorah Project II

Weekly Review

I made a speech for some colleagues who were retiring (see photo above), marked 60 papers and also wrote a few posts.

On My Blog

Photo memes:
- Mauve Series for Today’s Flowers
- Red Sign in French Village for Ruby Tuesday
- Kitchen Window for Window Views

Mesorah Project II, thanks again Rachel

Links Galore, JPIX, KCC and Haveil Havalim

New Walking Challenge

Weekly Recipe: Low-Carb Salmon Loaf

Marking Papers and Having Fun

Elsewhere in the JBlogosphere

For July 4, Leora gives her own vision of the USA

Mrs.S. has a suggestion for the English-challenged

Shimshonit’s husband shares a recipe

Raizy summarizes the news

Baila’s daughters are on vacation

Shabbat Shalom!

Marking Papers and Having Fun

As some of you know, I teach English in a French high school so this time of year is always devoted to marking exam papers. After three years of high school, French students take the baccalauréat, an exam which marks the end of their secondary education and allows them to go to university if they wish to.

Because of the importance of this exam, we mark papers which are anonymous and come from a different area than the one where we teach. Not all English exams are the same; it depends how significant English is in their curriculum. In other words students for whom languages are important get longer and more complex texts and questions.

This year I have been asked to mark papers for a stream where English carries very little weight but who have been studying it for at least seven years. The text they had to read was an extract from The Promised Land by Sarfraz Manzoor. It relates how a teenager, whose parents forbade him to go to the cinema, discovered it at the age of fourteen and how The Breakfast Club made him wish to spend a year in the USA.

After some straightforward questions, where the students were expected to show their understanding of the text, they were supposed to write in English. Unfortunately, apart from a few notable exceptions, what I read was rather horrendous considering the amount of time these students had spent in English classrooms. Sometimes it was also quite funny.

1) Imagine his father finds him (the narrator) outside the cinema. Write the dialogue (80 words).
2) Is there a film that has particularly impressed you? Relate and say why (120 words)

Here are a few gems found in the essays:

Question 1:
- Hello, what did you doing ear?
- You should doing to very important stud.
- I would go to the cinema witch watch Rocky.

Question 2:
- I was always on cinema, one day for week.
- This film touch my hearth and now I have a better communication with my mother.
- The job of guardener jail (Tom Hanks) is to kill.
- On the one hand he kidnapped the children bottom her parents … I’m chocked.
- (About Pearl Harbor) It’s a film who speak a second warm.
- (More about Pearl Harbor by a different student) It’s the worth moment of the war beacause China attack USA by surprise and there are many murdered.
- (About Harry Potter) I like this film because the actors are student. They are my old years.

Kitchen Window

Mary has a new meme: Window Views. Check her blog for windows from all over the world.