Print a map of Israel and a map of Minnesota at the SAME scale. They will guess wrong. Cutting one out and laying it on the other is the lesson.
Children wonder and discover; you facilitate more than you lecture.
- Why is the sad day right before the happy day?
- How big do you think Israel is?
- What does a country do on its birthday?
This year is the Jewish calendar, and until now it stopped at the ancient holidays. Yom HaAtzmaut is seventy-seven years old, which is worth saying out loud — children assume every Jewish holiday is thousands of years old, and meeting one that is younger than a grandparent changes what they think a holiday is. The other half of the lesson is the join: in Israel the memorial day runs straight into the celebration at sundown, deliberately, and nobody there experiences one without the other.
- Atzmaut — independence
- Yom HaZikaron — day of remembrance
- Hatikvah — the hope
- “Why is the sad day first?”
- Because the country exists because people died for it, and Israelis decided nobody should be able to enjoy the second day without going through the first. “Do all Jews live there?” About half do and about half do not — the biggest group outside Israel is here.
- Children can place Yom HaAtzmaut in the Jewish year, in spring after Pesach.
- Children can say why Yom HaZikaron comes immediately before it.
- Children can describe Israel's size accurately.
Some families here have relatives in Israel, some have lost someone, and some feel complicated about the whole subject. Teach the day, not a position. Find out beforehand whether any family in your class is directly affected.
Folktale. The Sigd climb (Beta Israel) — a community that prayed towards Jerusalem for centuries from the top of a mountain in Africa.
Changemaker. Golda Meir — grew up in Milwaukee, moved to a place that was not yet a country, and ended up running it.
I wonder what else in our year puts a heavy day right next to a happy one?
“We learned about Yom HaAtzmaut and the memorial day joined to it. Try at home: eat outside together — a barbecue is genuinely how Israelis mark the day.”