The Ancient Israelites, and the Jewish Religion

We learned about the Ancient Israelites over hundreds of years of history. I loved seeing how the history of the Bible fits in with world history, and getting a better idea of the world of the Old Testament! We are studying the Old Testament for Home Church this year, so we are reading many stories from the King James Bible, but I also checked out a bunch of Bible storybooks from the library. Our favorites were The Lion Bible for Children (here) and the DK Children's Bible Stories (here)—that one had some cool photos of ancient artifacts and maps along with the stories. 

One of our favorite activities, found in the fun book Old Testament Days, was making Israelite costumes and having a nomad's picnic. We just made tunics out of king-sized pillow cases (with neck- and armholes cut into them). We made a big drawstring bag which we used as our "table." And we ate flatbread and homemade yogurt and goat cheese (and hard-boiled eggs, which maybe wasn't authentic…did nomads have chicken? Maybe they ate quail eggs?). It was quite delicious.

It was also really interesting to learn about the Jewish religion and some of their holidays, both ancient and modern. These are holidays I've always heard of, but other than Hanukkah, I knew very little about the history of any of them! The girls had heard of lots of these holidays reading the All-of-a-Kind Family books, so they were excited to try out some of these fun traditions.

We cast our breadcrumbs on the water for Rosh Hashanah, and ate apples and honey. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year. 

We also made shofars to blow! (Er…sort of. Posterboard with a balloon is pretty much like ram's horns, right?)

We made cheese blintzes for Shavuot (dairy products remind the Jews of "the Land of Milk and Honey"!) Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses. To make blintzes, you make crepes, fill them with a cream-cheese filling, fry them again in butter, and bake them in a casserole dish! It's a lot of work, but they are really good, and quite different from just plain crepes! We ate them with berry jam and powdered sugar. Yum.

We learned to make challah. We especially liked doing a four-strand braid with the dough!

We usually try to have a sort of Passover Dinner on the Thursday before Easter—not a real Seder meal, but kind of a modified Seder where we talk about some of the Passover symbols. I usually make a Seder plate and we try to eat some kind of lamb! This year we got take-out from an Indian restaurant we like; Lamb Coconut Kurma. It was so good, maybe we'll do that every year! :) I made tzatziki to go with it.

We built a little sukkah, open to the stars, for Sukkot or the Feast of Tabernacles. This is a fall harvest festival, and the Jews eat and sleep in their little huts! That sounds so fun! We just ate in ours.

We also got to go on a really fun field trip where we saw a model of the Ancient Old Testament tabernacle. It was put on at a stake center, and they had a little video connecting the ancient temple to modern-day temples, and showing some symbols that are common to both. It was really interesting! Then we got to walk around the life-size model of the tabernacle, from the outer courts all the way into the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies, where we could see the Ark of the Covenant. It was really cool to get a sense of how big everything was and how it was set up and put together. The picture above is taken by the altar of sacrifice in the inner courtyard.

Here is the Holy Place (the skies were really beautiful while we were there!)

The big menorah in the Holy Place. The shewbread was in the part too.

And this is inside the Holy of Holies, during a sudden downpour—it was so snug and cozy in there with the rain pounding down! The ark of the covenant had the tablets that held the Ten Commandments, some manna, and the Rod of Aaron inside.