Sephardic Storyteller

Middle School (Grades 6-8)

Students hear Jewish folktales from Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt and discover the values they pass down.

Objectives

Folktales carry a community’s values, humor, hopes, and memories from one generation to the next. Jews in Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Iraq, and across the Middle East and North Africa told stories at home, in the synagogue, and on holidays, and many were never written down until families who moved to Israel shared them with the Israel Folktale Archives. Students learn the characteristics of folktales, read short tales from North Africa, listen to an Iraqi Jewish storyteller tell “The Bird of Happiness,” and identify the Jewish values each story teaches.

Essential Questions

  1. Why do communities tell and retell folktales, and what do these stories preserve?
  2. What Jewish values do the folktales of Middle Eastern and North African Jewish communities teach?
  3. What can a folktale tell us about the people and places that created it?

Students will be able to

  • Identify six characteristics of folktales and find them in specific stories.
  • Determine the lesson of a folktale and support it with details from the text.
  • Name Jewish values (middot) taught in the stories and explain how the plot teaches them.
  • Identify cultural clues about the communities that told the stories.
  • Explain how storytelling and archives preserve culture.

Curriculum Connections

  • English Language Arts: RL.6.2, RL.7.2, RL.6.3, RL.7.9, SL.6.1
  • Jewish Studies: middot and mussar; Shabbat and holidays; Sephardic and Mizrahi heritage

Materials

  • Computer, projector, and speakers
  • Audio: “The Bird of Happiness,” told by Miriam Kanani (about 10 minutes)
  • Appendix A: Jewish Values Chart and Appendix B: Folktale Characteristics Chart (one each per student)
  • Appendix C: The Bird of Happiness (one per student)
  • Appendix D: Three Short Folktales (one per pair, or projected)

At a Glance

Grade and setting: Grades 5 to 8, Jewish day schools, congregational schools, and informal Jewish education; adaptable for ELA
Time: One 60 minute session, or two 45 minute class periods
Source: Adapted from Journey to the Mizrah

Note to teacher

Read one, two, or all three short tales in Appendix D before the main story. “The Bird of Happiness” contains nearly every folktale characteristic, so it also works on its own. Play the audio while students read along; the storyteller’s voice is part of the lesson.

Downloads

  • Lesson Plan  Full lesson with teacher background, values key, and differentiation (PDF)
  • Appendix A  Jewish Values Chart (PDF)
  • Appendix B  Folktale Characteristics Chart (PDF)
  • Appendix C  The Bird of Happiness, an Iraqi Jewish folktale (PDF)
  • Appendix D  Three Short Folktales from Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt (PDF)
Procedures

Introduction (15 minutes)

  1. Communi-story (7 min). Students sit in a circle and build an improvised story together, one sentence each. Each sentence must connect to the one before, and the story must end by the time it returns to the first student.
  2. Discuss (8 min). How did it feel to create a story together? Do you remember stories your parents or grandparents told you? What did they teach, and why were they passed down? What are Jewish values, and where do we learn them?
  3. Alternative opening. Post the essential questions and project the values on Appendix A. Which do you recognize? Where did you learn them? Explain that Torah and Jewish texts pass on values, and so do stories.

Exploring Folktales (35 minutes)

  1. What is a folktale? (5 min). Folktales are passed down orally, usually feature ordinary people, and teach a moral. In Hebrew, a value or character trait is a middah, and the study of good character is mussar.
  2. Folktale characteristics (5 min). Review the six characteristics on Appendix B: strong characters, a simple setting, magic or fantasy, a problem that gets solved, cultural clues, and a message or lesson.
  3. Short folktales (10 min). Read one to three tales from Appendix D, from Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt. Students check off characteristics and ask: What can we learn about this Jewish community? What values does the story teach?
  4. The Bird of Happiness (15 min). Students follow along in Appendix C while listening to Miriam Kanani tell the tale. Pause after Aaron finds the glowing stone and ask students to predict what will happen.

Analyze, Share, and Reflect (10 minutes)

  • Analyze and share. Students complete the Folktale #4 column of Appendix B, circle the values on Appendix A that the story teaches, and may add a drawing. Pairs share with the class.
  • Reflect. Why does King Aaron visit the hut and put on his old clothes? How does the story connect to the history of the Jews who told it, and to the value of remembering where we came from?
  • Exit ticket. In one sentence: What value would you want to pass on through a story, and why?

Assessment

  • Formative: the Communi-story discussion, characteristics checked during the short tales, and predictions.
  • Summative: the Folktale #4 column and exit ticket, naming the lesson, supporting it with two details, connecting it to a Jewish value, and identifying one cultural clue.

Differentiation

  • Younger students or English learners: one short tale before the main story, preteach vocabulary, drawn responses, sentence frames.
  • Students who need support: work in pairs, use a partially completed chart, replay key parts of the audio.
  • Advanced learners: compare “Rabbi Shelomoh the Lion” with Aesop’s “Androcles and the Lion,” or research a folktale from another Middle Eastern or North African Jewish community.