Field trips

[magid]

Somehow inspired by Tapuz's comments yesterday, I started thinking about field trips for Jewish kids in New England.
Not the field trips that any class would take (art museums, planetariums, etc.), but ones that tie in more directly to being Jewish.

• Sweet Whisper Farms
  Shmuel  & Rivky  Simenowitz   (800) 660-9077
  P.O. Box 236,  Readsboro, VT   05350    
  E-MAIL: swfarms@together.net
  Sugarhouse Phone:  (800) 660-9077
  Goldmine Road, Readsboro
  Tour the farm, learning how to make maple syrup: which trees, how much sap is needed, when to tap trees, the boiling process, how maple sugar is made. Learn about the issues with making maple syrup kosher, how it differs from traditional practices to be it kosher. Learn about what organic practices are, sustainable agriculture, and getting organic certification.
  
• the Vilna shul in Boston, or the Touro shul in Newport, RI
  Learn about the history of either shul, and the history of the Jewish community in earlier times in the US. Learn about demographic shifts, why Jews came in the first place, and why they moved to other neighborhoods afterwards. Consider current trends: will the communities currently in the area stay where they are, or shift? What might cause shifts?
  
• National Yiddish Book Center
  Learn about Yiddish: linguistic roots, where it was used, what it was used for (historically, also currently), the culture reinforced by the language. Also learn about the process of saving books, physical rescue and book rebinding.
  
• Boston Holocaust memorial
  Learn about the Holocaust, of course. Also learn about the process of getting a memorial or other piece of public art made: space, design, artist, funding.
  
• Brookline, North Charles, or Malden eruv
  Learn the basics of what is needed to make an eruv (lechi requirements, things that are natural borders, and so on). Have someone in to discuss the issues with making an eruv (mapping for best routes, getting permissions from legal entities, getting insurance, getting rabbinical supervision, getting funds) and maintaining an eruv, with walks around some of the border afterward.

Comments

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

How 'bout a trip to the Touro synagogue in RI?

[magid.livejournal.com]

Er, second bullet?

Is that icon new?

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

Wish I could collect my thoughts enough for a second bullet ...

Yep, new icon.

[magid.livejournal.com]

It'll happen... eventually.

Yay, baby. At least it's the best reason for underslept-ness and scatterbrainedness I know of :-).

[tapuz.livejournal.com]

I love the eruv idea! I'd pull in physics of actually creating it with the geometry, geography/geology, mapskills and legal requirements...

You should contact jfl about writing this up as an article!

On the maple syrup -- mitchellf loves to tell the story of how modern kashrut supervision started with a rabbi's visit to a syrup farm to learn about the forming of his favorite treat. An innocent question about how the hardened scum (iirc) on the top was skimmed off the top of the syrup was met with an innocent "oh, we grease this stick with lard..."

[magid.livejournal.com]

I'm not a big physics person, nor geology, unfortunately. However, the rest of it... that I know more about.

The mishnayot of Eruvin have some interesting geometry in them (I'd thought at one point of writing some kind of geometry worksheets for use with the mishna), plus there's the idea of minimum slope (I housed the official measuring tool for the North Charles eruv for a while when there was still mapping being done).

The geography requirements are interesting, excluding cemeteries and bodies of water, finding steep slopes, and so on. Mapping requires listing every pole planned for use, noting all the numbers and owners on it (I'd never noticed that utility poles all have numbers on them, as well as listing their utility companies).

I know for North Charles they had to get a huge insurance policy, despite using high-tension twine (ie, not wire or anything that could hurt someone or be accidentally electrified), to meet the requirements of the utilities, and the municipalities. And that the original map was changed to minimize the number of entities to get permission from, but that wasn't a side of the process I was involved in actively.

Er, jfl?

I remember reading in the NYTimes about the lard used in maple syrup production, part of an article about newly-certified maple syrup. The other difficulty I've heard of more recently is that sometimes butter or other milchig things are used instead, which can be problematic for those who are highly allergic.