Edot: Hanuka Celebration at Temple Isaiah: Bring-A-Friend Day

We have been celebrating the joyous holiday of Hanuka this week. As part of our Religious School celebrations, students were given the opportunity to bring a friend with them to class. This year, sixteen of our Edot students brought friends with them. I assumed that most, if not all of the friends would have very little knowledge of Hebrew or of the Hanuka story, so I put our regular curriculum aside and designed a lesson plan that would allow everyone to participate and have fun learning about the holiday.

I started the day by reading a very brief summary of the Hanuka story. We then divided into four groups; each group was assigned to create a skit lasting 2 minutes, based on a part of the story I had just read. I added a slight twist to the assignment - each group had to create a skit presenting their part of the story in a particular style as follows: "The Diary of a Wimpy Kid," "Calvin and Hobbes" (Wednesday's group chose "Peanuts" instead), "a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novel," and "Dora the Explorer."

The results were hilarious. Each group was given about 25 minutes to prepare their skit (we divided up into different rooms and areas), then we all gathered in the Beit Knesset to enjoy the performances.

Again, there was a twist - after a group presented its skit, I asked them to act it out several times again, first in just one minute, then in just 30 seconds, and finally in just 15 seconds. They were told to be sure to include the most important part of their assigned section of the story each time. At the end of the final performance, the audience was asked to guess which characters or books the story was told through. In every case, the audience guessed correctly.

After the final performance was over, we moved back to our two Edot classrooms, and played the dreydl game using pennies. There were other Hanuka games to choose from, but everyone preferred the dreydl game (except for one group which played dreydl for a bit, then chose a Hanuka car race board game called "SOV" to play).

We ended the day with a wonderful Hanuka assembly in the Sanctuary with the other Religious School classes. Rabbi Greninger explained the symbolism of the Hanuka menorah (also called a "hanukiya"). On Tuesday she lit four candles and on Wednesday, five candles while we all chanted the blessings. Rabbi Greninger then shared the layout of the Sanctuary for the friends who were visiting (a good review for our own students as well!), and we sang Hanuka songs. We finished, as we do all our t'fila sessions, by singing the "Hashkiveinu" prayer as we all stood and held arms, swaying to the rhythm of the melody.

As always, a picture is worth a thousand words, and the ones below will hopefully convey at least a little of the fun we had during our "Bring-A-Friend" days.