B'roocheem Ha'Ba'eem La'Edot (Welcome to the Edot)

The words in the title of this post were written in large letters on our Edot classroom white board. "Blessed are those who arrive (or come) to the Edot" is the literal translation from the Hebrew. I had the great pleasure yesterday morning of welcoming our new Edot students and saying "hello" again to returning students.

We started the morning both sessions with a welcoming breakfast/brunch, where all the students received a new JQuest T-shirt. With the light blue staff T-shirts, the green Avodah TA T-shirts, and now the dark blue student T-shirts, our JQuest gatherings are becoming quite colorful!

Students and their parents looked for the grade or track they had registered for around the perimeter of the Social Hall, and there they were greeted by their teachers and Avodah TA's who signed them in and gave them a name tag and a JQuest T-shirt.

Families had half an hour to enjoy breakfast and schmooze with other families, then it was time for parents to join Rabbi Greninger in the Sanctuary to learn about our Hebrew program, while the students followed their teachers down to the classrooms.

Once in the classroom, we began to get to know each other by creating name cards with notes about our favorite movies, singers, things to do for fun and two adjectives describing ourselves in a positive way. Then we shared what we had written for each category, and found others in the class who had similar interests (we have a lot of athletes in our class in soccer, baseball, basketball, water polo, tennis and lacrosse!) These cards will be hung on the wall over the windows in our classroom, together with a photograph of each student.

And once we had gotten to know each other a bit better, we played The Shekel Game - a betting review game that lets me know after each unit of study how much information the students have retained while they are having fun betting that they can correctly answer the questions I give them in different categories. The categories in yesterday's game were Hebrew Through Movement, Siddur (Prayerbook), Jewish Holidays and Torah.

We only played for a few minutes, to allow the new students to learn how the game is played, but it was plenty of time for me to get a sense of how much they remembered from the previous year - especially in the Hebrew Through Movement category. As you can see in the video below, the program is a great success. After four long summer months, see how quickly the boys in the group reacted to my Hebrew commands!

Between the two sessions we held an all-school tefillah (prayer service), where we welcomed in our new JQuest school year with a "tekee'a" blast of the shofar by Rabbi LaVine, our new Assistant Rabbi at Isaiah.

And to end the service, we sang the Justin Timberlake song, "Can't Stop the Feeling" with new lyrics written by our own Rabbi Greninger. While we sang, we watched the original video of the song with a few extra cast members dancing to the tune - our teachers! A big YASHER KO'ACH goes to Erin for the amazing editing job, and of course to Rabbi Greninger for the "Starting JQuest @ Isaiah" lyrics. Here's a little snippet of the video with yours truly and Rabbi Greninger dancing to the song:

As Rabbi Greninger's lyrics proclaim, "It's a journey, it's a journey, it's a journey...Gonna be a Jewish journey...."

OUR EDOT JOURNEY IS ABOUT TO BEGIN - A JOURNEY THROUGH TIME AND SPACE. 

First stop: New Amsterdam, 1654 C.E. Pack your bags and hang on to your britches! It's a wild ride into the Wild West!