The Golden Land

I introduced our first unit of study to the Edot students yesterday morning - the American Jewish edah - by  sharing a video segment from the "Heritage: Civilization and the Jews" dvd-rom program, in order to help bring to life the first 200 of the 350+ year experience of Jews in the "Golden Land." You can view the video here. (I played the segment beginning at 5:07 and finished at 17:45.)

Since yesterday was the 7th day of Tishrei, we focused a good part of the session also on Yom Kippur (which begins tomorrow evening at sundown). We had discussed the concept of "t'shuva" (atonement) in class just prior to Rosh Ha'shana. Now, we focused on the "Ashamnu" prayer, the prayer we recite on Yom Kippur together as a community, asking forgiveness for our sins. The prayer is an acrostic, in which our sins are recited in the order of the Hebrew alphabet. In order to provide our 3rd through 6th grade students an opportunity to ask for forgiveness, Rabbi Greninger had 26 posters hung up on the walls of our school building's upstairs hallway - each piece had a letter of the English alphabet printed on its top margin. The students were then asked to write a "sin" - something they were sorry they did or thought during the previous year, beginning with the letter of the alphabet at the top of the page. I found it interesting that many of the Edot students found it hard to think "in the negative." Instead, they wrote positive messages to themselves on the posters of how they would improve their conduct.

This,  in my opinion, was a particularly powerful statement

We had our second session of music with Revital and Michaela and the other 5th and 6th grade students at the end of each session yesterday.

Using the powerful song sung on Yom Kippur called "Pitchu Li Sha'arei Tzedek" ("Open for me the Gates of Righteousness"), Revital taught us how musicians through the ages have used the "melismatic" form of compositions, where several notes are assigned to one syllable of a lyric in order to give a more emotional tone to a song.   

G'MAR CHATIMA TOVA - MAY WE ALL BE SEALED FOR A GOOD YEAR!