Shabbat Posters - Heedoor Meetzvah

We used most of our time each session yesterday to create posters depicting eight Shabbat Seder (Friday night welcoming Shabbat ceremony) rituals. Up to this point, we've learned about the rituals, the blessings for several of the rituals and the Hebrew language roots for key words in the blessing formulas and the words "shabbat" and "shalom."

I have explained several times to the students the Rabbinic concept of "Heedoor Meetzvah," which literally translates to "glorification of the commandment." The concept derives from a line in the Book of Exodus which says, "I will glorify my God." Talmudic era Rabbis asked themselves, "How can we glorify a God Who is omnipotent and omniscient and from Whom all glory emanates?" Their answer was that we could glorify God's commandments. How can we glorify God's commandments? By creating beautiful objects related to the commandments - objects used in our rituals. This encompasses creating beautiful dressings for the Torah scroll to designing beautiful keedoosh cups and candlesticks, challah covers, tablecloths for holiday tables, etc.

So today, the Edot students put their artistic skills to use to show the beauty of our Shabbat rituals. Four posters were created during each session, and the results were truly beautiful:

First comes the planning stage - here, Max and Joey are working out their design for depicting the "Ha'Motzee" blessing over the Shabbat challah.

Emma and Ashley and Jack (out of the photo frame) are figuring out which materials to use for their "Preparing for Shabbat" poster, while Abby and Maddy are deciding in the background which materials to use for their poster depicting the "Shalom Aleichem" song we traditionally sing every Friday evening, to welcome the "angels from on high."

Once the students decided on a design and on the materials to use to depict their assigned ritual, they divided up the tasks and worked very well together. Here, Callen, Zach and Jeremy are working on "Lighting the Shabbat Candles."

After outlining their design in pencil, the three boys took turns adding color and detail to it.

For those rituals involving blessings, I gave a pre-printed sheet with the blessing in Hebrew, English transliteration and translation for them to glue onto the poster. Joey and Max decided they wanted to copy the Hebrew of the "Ha'Motzee" blessing by hand, with remarkable results.

Jack and Emma are carefully painting in their outlines of drawings relating to preparing for Shabbat (setting the table, putting money in a tz'daka box, dusting the furniture as part of housecleaning).

Joey is painting a "magen daveed" (Star of David) on a challah cover, which will almost completely cover the challah he and Max created out of puff balls on the poster.

Here, Rona and Emily are creating a collage which will depict the "Keedoosh" (blessing over the wine) ritual.

Gabby is busy working on a poster depicting "Blessing the Children."

And Michael is totally focused on painting images of what was served for the traditional Shabbat Meal.

Below are a couple of the completed posters. I'll be creating a Shabbat bulletin board in the hallway outside our classroom once all the posters have been completed.

We finished each session with a visit from Revital and Michaela to our Edot classroom. Revital, with Michaela's help, taught us two Yiddish songs - "L'Cho Doidee" (a Yiddish version of the Sephardee -Spanish Jewish- poem "L'Cha Dodee") and "Shabes, Shabes, Shabes," which are a wonderful introduction to our new unit of study about Ashkenazee Jews which I'll begin next Sunday. These are two of the songs which they traditionally sang at the Shabbat table, following the meal.