Shabbat Seder Booklets

We used our scheduled Edot time after hafsaka (recess) on Tuesday and Wednesday to continue working on the Shabbat Seder booklets which we began at the start of the semester. Each booklet, when completed, will include all the blessings used for the rituals of welcoming Shabbat into our homes on Friday evenings (lighting the candles, blessing the children, blessing the wine, washing the hands, and blessing the challah), as well as a new blessing we wrote for our parents. The booklet is the culminating activity for our Shabbat unit of study, and reflects much of what we have learned in this unit - the language of Shabbat (the Hebrew roots for words in the blessing formulas and other Shabbat related ritual words), and the order of the rituals traditionally performed to welcome Shabbat in the form of a table of contents page for the booklet.

This week, we focused on the blessing said for the sons and daughters, and we added a new tradition - a blessing to be said for our parents.

The blessing for the daughters asks God to "make you like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah," the four matriarchs of the Jewish nation.

And the blessing for the sons asks God to "make you like Ephraim and Menashe," the two sons of Joseph, born in Egypt. According to a midrash (a Rabbinic teaching), this blessing attests to their unique strength. They were raised in Egypt as Egyptian noblemen, yet refused to give up their Jewish identities. They have become symbols of the loyalty of children to their parents and their faith.

As with all the other blessing pages for the booklet, we learned the words, recited the blessings together, then set about decorating the page to fulfill the Rabbinic concept of "heedoor meetzvah" (glorifying the commandment).

Students colored in the Hebrew letters of the blessing...

...and created symbolic drawings to represent the ritual (in this case, blessing the children).

This turned out, for the most part, to be a very calming activity, yet also a social one. Coloring in doesn't require that much attention, and as they colored, the students could socialize with each other.

As I mentioned earlier, we wrote blessings to recite over our parents.

Using the traditional wording for the short blessing formula, students filled in a worksheet to help them create the blessing.

They were asked to think of 3 positive adjectives describing their parents...

...and then think of two things to thank their parents for - first, something their parents do for them which is all too easy to take for granted (e.g. driving them to sports practices or games, helping them with homework), and second, something special their parents have done for them or given to them (e.g. taken them on a special trip, given them a very special gift). I'll be typing these up and they will be included in the booklet.

Finally, each student chose two pieces of colored construction paper which will serve as the front and back covers of the booklet.

First, they had to copy the Hebrew words "Seder Shabbat" in Hebrew letters on the top of the front cover...

...then put their full names on the bottom.

It was up to each student how to decorate the covers, with the suggestion that they use Jewish and/or Shabbat-specific symbolic drawings.

During the final fifteen minutes of each session, we joined the other 5th and 6th grade tracks for a music session with Eric Shoen, our weekday music teacher. Since Tu Beesh'vat, the holiday of the trees, is coming up on February 11th, he taught us a song about the "Tall, Tall Trees."

On Sunday, we'll be starting our new unit of study about the Ashkenazee Jews, with a focus on the Jews of eastern Europe. Stay tuned!