A Very "Moving" Session

Yesterday proved to be an "action-packed" day for our Edot students. We started the session learning three folk dances: "Hora Nirkoda" (which means, "Let's Dance a Hora"), "Mayim" (the Water dance), and the Turkish Kiss, a dance to a very popular Turkish song. Alan King, our dance instructor, has been leading Israeli dancing at Temple Isaiah and other Bay Area venues for several decades, and amazingly was able to teach us all three dances within a 20-minute period.

A good run is a terrific warm-up activity before dancing

Learning the "grapevine" (a/k/a the "Mayim") step

A circle within a circle, for the "Hora Nirkoda" dance

The final part of the "Mayim"  dance is showing how the water we "found" is distributed to the crops with a sprinkler system - arms and legs are waving like the sprinklers

Learning the first move of the "Turkish Kiss" dance

We were hot and thirsty after dancing for 20 minutes straight. Once up in the classroom, we quenched our thirst and opened the windows for fresh air. Everyone had a chance to rest while I read a chapter from "Out of Many Waters" (I had to stop every now and then - still trying to catch my breath!) 

Once rested, we moved into Room 202, which was all set up for our "Hebrew Through Movement" activities. I introduced several new vocabulary words this session:   l'hatzbiya (point at), al (on), tachat (under), and al yad (next to).  We had a lot of fun with the new words!

Banot La'Koom (Girls stand up)

Achshav rak Mora Charna (now only teacher Charna) - modeling the new vocabulary

La'shevet al ha'shulchan (Sit on the table)

La'shevet al yad ha'delet (sit next to the door)

La'shevet al yad ha'kiseh (sit next to the chair)

L'hatzbiya al ha'delet (point to the door)

David, la'shevet al ha'shulchan (David, sit on the table); Aaron, la'shevet tachat ha'shulchan (Aaron, sit under the table)

We finished the session with exercise for our fingers - preparing the table of contents page for the Shabbat Seder booklets we're making. These booklets will be used during our upcoming Family Shabbat Seder, on Friday evening, January 25th.  The table of contents page describes the rituals we perform to greet the Sabbath on Friday evening. Each student has been asked to draw a symbolic picture for each ritual. To do so, they have to learn the order of the rituals and what each ritual entails. To help them learn, I gave each student a copy of our "Welcoming Shabbat at Temple Isaiah" booklet, which describes each ritual. The students accomplished quite a bit in the 20 or so minutes we had remaining to the session - some even managed to complete the page. I'm always impressed with the quality of work they put into the projects.

Hmm - which part of "Preparing for Shabbat" (the first ritual) should I draw?

Working with pencil before coloring in the drawing

Can you tell from the drawing what the second ritual is?

Reading about the Candle Lighting ritual in the booklet

You can't get much more focused than these guys!

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.

Figuring out how to act out the story

Another group plans its skit

Dora the Explorer shares how the Maccabean Revolt began

Sharing how the Maccabees purified the Temple in a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure format

Hanuka story through the lens of "The Diary of a Wimpy Kid"

A group huddle to figure out how to perform the skit in just 30 seconds

Rabbi Greninger welcomes our "friends" during intermission

Perfecting the dreydl spin technique

Does the dreydl ever stop spinning?

Playing the SOV Hanuka car race game

Answer to "Do you recommend Temple Isaiah Religious School to other students?"

 

 

 CHAG  CHANUKA SAMEACH - HAPPY HANUKA!

Shabbat Shalom

This past week we continued to explore the "roots" of Shabbat by taking a close look at the shoresh (word root) of the word "Shalom."  We learned that any word built from the 3-letter shoresh of "shin-lamed-mem," from which the word shalom is built, must have something to do with "whole or complete."  For example, the Hebrew word "l'shalem" means to pay, since you are "completing a deal" with the payment. Therefore, the English word "peace" is not a true translation of shalom. A more accurate translation would be "a sense of completion."  To explain this more clearly, I asked the students if any of them had ever been assigned a long-term project in school, several weeks in advance of its due date. Of course, everyone raised their hands. Then I asked who had gone home the day the project was assigned, and had begun to work on the project immediately, planning the pacing and preparation to be sure it would be completed to the best of their ability by its due date. A few hands still remained in the air.  I asked those students how they felt when they handed in the completed project on or before its due date. They all agreed that they felt good about, and proud of their work. This, I explained to them, is the true meaning of "shalom" - that sense of completion you get when you know that you have worked hard on a project and accomplished it to the best of your ability, feeling proud of your accomplishment. 

We then discussed what the true meaning of the phrase, "Shabbat Shalom" is, according to the "root meaning" of the phrase. We reviewed how the Talmudic era Rabbis described how we must "balance on the timeline" (i.e. use time as best as we can to work in partnership with God to create a just world) for six days of the week.  If we work hard, to the best of our ability each of the six days to accomplish this task, we can "enter" the seventh day, Shabbat, with that wonderful feeling of "completion," knowing that we can now "rest" (i.e. step back and admire God's work and our own),  having done what we could to help bring about a just world.

Of course, because we're human, we won't be able to accomplish everything all at once, and we may make mistakes. Therefore, Shabbat isn't only a time to reflect on the previous week's accomplishments; it's also a time to look forward to the next 6 days, to plan how to improve our actions, and continue to do our part to effect "Tikkun Olam" ("repair the world") as individuals and as a community. When we wish everyone "Shabbat Shalom" at the start of Shabbat, we are really saying, "I hope you are entering this wonderful day we've been given to appreciate the universe God created and your own role in it, with that wonderful sense of completion that comes with knowing you've done everything you can to bring about a better world."
All that with just two words!

Shabbat Shalom.