T'shuva: Return Again

We used our Edot time together on Tuesday and Wednesday to wrap up our introductory discussions about the shape and purpose of Jewish time by exploring the question, "What happens if you lose your balance and fall off the timeline?"

Just before asking the above question, I reviewed the image that Talmudic era Rabbis created of a timeline on which we are all balancing as we follow the commandments and do good deeds, our role in partnering with God to create a just universe for all living things. After asking the question, I added, "Do we even know when we are losing our balance and falling?" To help answer this second question, I reminded the students of the Roadrunner cartoons we all watched, when Wiley E. Coyote is chasing the Roadrunner. They all recalled the images of Wiley Coyote following the Roadrunner off a cliff and continuing to run with no ground beneath him, until suddenly he would look down, realize he had just gone off a cliff and then fall crashing down to the ground. This is the image I wanted the students to have as we discussed whether we could always tell if we had "lost our balance."

As students began to share what they might have done to "lose their balance" during the previous year, a few shared that they may have unwittingly said something that hurt a friend's feelings or forgotten to do a chore their parents had asked them to do. Neither example was done on purpose, but everyone agreed that they "lost their balance" in those cases without realizing they had done so.

We then went back to my original question, with students sharing how they thought they could "get back on the timeline." At that point, I introduced the Hebrew word, "t'shuva" which literally means, turning around or returning. What are we "returning" to? To the timeline, to where we fell off so we can continue to "balance" on it.

I then divided the students into 4 groups, and each was assigned a "case study" relating to someone who had "lost his or her balance." Each group was asked to read the case study and then determine if the subject had achieved "full t'shuva" (i.e., if they successfully returned to the timeline and found their balance again).

From our discussion of these case studies, the students understood that just realizing you did something wrong (turning around) did not necessarily mean that you "got back on the timeline and found your balance." To do so, the Rabbis taught, there are four steps you must follow:

1)  You have to realize you did something wrong and determine exactly what it was you did;
2)  You have to ask forgiveness from all the injured parties, including yourself (after all, it's you who "lost your balance"). Ideally, asking for forgiveness face-to-face is the best way, according to the Rabbis, but if it's not possible, then anyway you can is acceptable;
3)   If possible, you have to try to immediately correct the situation that made you "lose your balance";
4)  And finally, you have to make a plan of action that will help you avoid making the same mistake in the future.

Once these steps were discussed, I pointed out a wall poster I had made several years ago with the 4 steps of T'shuva written on it, so we could all remember them throughout the year.

I also shared that if, for some reason, anyone in our class had trouble being responsible for his or her own actions during our class time, I would give them two warnings, but if a third warning was necessary it would come as a request for the student to write a "t'shuva essay" at home.Very simply, I would ask that student to go home, think carefully about what s/he had done, then write one or two sentences  for each of the four steps we had just discussed. If that ever happens, I will write to the parents to let them know I've assigned the essay, and will share the 4 steps in the note. This "t'shuva essay" will be the student's "ticket" back into the classroom.

As a final activity for our discussion, I gave each student a "T'shuva Worksheet" on which they were asked to list two things they had done in the previous year for which they felt sorry. Then, for each of those things they filled in the 4 steps for how they could achieve full t'shuva.

They were then asked to fold the worksheet into thirds, to fit into an envelope I gave them, and seal the envelope. They put their full names on the front of it, and then I gave each student a Magen David (Star of David) sticker to put on the flap of the envelope as a seal, and told them that this sticker would be counted toward the 20 stickers they could accumulate in the "Stumper/Challenge" program (see my previous post).

I will hold onto these envelopes during the year until the final week of school, at which time I'll return them and the students will be able to open them and check to see if they were successful in following their "plan of action" (step #4) to avoid making the same mistakes again.

We also participated in a whole-school "T'shuva" activity:

Rabbi Greninger arranged to have 26 large pieces of paper hung on the walls in our upstairs hallway. Each page had a letter of the English alphabet printed on its top.

Our students were asked to think of something they were sorry for which began with the particular letter on the page, and write it on that page.

Our Edot students took this activity very seriously.

Though I told them they could choose just two or three pages to write what they were sorry for, many wrote several things on each page, or chose multiple pages to share actions they felt they should atone for.

Here are two examples of what they wrote:

Our Hebrew Through Movement session was a review of vocabulary introduced to date, including "leetko'a shofar" (blow a shofar), and introduced the Hebrew word "sleecha" (forgive me; I'm sorry). Of course, to have fun, we didn't only blow the shofar...

I didn't even think about the result when I commanded the boys, "La'seem shofar al ha'rosh shel Charlie." ("Put a shofar on Charlie's head.")

Who ever said that learning Hebrew had to be boring?!!!

G'MAR CHATIMA TOVA. MAY YOU BE SEALED (IN THE BOOK OF LIFE).

Stumpers and Challenges

A week ago yesterday, I introduced an optional incentive program to my Edot students. It's called the "Stumper/Challenge" program, which evolved over some two and a half decades from my frustration at not having enough class time to share as much of our Jewish world with my students as I would have liked.

Very simply, I am offering my students a chance to earn as many $10.00 Toys 'R Us gift certificates as they can; they receive one certificate for every 20 stickers earned. (Yes, I know the company has just declared bankruptcy, but I checked and they are still honoring the certificates!)

How can the students earn the stickers? There are 3 ways:
1)  For every stumper they answer, they earn one sticker.
2)  For every challenge they do, they earn 5 stickers.
3)  For each book report they write, they earn 10 stickers (with a limit of 4 reports allowed).
And, of course, they can earn the stickers through a combination of the above.

The stumpers are questions written on sentence strips, relating to information the students can learn from newspaper articles hanging near the sentence strip containing the question, or relating to holiday questions, the answers to which can be found in a book on the window sill in our classroom called "Jewish Holidays and Customs." (It was a Bat Mitzvah gift I received over half a century ago!). The questions and challenges belong to the following categories: Jewish World, Jewish History, Jewish Values, Jewish  Holidays, Israel, Tana'ch (the Hebrew Bible), and Biblical Archaeology. They all hang on the bulletin boards at the rear of the classroom, or, when I run out of space (as I often do), on other walls in the room. The challenges are also written on sentence strips and relate to the above categories.

Here are some of the stumpers hanging on the Jewish History bulletin board...

...and a few hanging on the Jewish World bulletin board. As you can see, there is some crossover between categories, since the above two questions relate to the Ethiopian Jewish community we're about to start studying.

Since we don't have much free time during our Sunday and weekday sessions, I've told the students that they can e-mail me or call me with the answers to stumpers, or take home worksheets on our holiday board to do at home (if you don't have my e-mail address or phone number, just call the JQuest office and they'll be happy to give one or both to you). If any of the students can come early to class on Sunday or during the weekday session, and if I'm in my classroom then (which I usually am), they're welcome to join me and I'll be happy to listen to their answers.  Since challenges often involve memorization, they have to do the challenge in class in front of me.

Since the stumpers and challenges often have something to do with what we'll be learning in class or with an upcoming holiday, I usually change them every 3-6 weeks. But I'll be putting all the stumpers and challenges in posts on this blog, so even after I take them down, the students have been told they can always answer them until the end of the school year.

One final note. By accepting the stickers from me, the students agree that they will become teachers of the information. So anytime another student comes up to them and asks if they know the answer to the stumper, they have to share the information they've learned with the other student. (It's my sneaky way of "spreading the news," so to speak.)

Here are the stumpers and challenges hanging on the walls at this writing:

Jewish Holidays:
Challenge:  Memorize the 12 Hebrew months in order, beginning with Tishrei. (See Jewish Calendar poster hanging on wall)
Stumpers:
1.  The Talmud says, "Intelligence, no work." What does this have to do with blowing a shofar?
2.  Why are we not allowed to blow the shofar on Shabbat?
3.  How might you not fulfill the mitzvah of hearing the shofar?
4.  When and why did "Kol Nidre" come to have a greater and deeper meaning for Jews?
5.  Name the major Jewish holidays which fall in each Hebrew month.

Jewish History:
Challenge:  Name 3 Mesopotamian events or innovations which had a direct influence on the Jewish culture in ancient times.(See chart on bulletin board to find answers)
Stumpers:
1.  What did Prof. Hershkowitz consider to be "treasures," and where did he find them?
2.   In which city did God contact Abraham for the first time?

Jewish Values: 
1.   How did 9 Temple Isaiah young people connect to their Jewish homeland, heritage and community?
2.   What question does Judge Weinstein ask Judge Scheindlin when he sees her?
3.   What did Simone Veil survive, and how did it affect how she treated society's weakest people?

Jewish World:
1.   Who are the "Falash Mura"?
2.   Which is the oldest congregation of Jews in the U.S., and which is the oldest synagogue building in the U.S.?
3.   What is a "Ques" and why won't Israel's Rabbis accept them?

Israel:
1.   Why have so many great empires wanted to conquer Israel/Canaan/Judea? (such a little country!)
2.   Who are the peoples who live within Israel's borders with the Jews? (What other nationalities live in Israel?)
3.   Who is Israel's Prime Minister? Who is Israel's President?
4.   What is the Knesset?
5.   How many Nobel prizes have been won by Israeli citizens?
6.   What is "Birthright Israel" and why is it so important?

TANA'CH: (Hebrew Bible)
Challenge:  Name all 13 tribes of Israel. (You can take a copy of the Tribal Map hanging next to the sentence strip.) (Yes, 13! Joseph did not have a tribe named after him, but each of his 2 sons had a tribe named after them. Jacob had 12 sons; take away Joseph, it leaves 11. Add the 2 sons of Joseph, and you have 13 tribes.)
Stumpers:
1.   Which were the first 3 cities in Canaan attacked by the Israelites under Joshua?
2.   According to Ethiopian Christians, how did the Ark of the Covenant find its way to Ethiopia?
3.   What do the Arabs call the Queen of Sheba?
4.   Where is the "Lost Ark" being kept, according to some?

Parents, feel free to share any answers to stumpers you may know! Again, we're "spreading the news!"

The Shape of Jewish Time

Yesterday, we continued our discussion begun last Sunday about  the Rabbinic teachings relating to "tikkun olam" (literally, reparation of the world), using the focus of the Rosh Ha'shana holiday and the shofar, its major symbol (RAMBAM's alarm clock).

I began the lesson by asking the entire class a series of questions which were very easy to answer. Ella, my very able TA, wrote the answers to the questions on the board in two columns.

The answers in the left column were "day, week, month, year, spring, summer, fall, winter and lifetime." Those in the right column were a bit more involved: "Creation, Noah's Ark, Abraham Moves to Canaan, Sarah gives birth, Jacob marries Leah, Joseph is Sold into Slavery, Joseph interprets Pharaoh's dreams, and Joseph is Reunited with his Brothers."

Once all the answers were written on the board, I asked the class, "If you were asked to draw a geometric figure which described the words written in the left column, what figure would it be?" It didn't take long for most of the students to realize the periods of time in that column could be described by a circle. I asked the same question about the phrases written in the right column.Very quickly, several students came up with "a line" (and, indeed, one very clever "geometrist" in our group said, "a line segment").

I shared with everyone that most ancient cultures saw time as an ever-repeating cycle. No matter what they did or believed, time would continue in this circular pattern. About the time of the Biblical prophets (ca. 1000-500 B.C.E.), a revolutionary concept of time developed which described time as a human progression of events which was superimposed upon the circular pattern of natural time. The prophets taught that every action undertaken by humans had moral consequences; every historical event that befell the Jewish nation was a result of whether or not we fulfilled God's commandments.    This Jewish "linear" concept of time was adopted, through Christianity and then Islam, by western civilization. It was God, the Rabbis taught, who created time. Since everything God creates must have a purpose, these Rabbis taught, then time must have a purpose. What is that purpose? Tikkun Olam. God created the universe, but now our role is to act as God's partners to bring justice to the universe.

The Talmudic Rabbis envisioned a "timeline," if you will, upon which we all must balance. How do we balance on it? By following the commandments and doing good deeds. They believed it was the responsibility of the Jewish nation to be role models for all the peoples of the Earth. And they believed and taught that when every individual, every community and every nation was perfectly "balanced on this timeline," time will end and we will enter the dimension in which God exists - they called this dimension "Absolute Time." We also refer to this period as the Messianic Era.

Now it was time to connect what we had learned last week about Rosh Ha'shana and the shofar to our original question:  WHY did the Jewish Diaspora communities, the Edot, maintain their Jewish national identity so fervently for at least two millenia?  They all assumed the responsibility for upholding the words of the Biblical prophets to be "a light unto the nations." They all believed each Jewish individual and community had a moral obligation to follow the commandments and pursue justice - "tzedek, tzedek teerdof" ("justice, justice shall you pursue").

As for HOW these Diaspora communities did so - well, that's what we'll be learning during the coming year as we study the history and cultures of four representative edot (Jewish Diaspora communities): the Beta Yisrael of Ethiopia, the Babylonian Jews of Iraq, the Jews of Spain, and the Jews of Yemen.

We ended our lesson about the "shape of Jewish time" by making our own individual timelines. These will be kept in each student's folder, and as we learn about specific events and eras in history, we'll note these on our timelines. I introduced the terminology used by most historians today of B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era), and to give it context, I shared the Christian belief that Jesus is the Messiah, but that his appearance on Earth about 2,000 years ago was temporary, to remind people to continue our efforts to bring about tikkun olam. I shared the Christian belief in the "Second Coming" and how Christians began counting the years all over again from Jesus' birth, to help the students understand why those years before Jesus was born (B.C.E.) are counted backwards from "year 0" when Jesus was born, and why they are counted "forwards" after his birth (C.E.).

Yesterday, I introduced the historical novel I'll be reading this semester at the start of each Sunday and weekday session, called "The Storyteller's Beads." We'll be starting to learn about the Beta Yisrael of Ethiopia next week, and this story provides wonderful background history and descriptions of this edah's unique culture.

 And, of course, we continued to have lots of fun with our Hebrew Through Movement commands. This time, I reviewed what we had learned about the sounds of the shofar last week, by introducing commands to blow the different sounds we learned about.

First, I introduced the command "leetko'a ba'shofar" ("blow the shofar").

Then I asked for volunteers to model the same command.

Lots of volunteers to choose from!

Then it was time to put the shofar through its paces (not to mention the boys!). "David, la'seem shofar al ha'rosh shel Brody; Brody, la'seem shofar al ha'rosh shel Myles; Myles, la'seem yad al ha'rosh shel David. Achshav, la'shevet al ha'reetzpa b'yachad." ("David, put a shofar on Brody's head; Brody, put a shofar on Myles' head; Myles, put a hand on David's head. Now, sit on the floor together.)

Using the same formula as I had for the boys in the photo, I gave a series of commands having the students put their hand or a shofar on the head of the student next to them, then asked individual students in the group to blow certain sounds - in the video snippets above and below, I commanded them  "leetko'a tekiah g'dola" ("blow a big or great tekiah). I can now say with full confidence that all our students are familiar with all the sounds of the shofar blown on Rosh Ha'shana and Yom Kippur!

During the coming weekday sessions, we'll be finding out what happens when we "lose our balance and fall off the timeline." Stay tuned!

G'MAR CHATIMA TOVA L'CHOOLAM.

MAY WE ALL HAVE BEEN SEALED (IN THE BOOK OF LIFE). 

The Sounds of the Shofar

Last week, we learned that the Jewish People fit the definition of a nation -  a group of people with a language, a set of laws, a land, and a history in common. We learned that we are the oldest surviving nation on Earth, and because of certain historical events we were, for about 2,000 years, a nation without a land - a Diaspora nation. 

Yesterday, I continued our discussion by asking the students, "If we couldn't live together, how is it that we always remembered who we were and where we came from, and kept our national identity? How did we preserve it and, even more importantly, WHY did we do so?  To help begin to discover the tie(s) that have bound us together through space and time, and continue to do so, I introduced a quotation from Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon, who lived about 1,000 years ago (also known as RAMBAM and Maimonides). 

“Awake, awake, you slumberers from your sleep, inspect your actions and return.” 

We discussed what Rambam meant in this statement, realizing that he was speaking metaphorically. I then asked the class to listen very carefully to the sounds of the shofar on this link (I played minutes 1:56 to 3:18). When we had finished listening, I hung up two posters on our whiteboard, describing the shoresh (root letters) for each of the following words: shofar, t'ru'ah, sh'vareem and t'kee'ah. 

Very briefly, the word shofar is built from the 3-letter shoresh "shin-fey-resh." All words built from these 3 letters must have something to do with "improvement." The shofar is an instrument of improvement. All words built from the 3-letter shoresh "tav-resh-ayin" must have something to do with "alarm." The 9 staccato sounds which we blow on the shofar are named t'ru'ah - a sound of alarm. All words built from the 3-letter shoresh "shin-vet-resh" must have something to do with "broken." The 3-beat sounds we blow on the shofar are named sh'vareem. Finally, all words built from the 3-letter shoresh "tav-koof-ayin" must have something to do with "repair." Thus, the shofar, the instrument of improvement, is speaking to us - "Alarm! Something is broken and must be repaired." 

We discussed how the sounds of the shofar related to RAMBAM's quotation and agreed that we listen to the shofar on Rosh Ha'shana (Jewish new year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) because we want to "be awakened" by the sound of the shofar (our Jewish alarm clock, if you will) to look around ourselves and in ourselves and "repair" and strengthen our relationships with the people around us, with our community, and with God and God's Universe. 

I shared that it's not just on Rosh Ha'shana and Yom Kippur that we are commanded to listen to the shofar, but during the entire previous month (Elul) as well. Every day of Elul, except for Shabbat, we are all asked to "look back at our deeds" from the previous year and "take stock" of how we've treated ourselves, our fellow human beings, God and God's Universe. We're asked by the Rabbis to form a plan for improving these relationships over the coming year.

I finished this part of the lesson by having the students listen to the sound of t'kee'ah g'dola (literally, "big tekiah") (minutes 3:19-4:39 of the above link), which is the final sound we hear blown on Rosh Ha'shana and Yom Kippur (it's blown in this link for an impressive 40 seconds!!!). 

Next Sunday, we'll continue to explore WHY our Jewish nation has maintained its national identity in both good times and bad, and tie what we learn to yesterday's lesson. Stay tuned!

We used the remaining quarter of an hour of our session yesterday for our first Hebrew Through Movement lesson of the year. So many students - both 5th and 6th graders - recalled a good deal of the vocabulary I reviewed with them!

Baneem, la'shevet al ha'shoolchan. (Boys, sit on the table.)

Baneem, la'shevet al ha'beerka'eem, al ha'reetzpa. (Boys, sit on the knees on the floor.)

Baneem, la'seem yada'eem al ha'reetzpa. (Boys, put hands on the floor.)

Achshav, baneem, la'lechet al ha'beerka'eem v'al ha'yada'eem al ha'reetzpa. (Now, boys, walk on the knees and on the hands on the floor.

 After spending almost 15 minutes walking, running, jumping, turning around, getting down on the floor and up on the tables, I decided to finish the session with some deep breathing - "leenshom pa'am achat" ("breathe once"), "leenshom sh'nei p'ameem" ("breathe twice"), "leenshom shalosh p'ameem" ("breathe three times").  Then all the students followed the command, "La'koom v'la'seem ha'keeseh mee'tachat la'shoolchan. Achshav, la'lechet l'beit ha'meekdash b'yachad." ("Get up and put the chair under the table. Now, walk to the Sanctuary together.") It was time for our tefillah service.

Let me take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy and healthy 5778.

L'SHANA TOVA TEEKATEIVOO! (MAY YOU BE WRITTEN FOR A GOOD YEAR!)

A Sweet Start to the New Year

At the very start of each of our first two weekday sessions, all our 5th and 6th grade students met up in the Social Hall for the first of seven cooking sessions led by Karen.

Traditionally, Jews all over the world help usher in the new year with a festive meal, including foods symbolizing the wish for a prosperous and sweet year to come. It's not surprising then, that the first recipe our 5th and 6th graders prepared under Karen's tutelage was honey cake.

This year, Karen prepared a poster sharing important cooking skills, which she shared with the students.

Before dividing up into groups around each small table, we watched Karen model the poster skills, as she assembled the ingredients for the honey cake into the mixing bowl.

Then it was time for each group to make the cake batter. Four students were assigned to each table, and immediately set about adding in the dry ingredients - flour and sugar were on the table; the baking soda and baking powder were on Karen's table up front.

The tricky part was making sure that the measured amount of the ingredient reached the mixing bowl without too much spillage!

Checking and re-checking the ingredients list was very important!

Add in the half cup of sugar - you wouldn't want to forget the sugar!

Measuring the half teaspoon of baking power obviously requires teamwork.

So does adding in the vanilla.

Pouring the honey into the measuring cup is a 2-man, 3-hand affair here.

Then comes the stirring (why does the opening scene of the 3 witches in "MacBeth" come to mind?).

In this case, stirring the batter involves one stirrer and two supervisors. We guaranty the quality of this cake!

More supervision; and making sure no ingredient has been omitted.

Finally, the stirred batter is poured into a floured pan, and V-E-R-Y carefully carried to the oven in the kitchen.

Since this was a fairly simple recipe which took only about half an hour to prepare of our allotted 45 minute cooking session, we had about 20 minutes for hafsaka (recess) once the last tables had been cleared.  

Over the summer, a Gaga pit was built in time for Camp Kefli, and it proved to be very popular. It was so popular, in fact, that it filled very quickly with almost all the students on both days.

 And the students "threw" themselves into the game, with all the energy they could muster!

For those students who decided not to play Gaga, we had jump ropes, sidewalk chalk, and balls available to play with. 

At 4:43, it was time to put away the balls and jump ropes and head down to tefillah in the Beit Knesset, where Rabbi Greninger led us in our first weekday tefillah (prayer service). This was the first time our third graders participated in our weekday tefillah session, so Rabbi Greninger assured them and other new students that though they might not know all the words and melodies of our prayers to start, they would learn them over the course of the year and be able to recite them as well as the "veterans" in the group.

Finally, after tefillah, we went to our Edot classroom, and had a chance to share and discuss our ideas of how you can tell if someone is Jewish and what it means to be Jewish.

I started the discussion by asking each student to say his or her first name (not nickname) out loud. As they said the name, I wrote it on the whiteboard in a particular column which wasn't labeled at first. Once all the names, including mine, were on the board, I asked everyone to try to discern the pattern I used to decide which column each name should go under. Hands went up, and after a few suggestions a few students suddenly realized that the names in each column came from the same place in the world - derived from the language spoken there. The longest column contained Hebrew names, mostly coming from the Torah. My name is a Yiddish one from Poland, and other names were originally German, Welsh, Gaelic (both Irish and Scottish), Latin and Greek.

At this point, I pointed out that we were all sitting in a classroom in JQuest, and wondered why all our names weren't under the "Hebrew" column. Very quickly, we determined that Jews have borrowed names from all over the world because Jews have lived all over the world and still do. If that's the case, I asked, how can you tell if someone is Jewish?

For over half an hour, until the dismissal bell rang, we created more columns on the board. First, a column labeled "Jewish" under which we made a long list of how we can tell if someone is Jewish - they might be in a synagogue, or wearing a Jewish star or other Jewish symbol, or might have Jewish symbols on their houses. They might be wearing a tallit with tzitzit or a kippa or have peyos (curled side locks); they might be speaking Hebrew or Yiddish, reciting Jewish prayers, or maybe they're living in Israel. The list went on and on, 'til I ran out of room on the board. Then I started 4 more columns labeled, "French," "Catholic," "Spanish," and "Muslim." For each column, the students shared how you could tell someone belonged to that group. Finally, I asked them to look over the columns to see if we had written the same thing under each column. I circled those items, and it turned out that items relating to language, land, laws, and history were common to the "Jewish,"
"French" and "Spanish" columns. Our discussion following this activity determined that just like the French and Spanish, Jews are a group of people we call a "nation" because the definition of a nation is a group of people who have four things in common: they speak the same language, have a common history, follow the same laws and live in the same land.

At the end, I shared that the Jewish nation is the oldest surviving nation on Earth, perhaps as old as 3,500 years. Even after being exiled by the Romans about 2,000 years ago (the final of several exiles in ancient times), we maintained our national identity (as all nations must) by teaching each successive generation our language, laws and history (thus we read the Torah, which contains our earliest history and our laws, every week as a community, and study the Torah individually and together) and, while in exile, we always remembered our land - Israel - in our prayers and during our holidays ("Next year in Jerusalem.").

Just before the bell rang, I asked the students what they expected we would be learning at JQuest, and they agreed that we'd be learning what good Jewish citizens should know: Hebrew, Jewish history, Jewish laws and information about the State of Israel. And, indeed, we shall.

"Getting to Know You; Getting to Know All About You"

Some of you may recognize the song lyrics above from "The King and I" Broadway musical. They describe exactly what we did yesterday morning at JQuest. The song continues, "Getting to like you, getting to hope you like me." And I think we succeeded - at least that's what it looked like to me.

We met upstairs in the Social Hall, where a sumptuous pancake breakfast was set out. As each student and his/her parent(s) came to our Edot table to sign in, I had a chance to meet most of our new students (a few couldn't join us yesterday) and welcome back our returning students.

Here I am with Kyra, one of my fabulous Avodah TA's, waiting to greet everyone.

And here are 3 of our returning students, connecting after a long summer (or perhaps seeing each other again since Camp Kefli ended a few weeks ago).

Plenty of food for plenty of people!

Once everyone had a chance to eat and schmooze, all the students joined their teachers and went down to the classrooms, while Rabbi Greninger spoke to the parents about our focus this year on Jewish middot - values.

Once in the classroom, we immediately set about getting to know each other by means of an activity called "Name Tag Matchmaker."

Each student chose a colored index card, then found his/her printed name label to attach to the center of the card.

Then each corner was filled in by answering four prompts I read out: "Two things I like to do for fun are...";"My two favorite movies are..."; "My two favorite singers or bands are..."; and "Two positive adjectives that describe me are...".

Once all the responses to the prompts were written down, we began to share to find out more about each other and our interests. Everyone shared enthusiastically.

Now that we had begun to learn each other's names and what we liked to do, etc., it was time to play "The Shekel Game." This is a group betting game which we'll be playing after each major unit of study. It's fun for the students, and gives me a chance to assess if most of the students recall important information and ideas that we discussed in class.

Each group chooses a treasurer to handle the money (we use copies of actual Israeli shekels in use there today), a reporter who is responsible for giving the answer the group decides upon, and a recorder, who records the amount of money the group bets.

For this first game, I used questions relating to subjects the students learned in the 3rd and 4th grade tracks. Once I ask the question, they have 30 seconds to decide together upon the answer. I was very impressed with how much they recalled.

Taking a quick break to pose for a "candid" shot.

We only had about 50 minutes together before it was time to go back upstairs, this time to the Sanctuary to meet the rest of the school and parents for our first tefillah (prayer) session of the school year. 

Here's to a wonderful year of getting to know and like each other even better, to learning about the diversity of our Jewish world, and to building a strong set of Jewish values that our students will always be able to fall back on in good times and bad.

The Yiddish word that summarizes what we hope to impart to our students and families at JQuest is "Menschlichkeit" (literally, "the condition of being a mensch). What is a "mensch?" That's an answer we will all search for together in our Jewish Quest!