Rick Recht Concert

Yesterday morning, during what would ordinarily have been our tefillah service at the end of first session, we enjoyed an hour-long Rick Recht concert in the Sanctuary. Rick had already performed for our Spring Fling (last day of school) back in 2013, and I can happily report that his concert this time was just as energetic and engaging as in 2013.

What was most enjoyable for me was the fact that he included us all in singing his songs. For each song he performed, he asked one of our JQuest grades to join him up on the bima. From the moment he was first introduced by Cantor Korn, to the final song, he engaged the entire audience.

Here's his rendition of "Od Yavo Shalom Aleinu" with the sixth graders:

He performed a very moving "Halleluya" with our Shira track students as, in the background, images were projected of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his peaceful protest movement:

He even managed to include his own son, Tal, as he sang the song he wrote about him:

And our own music director, Ben, joined Rick onstage for a beautiful rendition of "For All You Are, For All You Do":

In class, before the concert, I introduced the students to the concept of the "Edot." Many of the students, when asked to offer their definition of "edot," said that the word meant "culture." It's not surprising they came up with this definition in that our school description of the Edot track uses the word "culture" as translation for the term. Actually, the Hebrew word "edah" (singular of "edot"), is best translated to English as "an ethnic group," and, even more specifically, as a Jewish Diaspora community.

Once we had established the definition of "Edot," I handed out color photographs of people from different parts of the world:

These photos represented people from almost every continent, and I asked the students to try to figure out what part of the world each person came from.

 After they shared their guesses, I asked if anyone could tell me the one thing all these people had in common as far as where they came from. A few students had already guessed that all these people were Jews living in different parts of the world. I then asked the students the same question I had asked them the very first week of school: "How can you tell any of these people is Jewish?" A few photos showed men wearing a tallit (prayer shawl), keepa (skullcap), and/or studying a Hebrew text, so we started by listing those clues. But when it came to a female Israeli soldier or a Yemenite woman wearing a traditional Jewish wedding headdress, or an Afghani man wearing a turban and sporting a very wild beard, it was much harder to say why they thought s/he was Jewish.

At this point, I introduced the fact that because Jews live all over the world and have so many different customs, three "umbrella" groups have been defined over the centuries to include "edot" following similar customs: Ashkenazeem (European Jews) originally came from the Rhineland region of Germany and eventually most moved to Eastern Europe; Sephardeem (Spanish/Portuguese Jews) came from the Iberian Peninsula; and Mizracheem (Eastern Jews) never left the Middle East or North African areas where they settled over several centuries following the Babylonian and Roman exiles. I explained to the students that as we learn about specific edot this year, they'll come to understand how all the Jews everywhere read the Torah and followed the commandments and upheld similar values, but developed different cultural customs depending upon where they lived.

To end the lesson, I asked the students to suggest specific edot that would fit under each of the three "umbrella" groups, which they did very well.

Before it was time to go to the Sanctuary for the concert, we had about 20 minutes for our Hebrew Through Movement session.

With all the Tishrei holiday vocabulary that I had already introduced, this was a good time for a review, as well as to introduce Simchat Torah vocabulary in time for this coming Wednesday evening, when Reform congregations begin its celebration. Before class began, I had set our "holiday table" (shoolchan shel chageem, in Hebrew) with the major symbols for each holiday.

As always, we began the session with some basic vocabulary review and a chance for everyone to move around after sitting for the first part of the session:

Then it was time to introduce Simchat Torah vocabulary:

Maddie, l'hareem sefer Torah me'al ha'rosh. (Maddie, lift up a Torah scroll over the head.)

Billy, l'hatzbee'a al Michael eem yad (shel Torah) gadol; Ella, la'seem shofar al ha'rosh shel Michael; Michael, la'seem yad (shel Torah) katan al ha'rosh shel Ella. (Billy, point to Michael with a large Torah pointer; Ella, put a shofar on Michael's head; Michael, put a small Torah pointer on Ella's head.)

And finally, putting it all together:

Hopefully, your family can join us on Wednesday evening at 6 p.m., after our regular Wednesday JQuest session, for a free pizza dinner followed by our Simchat Torah celebration with the entire congregation. We'll all have a chance to welcome our kindergarten and other new students to our JQuest community, and see several of our Isaiah sifrei (plural for sefer = scroll) Torah completely unscrolled as we listen to Cantor Korn chant the final line of the Book of Deuteronomy, then, immediately after, chant the first line from the Book of Genesis.

As a postnote, one of the Edot students asked me yesterday how long a Torah scroll is, after I described to them how we unroll the scrolls during our Simchat Torah celebration. I finally found this website that answers the question as best as possible. At the very end, there is an excellent suggestion:  

The next time your Temple’s Torah is re-scrolled you should ask someone to measure the length of a sheet and count how many sheets were used to make your scroll!

It may not be convenient, but someday it would be interesting if some of our clergy and/or congregants (or perhaps our Noar Night students) could do so with perhaps just one of our sifrei Torah.