Hiddur Siddur Workshop

We took a brief break from our Edot studies yesterday morning so that we could gather in the Social Hall for the second of three B'nai Mitzvah family workshops scheduled for this school year. Our sixth graders participated on Saturday morning in a special Shabbat morning service workshop with our clergy, learning details about the meaning and order of the service itself and their participation in it during their Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremony.

Yesterday morning, the fifth grade workshop focused on the Siddur (the Jewish prayer book).

Families began arriving around 8:45 a.m. and continued arriving until a bit after 9 a.m. What a wonderful surprise to see so many families participating in the workshop!

There were bagels, cream cheese, coffee and tea waiting for them when they arrived (but only after each family registered and made a name tag for each member!). 

Soon after everyone had arrived, Rabbi Shanks welcomed the group and introduced the subject of the workshop - the Siddur!

We call this workshop, "Hiddur Siddur," and the following skit performed by myself, Maimone (our Y'tzira track teacher) and my two Sunday TA's, Kyra and Ella, explains the meaning of the name and the purpose of the workshop:

Here we are performing the skit.

Charna:  Look at all the people sitting here. What’s going on?

Ella T.:  We’re having a siddur celebration!

Charna:  A celebration?  Fantastic!  But what’s a siddur?

Maimone:  It’s the Jewish prayer book. 

Kyra:  That’s a funny name for a prayer book.  Does it mean anything?

Maimone’s TA:  It’s a Hebrew word, which means “order.”

Charna:  What does that have to do with a prayer book?

Ella T.:  When we get together to pray, we say each prayer in a special order.  The prayer book – the Siddur – makes sure we know what that order is. That way, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Jew living in India or Tunisia or Switzerland or the United States. We all say the prayers in the same order.

Charna:  That makes sense.  So how are you planning to celebrate the Siddur today?

Maimone:  Each of the fifth graders at Temple Isaiah is going to be presented with his or her own siddur, which they’ll use to help prepare for their Bar and Bat Mitzvah ceremonies, and hopefully for many years to come.

Charna:  Wow – that’s a really nice gift.  Can they put their names in the Siddur?

Kyra:  Better yet – we’ll give them a chance to decorate the Siddur – we call that part of our celebration “Hiddur Siddur.”

Charna:  Nice name – what does it mean?

Ella T.:  “Hiddur” means to decorate or to embellish. Rabbi Ishmael in the Talmud remembered the Biblical verse from the Book of Exodus, “This is my God and I will glorify Him.” 

Kyra:  That’s right.  At first, it didn’t make much sense to him – after all, how can human beings add glory to the Creator?

Maimone:  After mulling the problem over for some time, he suddenly had an “AHA” moment.

Ella T.:  “AHA,” he said to himself.  We can glorify God in the way we perform God’s commandments – the mitzvot. 

Maimone:  When God commands us to celebrate Sukkot, we can make a beautiful lulav and sukkah.  When we celebrate Rosh Ha’Shana as God commanded, we can use a beautiful shofar.

Kyra:  The Talmud tells us that we should make a beautiful Torah scroll which has been written by a skilled scribe with fine ink and fine pen and dressed beautifully.

Ella T.:  And of course, when we pray, we can do so using a beautifully decorated siddur. 

Maimone:  So today we’ll have a “Hiddur Siddur” half hour, when the students and their parents can work together to create a beautiful book jacket to cover the siddur, to help glorify God. 

Kyra:  The students will use their beautifully decorated siddurim during our week day tefillah sessions, so they’ll keep them at school until the end of seventh grade.

Ella T.:  After that, we hope they will become heirlooms, to pass down to future generations in the family.

Maimone:  Most importantly, we hope they’ll be used lovingly, and not just kept on a bookshelf after the Bar or Bat Mitzvah ceremony. 

Charna:  So what are we waiting for?  Let the celebration begin!

 Just after the skit was finished, I described the tools that we had laid out on each of 5 tables set up in the rear of the room, and pointed out five laminated sheets hanging behind each table with instructions and suggested ideas for how to decorate the Siddur cover. 

At this point, everyone got up from their seats and divided up, immediately taking materials and tools and discussing ideas for decorating the covers.

Most began by finding English letter stencils to write their name on the spine of the cover, so that they'll be able to find their Siddur easily when it's standing with all the others on the bookcase in the Beit Knesset, where we hold our weekday tefillah.

Once that was accomplished, it was time to decorate the front cover. Most students chose stencils we provided of Jewish symbols such as the Chamsa (actually borrowed from Muslims as we'll be sharing next week at our Chamsa family workshop!) ...

... and Israeli flag. We made sure to remind everyone  that since the Siddur is written in Hebrew, we open the book from right to left. It was important to keep this in mind when deciding which decorations should appear on the front of the cover, and which on its back cover.

The half hour we allotted for decorating the covers flew by, and then it was time to have the students gather on the stage with their covers, as Maimone and the T.A.'s handed out the Siddurim to the students, while proud parents took plenty of photos (even as I took photos of the parents taking photos!).

The covers were quickly placed on each student's siddur, and there were lots of happy faces posing for proud parents.

Rabbi Shanks then led everyone in chanting the "She'he'cheyanu" blessing, which we recite whenever we experience something for the first time.

Our Edot students can be very proud of the covers they designed for their Siddurim:

After singing the "She'he'cheyanu" blessing, all the children followed Maimone, myself, and our T.A.'s into the Oneg Room, while Rabbi Shanks handed out the Bar/Bat Mitzvah date assignments to each family and answered questions, and Michaela, our Facilities Event Coordinator, shared details about planning the event at Temple Isaiah.

Meanwhile, in the Oneg Room, Maimone had an interesting game called "Human Battleship" that he introduced to the students: (We discovered soon after he began to introduce the game that the microphone that Rabbi Shanks was using in the Social Hall was connected to a speaker in the Oneg Room, so the voice that Maimone is reacting to in the video below is that of Rabbi Shanks next door.)

We finished the game, and Rabbi Shanks and Michaela finished their presentations just in time for all the families to join us at our regular Sunday tefillah in the Sanctuary, led by Rabbi Greninger and Ben.

It was a wonderful opportunity for the students to use their new Siddurim for the first time.

During the coming weekday sessions, we'll be getting back to our Babylonian/Iraqi edah unit of study, preparing a special treat that is served by Iraqi Jews during the Purim holiday. Our timing is pretty good, since we'll be celebrating Purim just about 3 weeks from now!