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!

Skits and Posters

Once we completed our overview of the 2,500-year history of the Babylonian/Iraqi Jewish edah, it was time for the students to share what they had learned in the form of skits and posters dramatizing and illustrating major historical events, personalities and eras of the community's development.

At this point, I'd like to thank Greta and Alison for substituting for me on January 23rd and 24th (Greta) and on January 28th (Alison), while I was away in Denmark celebrating my sister-in-law's and brother-in-law's golden wedding anniversary. While I was away, they guided the students in writing the skits, which they'll be performing at our Chamsa Family Workshop on Sunday, February 11th (see notice we sent out about this workshop at the end of this post).

Over the past two weekday sessions, our Edot students were up to their elbows in paint, glue, and lots of other materials, creating posters we'll be using as backdrops for the skits.

As soon as I handed out the assignments, the students sketched an outline on the poster paper in pencil, then began to use materials they had agreed upon to bring the sketch "to life."

Some set right in to bring their vision to life...

...while others took more time deciding which materials to use, and then created the design based on what they chose.

Below are the comings and goings of the creative process captured by my TA's and myself :

And by the end of each session, the posters were completed. Below are the results of all the creative energy pictured above:

SIEGE OF JERUSALEM BY NEBUCHADNEZZAR'S ARMY

DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM AND HOLY TEMPLE

EXILES' MARCH FROM JERUSALEM TO BABYLON

AL NAHAROT BAVEL (BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON)

JEREMIAH'S ADVICE TO THE EXILES IN BABYLON

SCENE FROM A BABYLONIAN TALMUDIC ACADEMY

THE RISE OF ISLAM

JEWISH ADOPTION OF CHAMSA AMULET

The posters are now hanging on a bulletin board in the hallway across from our classroom. I labelled the bulletin board, "SCENES FROM BABYLONIAN JEWISH HISTORY."

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we celebrated TU BISH'VAT (literally, the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Sh'vat), which began Tuesday evening and ended on Wednesday evening.

Between my reading of the novel at the start of each session and our Hebrew Through Movement activities (reviewing and introducing Tu Bish'vat vocabulary), we talked about the origins of the holiday as a harvest of tree fruits in ancient Israel, and how many centuries later, Lurianic Kabbalists (followers of Rabbi Isaac Luria of Safed, in Israel), added spiritual overtones with the teaching that we celebrate the original Tree of Life, from which all life emanates in our world. I described the Tu Bish'vat seder that they developed, which shares this teaching.

I look forward to seeing our 5th grade parents and students this coming Sunday in the Social Hall, where we will be holding a special "Hiddur Siddur" celebration as part of our B'nai Mitzvah series of workshops. Each fifth grader will be presented with his/her own Siddur, and will have the opportunity to decorate a cover for it. These prayer books will be kept in school the next two years, for use in our JQuest tefillah sessions on weekdays.

And please keep in mind that the following Sunday, February 11th, we will be holding our Family Chamsa Workshop in our classroom. Below are details we sent out by e-mail this past Monday:

During the month of January, our Edot students have been learning about the history and very rich culture of the Babylonian/Iraqi Jewish community. This edah (Diaspora Jewish community) traces its origins back to the Babylonian Exile in 586 B.C.E.  It thrived as empires rose and fell around it, and as new religions arose to both challenge and enrich its members. For centuries, this community was revered as the center of Jewish learning, and its religious leaders determined Jewish law for Jewish communities around the world. 

On Sunday, February 11^th, during our regular JQuest session, the students will share with you what they have learned in the format of a family workshop. As a culminating activity for this workshop, participating families will make a copper foil “Chamsa,” a centuries-old amulet which was first adopted by Iraqi Jews from their Muslim neighbors during the 8^th century C.E., and later by other Middle Eastern and North African Jewish communities.

Ideally, at least one parent will accompany each student to this workshop. The workshop will be held in our classroom, Room 201, in the Talmud Torah Building, from 9:00 to 10:25 a.m., at which point we will join the 3rd-6^th grade tefillah up in the Sanctuary.  This particular tefillah is the first of a series of “Creative Tefillah” services, led by our 6^th graders.

Please let me know as soon as possible, but no later than Sunday, February 4th, if you and your child(ren) can join us or not and, if so, how many of you will be coming. I will need to have exact numbers in order to have enough copper foil and other materials on hand.   

I hope you can join us.

     Charna