4th Grade: ever upwards, on Jacob’s Ladder
Have you ever had a nighttime dream that changed your life? What kind of dream would do that? How might you know that a place felt holy, what would that be like?
While our Torah-hero Jacob was running for his life, he had a beautiful dream: a ladder stretching into the heavens, with angels going up and down it, and at the top, God told Jacob that God would always be with him. When Jacob awoke, he was so amazed that he said, “This was a holy place, and I didn’t even know it!” Jacob marked the spot specially, and he promised that, if he got home safely, God would be his God forever.
In class, students walked around a gallery of these pictures, by modern Jewish artists all over the world, all depicting this same dream. Not only did these images show what literally happened in the dream, but also, they tried to show how the dream might have felt. Some artists and students thought the dream was surprising and active, some thought it was relaxing and spacey, some dizzying like that swirly moment right before you fall asleep. How do the pictures make you feel?
Morah Leora’s classes used paint, and Morah Hadar’s classes used beautiful pastels. All the artwork came out amazingly, but moreover, it was super fun to explore and experiment with colours and techniques!
Big questions for families:
- For everyone: How did you make your picture? Show me the hand motions you used with the paintbrush or pastel. (Note: 4th Graders are total perfectionists, and are quick to dislike their work when the product doesn’t come out quite how they imagined. You can help them avoid frustration by remaining process-oriented instead of product-oriented — it’s all about doing cool or fun experiments.)
- Jacob said “this place was holy, and I didn’t even know it!” Has your child ever felt that a place was holy? Have you? What did that feel like — or if neither of you have particularly felt holiness, how might you know it, if you encountered it? Keep an eye out in your travels: apparently, holiness might even surprise us.
- For an abstract thinker: Where does holiness come from? (Entirely invented by people? Entirely given by God? Made when God and people work together?)
- Can art be holy?
- For an extremely abstract thinker who should basically be in highschool already: Does the source of holiness have an impact on whether human art can be holy?
- For a concrete thinker: In Jacob’s dream, what do you think the angels might have looked like? (We noted that Jewish depictions of angels tend to be pretty rock n’ roll, like, they’re not chubby babies with wings; they might be made of fire, have lots of wings, or they might be wheels with tons of eyes — they might not look human at all. Plus it’s a dream, so, they might look like anything! Have fun with it.)
- For an artist: What choices did the artists make, like to explore how the dream felt — choice of colors, long swooshy lines or short abrupt lines, splatters? Does the ladder look sturdy, or wavy and difficult to touch? What did the artists make their Jacobs and their angels look like — ages, skin tones, representative, abstracted, or invisible? If they had chosen differently, might that make the picture feel different?
- For a powerful dreamer: Do you think this dream might change Jacob’s perspective, or change his life? What kind of nighttime dream could change your life?
- There’s a potential tie-in here, with Black History Month: What kind of dream could change the whole world?
- Speaking of Black History Month, can you find some Black Jewish artists? What are their stories?
- For a textual child: (We didn’t get to cover this, but you can at home) Even after literally seeing God, Jacob made his promise conditional. IF I come back home safely, THEN God will be my God. What’s up with that — why didn’t Jacob just promise, why didn’t Jacob already trust that he was super duper blessed and God would keep him safe no matter what?
- Do you think growing up in a family where everyone constantly tricks each other might’ve taught Jacob that he can’t trust anyone?
- In our family, what might our actions teach each other?
Enjoy!
(The photos were too large this week for the blog to upload them, so I put them here. You’ll find all the paintings that Morah Leora’s students painted, plus a few of the MW-2nd-shift kids being their awesome selves.)