The Importance of Family

Jewish Studies

Andrew’s Monday/Wednesday Class

We spent this week learning the story of Jacob, Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilpah and their 13 children. Monday was spent learning about Jacob’s family tree and we reflected upon our own family trees. After, we used clay to make gifts and replicas of people in our family! On Wednesday, we discussed the importance and significance of our own names and the story of how Jacob’s name was turned to Israel. We then explored the meaning behind our names and drew the meanings of our names.

Lee’s Monday/Wednesday Class

This week we have been learning about stories of Abraham, Isaac, Sarah, Hagar, and Ishmael. First we learned about Sarah casting out Hagar. We looked at some art inspired by this story, and talked about how it might illustrate Hagar’s feelings about what she’s going through. We also compared the promise God made to Abraham with the one the angel made to Hagar. Then we moved on to the Sacrifice of Isaac, starting with some more paintings and forming our own ideas of what might be happening in the story The students had some amazing suggestions, which added to our understanding of the story once we read it in full. Finally, we spent a few minutes drawing or writing about how each character might have been feeling during this shocking story.

Richard’s Tuesday/Saturday Class

This week students learned about Abraham and the sacrifice that didn’t occur with Isaac. Students then broke off into stations to draw a comic strip of the story or work on a skit. The students in the skit group took recreation quite seriously and ultimately would like to perform for a larger audience, drawing inspiration from another class’s Cain and Abel play!

Lee & Marna’s Tuesday/Saturday Class

This week we filled in some background of God approaching Noah and then read the story of Noah on the Ark together. We talked about a few of the ideas in the story, including the dove and olive branch and why they are now used as symbols of peace. We then did a meditation about what it might have been like on the Ark, followed by a rap game to get our creative juices flowing and to think about rhyming. To think about how we might use this creativity to reinterpret the story, we listened to part of a short story and a poem about Adam and Eve and a few poems about Cain and Abel. Finally we spent a few minutes writing our own poems or short prose about what the experience might have been like for Noah.

David’s Tuesday/Saturday Class

This week we finished the cycle of Abraham’s stories [The journey to the land of Canaan – ‘Lech Lecha’, the story of Ishmael and Hagar and the binding of Isaac]. To conclude the unit we explored a film that summarized all the stories and reflected on all the students’ questions from throughout the past few weeks. We learned a new game, ‘Contact’, and played it in the context of the lesson. During the lesson we conducted a fire drill, and the children did an excellent job.
I hope that we all continue to have a happy holiday season and a vacation that will bring us strength for the rest of the year.

Hebrew Through Movement

This week we played Simon Says type games to practice our learning about colors:
Red- Adom – אָדֹם
Yellow- Tsahov – צָהֹב
Green – Yarok – יָרֹק
White- Lavan – לָבָן
Black – Shachor – שָׁחֹר
Blue- Kachol – כָּחֹל
We learned that in Hebrew the adjective comes after the noun and we composed phrases including former vocabulary and colors. For example:
Green table – Shulchan Yarok – שׁוּלְחָן יָרוֹק