Seventh Grade

Tonight was our first Moving Traditions lesson, in which our seventh graders explored “teen stuff” like finding balance, building community and sharing what is stressful and exciting about becoming a teenager. The students participated in a series of teambuilders (including the one pictured here) to practice physically finding balance before we launched into a discussion about emotionally finding balance during adolescence. We will have another Moving Traditions lesson next week, and then when we resume after Thanksgiving, we’ll launch into the second trimester of electives. Some important announcements:

Today was our last day of Trimester 1 electives! The kids had a great first trimester and lots of adventures, including exploring 5000 year-old Israeli architecture, discussing midrash about Adam & Eve and Jonah, practicing good teamwork while playing frisbee or soccer, cooking Israeli treats, learning about key historical moments in the Holocaust, engaging in conversations about identity, and much, much more.   In addition,

Hey everyone!

The 7th graders had an AMAZING night this week during their elective block.  In Arts & Crafts class, there was a guest speaker (our teacher Leora’s dad) who brought in Israeli artifacts that were literally thousands of years old and had the kids use them as models as they worked on their own clay sculptures. In Judaism & Sports, the kids learned about the current conflict between the NBA and China before and shared their thoughts on what they think is the ethical thing for the NBA to do before shooting some hoops in the gym. In Torah Studies, the kids thought they knew the story of Adam & Eve, but they quickly realized that a close reading of the text leaves one with many interesting questions and takeaways.

Hello families,

The seventh grade electives are going really well! To give a couple of details, this past week, the Jewish Cooking class had a Candy Sukkah building contest (think gingerbread house, but with a sukkah instead!), the Jewish Arts & Crafts class made mezuzahs out of clay, the Judaism & Sports class self-refereed an ultimate frisbee game after discussing the ethics of self-refereeing, the Torah Study class discussed why Jonah ran away and what was the deal with the big fish, the Holocaust Studies class arranged a timeline of key historical dates leading up to the Holocaust, and the Rosh Chodesh girls discussion group continued their conversation around identity.

Hope you all had a meaningful High Holiday season! The last two weeks have been really exciting for 7th graders, now that we have officially launched our electives. This past week, our students were learning how to make Israeli hummus, how to knit (and how knitting shows up in Torah), how Judaism connects to the ethics of sports, how there’s more to the story of Judah than meets the eye, how the Holocaust has affected their classmates’ families, and how to engage in Rosh Chodesh girls’ discussion groups.

This week, in their last “regular” Jewish Studies class for awhile, the 7th graders prepped for the high holidays by discussing one of the most challenging texts read during the days of awe: the binding of Isaac. The students acted out the scene and then worked in chevruta (pairs) to analyze the original text before engaging in a classwide debate about whether Abraham passed God’s test.

Hi families!

Our second week of Yachad was terrific. In our first class, we discussed a theme that was perhaps close the hearts of our seventh graders: to what extent do we have a choice to be Jewish? Students looked at passages of Torah and Talmud to evaluate whether Moses had a choice at the burning bush and whether the Jewish people had a choice at Mt. Sinai. During our Tefillah time, students recited the blessing and Abel volunteered to sound the shofar in front of the whole grade (and he did a great job!)

During our second class, we talked about teens around the world who have made a difference, and many of our Yachad students were especially inspired by Greta Thunberg (and some of them even said they are participating in the Climate Strike this Friday!) As I mentioned in last week’s post, all of the seventh graders will be completing a community service project this year (that we are fondly calling Tikkun Olam-A-Thon) as part of the preparation for their B’Nei Mitzvah.

On Thursday May 9th, the 7th grade students showcased their mitzvah projects at our first annual 7th Grade Mitzvah Fair.