Religious School Update – May 2, 2024
Hello Everyone,
First of all, we wanted to thank all of our families who helped out and attended the Seder dinner this past Saturday. The kids had a lot of fun finding the afikomen. Our next Religious School session will be this Sunday, May 5, and then we will have a break the following week on May 12 for Mother’s Day.
And now for the recap. Rabbi Dean led our Tefillah service before the kids went to their separate classes. The younger kids finished up their Passover packets and completed their matzah covers for their family Seders. At the same time, the B’nai Mitzvah class explored how to modify Passover traditions to give them a 21st century twist. The kids brainstormed what the 10 plagues would look like if they were based on disrupting life in urban areas dependent on technology (instead of rural areas dependent on agriculture). The new plagues would include electrical power outages, device breakage, natural disasters, sun flares knocking out satellites, etc. They also reimagined the lyrics to Chad Gadya. For the second half of class, we reviewed the B’nai Mitzvah prayers and continued working on their ancestry projects.
And that is about all for now. Please remember to sign up for bringing snacks for the kids along with hosting an Oneg if your family has not done so already. We still have openings for one Shabbat in May and two Shabbats in June. Thanks everyone and we’ll see you Sunday!
Best,
David
Religious School Update – May 23, 2024
May 23, 2024 by tbhrich • Beit Midrash
Hi Everyone,
It was great to see everyone on Sunday. Now that we are in the home stretch for the school year, we will have next week off because of Memorial Day, our final full session on June 2, and then our annual Mensch Ceremony/Ice Cream social on June 9. For the last day, we will have our regular Tefillah service, an hour or so for the Mensch Ceremony, and then another half hour to an hour for the ice cream social. We encourage all parents to stay for the ceremony and contribute one ice cream treat for the kids. It will be an excellent finish for the year! We also encourage everyone to stay for the membership meeting, which will start that day at 1:00 p.m.
And now for the recap. The younger grades were finishing up their lessons and completing end of year projects. The B’nai Mitzvah class spent the first half of class learning about how Israel became a nation along with what was required to survive during the Israeli War for Independence in 1948. We all agreed that cohesion, better planning, supplies from abroad, and division among the Arab combatants allowed Israel to win the war against long odds. We then looked up fun facts about Israel and came up with a Top 10 list. The list included that glue in Israel is Kosher, the largest sock mosaic (12,000 pairs) was created in Israel, and that at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, a ladder has stood at a window for over 200 years because none of the six sects of Christianity that use the church have claimed it! For the second half of class, the students worked on their Ancestry posters. They will complete the posters on June 2 and be able to take them home to show their family symbols, roots, and history in visual form. They will also be able to log into the ancestry site and show the family trees they created. It should be quite illuminating.
And that about covers it for now. Everyone have a wonderful long weekend and we will see you in June!
Best,
David