Jan 18
There’s a morning ברכה (berakhah – blessing) that says פוקח עורים (pokeach ivrim – open the eyes of the blind). We’re not blind. But as we learned in Yetzirah this week, there’s a lot we don’t see. How do we “open our own eyes” and those of our friends? Here, children… LISTEN LOOK CAREFULLY …
Jan 15
Kicking off our new Boker Tov unit, the Shorashim-ers were curious about a few yellow paper cut outs of the sun on our shulchan. Morah Miriam: What’s this? Shorashim-er: This sun in the sky looks like a gear. Gears make the world go. Morah Miriam: Does the sun make the world go? Shorashim-er: Well the …
Nov 20
These are the smiles of children who argued, took the time to hear what each other was saying, and worked things out!
Nov 15
We’re learning what the ancient rabbis say about the flood story. One of the rabbis says that there was a miracle to fit all of the animals and food onto the ark. Rabbi Rebecca: What’s a miracle? Boy 1: Well, I can’t explain that! Rabbi Rebecca: Let’s see if we can find some words… …
Nov 15
This week, Nitzanimers learned what that ancient rabbis wondered about Noach’s Ark. Some of the rabbis’ questions/answers were similar to the Nitzanimers’, and some sparked open dialogue filled with different opinions and even more questions! A girl’s question (What happened to the fish during the flood?) sparked a conversation: Boy 1: “That’s easy, the fish …
Nov 01
First Grade Boy: “I think that parts of the story are true and parts are not. Like it’s true that there was a flood but it didn’t destroy everything. Just the bad people. I don’t know if all of them [the people] were bad. I think there was just one other family that was just …
Oct 25
This week in Shteelim, we continued our exploration of the Noah story and introduced a new idea of looking for similarities and differences. This idea ties into our greater theme of keshet, in that there are many different kinds of tzeva’im (colors) that fit into the keshet together. When we were working on our leaf …
Oct 24
It’s something we wrestle with: are the stories in the Torah true? What does “true” mean, anyway? “When was this story written?” “Is it true?” “I wonder if any of us were alive when this happened…” (After being asked by another Nitzanimer if the story is true:) “We talked about it last year and I …
Oct 24
Last week, Nitzanim focused on understanding the story of Noah and the ark as it’s written in the Torah. We didn’t allow ourselves the luxury of imaginging details; our drawings were strictly what we could know from the Torah’s words. This week, we started to notice what the Torah doesn’t tell us about the story, and boy, …
Oct 24
The Torah Says (from Genesis Chapter 6) “God said, ‘I will wipe them [humans] out, together with all the animals, creeping things, and birds, for I am sorry that I made them (verse 6).’” “…the earth was filled with violence (verse 7).” Our Careful Readers Say: Girl 1: Why did he [God] want to …
