Our first Jewish Enrichment Center-wide theme for the 5775 year is סְלִיחָה (slicha – forgiveness). Over the past few days, we’ve begun to have small group conversations and dramatic explorations about this concept, beginning with the questions:
1. When was a time you said sorry? How did it make you feel?
2. When was a time someone said sorry to you? How did it make you feel?
3. Has someone ever done something mean to you and you did something back to them?
In these conversations Nitzanimers have revealed that they have many thoughts and associations with the concept of revenge, even if they couldn’t exactly define the word itself. We talked about arguments with siblings, conflicts at school, as well as Star Wars, Star Trek, Frozen and Malificent. We began yesterday with these questions about memories and experiences with saying sorry in order to ground our exploration of סְלִיחָה (slicha – forgiveness) in the child’s own experience, before we move on to looking at Torah and rabbinic texts.
Acting out skits about interpersonal conflicts–specifically revenge and apologies– was the first activity we jumped into to explore the concepts raised in our discussion.
I’m looking forward to seeing how our concepts of revenge, holding a grudge and forgiving continue to evolve over the next five weeks, and how we will see these developments in children’s thinking through discussion, skits, and other projects.
