Class update – Juniors, December 2009

The December juniors class, organized around a Hanukkah theme, focused on the ways that historical explanation can differently inform how contemporary Jews celebrate and think about the holiday. Class started off with a game of dreidel; students played for gelt and had a chance to re-familiarize themselves with some Hebrew letters. Then the class worked to solve a riddle that engaged them in thinking about how the Hebrew letters on the dreidel connect to the rest of the Hebrew alphabet; taking the phrase “Nes Gadol Haya Sham,” the celebrated acronym that takes the dreidel-letters as its basis, they used phonetic principles to spell the words out in Hebrew, and employed a glossary of terms to discover that this phrase translates as “A great miracle happened here.” They discussed the significance of this phrase to the standard retelling of the Hanukkah story and its ‘miracle of lights,’ and then moved on to some theater activities. Two groups of students read two different accounts of the Hanukkah story–one a traditional retelling of the Maccabees’ triumph over Greek oppressors, while the other (supported by most contemporary scholars) an account suggesting that the Maccabees were actually involved in a civil war with more assimilated, Hellenized Jews in Jerusalem (and King Antiochus just intervened). Each group created a mini-play about their version of the Hanukkah story and presented it to the class, and their performances became a springboard for discussion about the reasons one historical explanation might be promoted by Jewish people as opposed to another, more historically true, explanation. The lesson finished with rehearsal and final planning time for the Hanukkah play “Herschel and the Hanukkah Goblins.”

Class Summary – Pre-school, December 2009

Since the Humanistic Judaism packets were such a big hit last month, the students continued to work on them again this week. We finished up the section on what it means to be Jewish and have now moved into what it means to be Humanistic. We’re talking about the fact that we below to a world family along with own family and the Jewish family we’ve been talking about. We’ll continue working on these packets until we’re through with them, a little bit at a time, as the student’s seem to enjoy them and we’re about to discuss challenging but important topics.

This week we learned another new word” be’vakasha, which means please. Because our version of duck, duck, goose helped the student’s learn the word mayim in the last session, we worked on learning the word be’vakasha in the same way. Everyone seemed to get it, but learning new words are hard so it would be great if the student’s could try and practice these words at home.

We also practice the student’s parts in the Chanukkah play with the middle’s class and everyone got to be at least two characters! The students did a great job mooing, meowing, neighing, and making noise as children. I’m sure everyone will do smashing at the real thing! To learn a bit more about Hanukkah before it starts, we also read a book about how one family celebrated Hanukkah, complete with drediels, latkes, and the menorah.

Class Summary, Middles – December 2009

We spent some type talking about famous Jewish people. Many of the students talked about famous Jews they had learned about themselves such as Albert Einstein, Shel Silverstein, Natalie Portman and Anne Frank. Of course we talked about Hanukkah and in our Hebrew lesson with Muriel we learned words associated with the holiday. We also sang the song S’vivon which we later taught to the pre-school students. The remainder of the class was spent rehearsing for the Hanukkah puppet show. We has a great time practicing and hope the audience enjoyed it!

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