Class update – Juniors, March 2010

The juniors’ class spent March’s lesson learning about the Ethiopian Jewish community and Ethiopian Jewish observance of Passover. Because Ethiopian Jews, or Beta Israel, practice a pre-Talmudic form of Judaism, they celebrate Passover and other holidays in some ways that are different from other Jews. Students participated in a role-playing activity where they acted the parts of Beta Israel people living in a village in Ethiopia in the 1970s. The activity walked students through the different stages of a Beta Israel Passover celebration, from the cleaning and inspection of homes for chometz to the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb to the Kes’s (rabbi’s) oral retelling of the Passover story. Students ‘broke the fast’ in character afterward, eating pieces of injera spread with hot pepper sauce just as Beta Israel people would to enjoy their first taste of leavened bread at the holiday’s end. Through the role-playing, students also learned about the challenges and discrimination Beta Israel people faced in Ethiopia, and discovered how tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews were rescued from civil war and famine and brought to Israel by airlift in the ’80s and ’90s. Acting the parts of Beta Israel people, students learned, additionally, how these Ethiopian Jews see strong parallels between the ancient Jewish exodus from Egypt celebrated in the Passover story and their own exodus from Ethiopia to Israel. The lesson concluded with an opportunity for the class to write a final act for their characters, in which these characters reflected on the opportunities and challenges presented by their new lives in Israel. We wrapped up the morning with some time outside; the class played some games and reflected on the things they had learned so far as well as the things that they wanted to do in the remaining time this year.

Class update – Pre-School, March 2010

March’s class focused on Passover. We started the day by working through our Humanistic Judaism packets. We will finish these next class and everyone will take them home! Everyone has learned a lot about what Humanistic Judaism means through these coloring books, both by reading through it and by making up our pictures to illustrate it. After that, we read a book explaining what the holiday of Passover is and different objects or words that we all should know when we celebrate Passover. Once we learned all of those great words and objects, the students did a scavenger hunt for many of those objects. I’d hidden pictures of the contents of a seder plate, along with some pictures of matzo, around our classroom. Everyone searched the room for the pictures, and once we found them and identified all of them, we made a big seder plate together with the pictures. It was a great way to introduce the students to the different foods they would see on their seder plates at home or in friends’ homes. After learning all about our seder plate, we went upstairs and worked with the Middles group to make matzo covers for the Or Emet seder. Hopefully everyone enjoyed seeing our students’ great artwork on their tables during the Seder!

Class Update – Middles, March 2010

We worked on phase II of our Mezuzot project…painting! The painted mezuzot are ready to be filled with their scrolls and mounted to doorways. Muriel Sterne provided our Hebrew lesson while also teaching us about Passover. For the last portion of class, we were joined by the pre-schoolers. We all worked side by side making beautiful Matzoh covers for the Or Emet seder and to take home.