(no subject)
Oct. 6th, 2002 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasYes, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cheshyre and I went to The Chocolate Party that teddywolf and tigerbright held. Much could be said about it, but others have already said it; I'll content myself by just saying "good people and good chocolate."
So, today, I taught my first Hebrew School class. It went okay. Actually, it went pretty darned well.
I've got ten people officially in my class; seven showed up. They're six-year-olds. When kids showed up, I gave each one a big outline of a hebrew letter for zir to color, and I told zir a little about zir letter. Then we talked a little about what it meant to be Jewish, but that discussion just plain didn't take off, so, instead, I grabbed two big piles of hebrew letters, put them in a big pile in the center of the floor, and the kids matched them. ("Find the two alephs! Great! Now find the two beits!")
After snack and singing, which all the classes do together, we did a little with B'reisheit, the first parsha in the Torah. Those of you from relgions that include the Genesis among your holy books will probably be familiar with it; parshat B'reishet covers three stories most Jews, Christians, and, I think, Moslems, know: "the seven days of creation", "Adam and Eve", and "Cain and Abel". I just did the first one of those stories.
First, I told them about the idea of a "parsha", that we read a piece of the Torah every week, and that this piece was called "B'reisheit", which meant "The Beginning". And I asked them to guess what happened in the story called "The Beginning".
First, someone guessed that we came out of Egypt. I said that was a really imporant beginning (it's the beginning of Judaism as an identified nation, and the beginning of G-d fulfiling G-d's covenant), but that this was before that one. Next someone guessed that it was about Abraham and Sarah, and I said that was also a really imporant beginning, (the beginning of Judaism), but this was before that one. Then someone guessed that it was the beginning of the world, and I said that, yes, that was what this beginning story was about.
I had the kids take a piece of paper each, and fold it into quarters. This gave them eight squares to draw in. I said, "What do you think there was before G-d started to make anything?" and the kid who I'd been warned about as being a discipline problem said "Chaos and space!" and I said, "Right! In Hebrew, that's 'tohu v'bohu'!" He said, "What? I'm *right*? I was just guessing!" and I said, "Yep, you're exactly 100% right, and that's as good a translation of 'tohu v'bohu' as I've ever heard."
So, in the first box, they drew pictures of "tohu v'bohu." Then, in the second box, they seperated out light and darkness, and so on. In the eighth box, for the seventh day, they drew pictures of Shabbat. (G-d created rest and Shabbat on the seventh day.)
Then, after school and staff meetings and working out who's going to be leading singing during snack next week when Mark, the head of the school, is out (answer: me! Go me!), and schmoozing with Adam Rich, a teenager who helps out with teaching some of the classes, Lis took me out to the Harvard Square Octoberfest. She's been after me for a while to go to an Octoberfest or a Mayfair in Harvard Square, because she loves them, and really would rather go with me than without me. So we went and had bratwurst and pizza and Bell and Evans Organic Free-range chicken (wow that was good) and baked plantains and samosas and pakoras and mango lassi and kettle corn. Lis was right. It's fun.
Then we went to Home Depot and got a big piece of wood to put over our dishwasher to act as a countertop.
And I wrote emails to the parents in my class, and wrote up a livejournal entry which told about this stuff and posted it, and I don't know what happened next, because it hasn't happened yet.
cheshyre and I went to The Chocolate Party that teddywolf and tigerbright held. Much could be said about it, but others have already said it; I'll content myself by just saying "good people and good chocolate."So, today, I taught my first Hebrew School class. It went okay. Actually, it went pretty darned well.
I've got ten people officially in my class; seven showed up. They're six-year-olds. When kids showed up, I gave each one a big outline of a hebrew letter for zir to color, and I told zir a little about zir letter. Then we talked a little about what it meant to be Jewish, but that discussion just plain didn't take off, so, instead, I grabbed two big piles of hebrew letters, put them in a big pile in the center of the floor, and the kids matched them. ("Find the two alephs! Great! Now find the two beits!")
After snack and singing, which all the classes do together, we did a little with B'reisheit, the first parsha in the Torah. Those of you from relgions that include the Genesis among your holy books will probably be familiar with it; parshat B'reishet covers three stories most Jews, Christians, and, I think, Moslems, know: "the seven days of creation", "Adam and Eve", and "Cain and Abel". I just did the first one of those stories.
First, I told them about the idea of a "parsha", that we read a piece of the Torah every week, and that this piece was called "B'reisheit", which meant "The Beginning". And I asked them to guess what happened in the story called "The Beginning".
First, someone guessed that we came out of Egypt. I said that was a really imporant beginning (it's the beginning of Judaism as an identified nation, and the beginning of G-d fulfiling G-d's covenant), but that this was before that one. Next someone guessed that it was about Abraham and Sarah, and I said that was also a really imporant beginning, (the beginning of Judaism), but this was before that one. Then someone guessed that it was the beginning of the world, and I said that, yes, that was what this beginning story was about.
I had the kids take a piece of paper each, and fold it into quarters. This gave them eight squares to draw in. I said, "What do you think there was before G-d started to make anything?" and the kid who I'd been warned about as being a discipline problem said "Chaos and space!" and I said, "Right! In Hebrew, that's 'tohu v'bohu'!" He said, "What? I'm *right*? I was just guessing!" and I said, "Yep, you're exactly 100% right, and that's as good a translation of 'tohu v'bohu' as I've ever heard."
So, in the first box, they drew pictures of "tohu v'bohu." Then, in the second box, they seperated out light and darkness, and so on. In the eighth box, for the seventh day, they drew pictures of Shabbat. (G-d created rest and Shabbat on the seventh day.)
Then, after school and staff meetings and working out who's going to be leading singing during snack next week when Mark, the head of the school, is out (answer: me! Go me!), and schmoozing with Adam Rich, a teenager who helps out with teaching some of the classes, Lis took me out to the Harvard Square Octoberfest. She's been after me for a while to go to an Octoberfest or a Mayfair in Harvard Square, because she loves them, and really would rather go with me than without me. So we went and had bratwurst and pizza and Bell and Evans Organic Free-range chicken (wow that was good) and baked plantains and samosas and pakoras and mango lassi and kettle corn. Lis was right. It's fun.
Then we went to Home Depot and got a big piece of wood to put over our dishwasher to act as a countertop.
And I wrote emails to the parents in my class, and wrote up a livejournal entry which told about this stuff and posted it, and I don't know what happened next, because it hasn't happened yet.