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Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Grade 7 Update: Gesher is Amazing!

This Gesher class continues to amaze me!

It’s been a very busy, rich and rigorous few weeks—
We completed three banners for the Birkot haShachar arts project, each student created a personal birkat ha-bayit (blessing for the home), and, as part of our Jewish Life Cycle Speakers Series, we met with Robin Kahn who taught us about Jewish education.  The following is their thank you note to Robin:
Dear Robin,
Thank you for educating us on the topic of Jewish education, an important part of the Jewish Life cycle.  We learned that Jewish education lasts throughout the duration of one’s life.  We also learned that Jewish learning will never end as the generations go on.  And we learned about the importance of Jewish education to the Jewish community.  We enjoyed the videos of the children singing and the boy dancing.  The text taught us about how God teaches parents to teach their children who will then teach their children and so on about Jewish values.
We hope to learn from you again in the future.
Sincerely yours, The Gesher Class (your favorite!)

The Men’s Club treated our school to a festive Hanukkah celebration with latkes, dreidels and gelt.  Gesher students represented our school in writing a thank you note to Men’s Club too:

Dear Men’s Club,
Thank you for the delicious latkes.  Thank you for your time.  The dreidels  were very fun to use.  We had a lot of fun getting ready for the upcoming holiday! 
We are so grateful for everything that you do for us.  And we are very proud that many of our fathers are members of the Men’s Club.
The Gesher Class (the best class!)
On behalf of the Temple Israel of Natick Religious School


We were rabbinic thinkers discussing developmentally salient questions of should a child who has sold drugs be permitted to attend religious school?  And, if a post bar mitzvah teen shoplifts, should his parents be held responsible?
            Having succeeded on our Thanksgiving campaign, students were excited to embark on a new mitzvah project. Have you noticed the JF&CS Family Table Food Pantry wood box in the temple hallway?  Did you know that our synagogue community is responsible for collecting 45 4-packs of toilet paper each month for the JF&CS Family Table Food Pantry?  Dafne Blacker taught us about this important mitzvah and our students are busy developing ideas to inform our congregation and to generate donations.
            We have also continued to study the weekly Torah portion.  Students have been particularly observant recognizing details, commenting, and working to make personal connections.  Today we watched G-dcast videos to summarize the parshiot from last week, this week and next week:
Vayishlach (last week) http://www.g-dcast.com/vayishlach/

We ended class today with Hanukkah gifts:  chocolate gelt from the Religious School and from HaMorah Margalit, a thinking tool (aka fidget), a dreidel kit (gelt, dreidel and a dreidel-game refresher).  The students expressed genuine appreciation and gratitude for everything that they received.

May your Hanukkah be filled with light, joy and gratitude!

HaMorah Margalit (aka Gretchen Marks Brandt)

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