Most of our morning was a Service
Sunday activity coordinated by Katie Hamelburg.
Kelsey Hampton from the Natick Service Council (“neighbors helping
neighbors”) taught Temple Israel 6th and 7th grade
students and 7th grade students from Temple Beth Am about the
amazing work of the NSC. It provides a
food pantry, after school enrichment, and case management for 700 families in
Natick. The students then created posters illustrating needs in our community
and what they could do to help. They learned that NSC will be providing
Thanksgiving meals for 220 families and the students made Thanksgiving greeting
cards to enhance the gifts of food. For more information about the very good
work of the Natick Service Council and to learn about how you can get involved,
please go to https://natickservicecouncil.org/.
After our hands-on activities, we
were reminded that Jews welcome new babies into the Covenant with blessings and
by giving them names. Students were
invited to think about the origin of their names; for whom were you named? What do you know about that person? What attributes do your parents hope that you
will share with your namesake?
We learned a new mishna from Pirkei Avot (4:13).
Rabbi Shimon says, there are three crowns:
the crown of the Torah,
the crown of the priesthood
and
the crown of royalty,
and the crown of a good name rises above all
the others.
We learned that keter is the Hebrew word for crown and
the Hebrew expression shem tov means good name.
We also considered another text from
the midrash:
In life you discover that people are called
by three names:
One is the name the person is called by his
or her father and mother;
One is then name people call him or her; and
One is the name one acquires for one-self.
The best is the name one acquires for one’s
self. (Kohelet Rabbah 7)
We thought about what attributes
and behaviors people would associate with our names and how we will achieve our
own keter shem tov, a crown of a good
name.
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