It was wonderful reuniting with our
amazing Gesher students! We shared highlights of our winter vacations
and then jumped into Jewish learning. We
reviewed the Jewish calendar noticing how the Hebrew months fell compared to the
Gregorian months and also the placement of Jewish holidays. Did you know that there are four new years on
the Jewish calendar? Rosh Hashanah, Tu B’Shevat (the 15th
day of the Hebrew month of Shevat
also known as the New Year for trees), the first of Nissan and the first of Elul.
Since Tu B’Shevat will fall on
January 31st this year, we wondered about this holiday learning that
it began as a sort of tax year for fruit bearing trees and was transformed by
the mystics of Tzefat into a celebration of nature as part of God’s
creation. The Torah is compared to a tree:
Etz Chaim hee l’machazeekim bah, (it
is a tree of life for those who hold fast to it…) and people are also compared
to trees: Pirkei Avot (3: 17)
presents a comparison between humans and trees suggesting that a person whose
learning exceeds his/her deeds is like a tree with shallow roots and a person
whose deeds exceed his/her learning is like a tree with deep roots and sparse
branches.
Bar Argaman introduced our students
to the Israeli Scouts explaining that their uniforms are khaki, the color of
sand and that each scouting session includes four parts: game time, content
time, point of view time, and scouting time.
Students had the opportunity to play a scouting game and to learn the
Russian Vein Blocker, a first aide skill.
In the final hour we looked at a
very famous mishna from Pirkei Avot (1:14):
If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I
am for myself only, what am I?
And if not now, when?
Students developed their own
interpretations of this mishna and
then used the i-pads to create video commentaries.
In a future session, we will enjoy
more Tu B’Shevat texts, some tastes
and perhaps a Torah Godly Play Tu
B’Shevat story. We also look forward
to welcoming Robin Kahn to our class
to be a special guest speaker as part of our Jewish Life Cycle guest speakers
series.
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