A Chanukah Apology, The Waffle Song, and Hall of Fame Inductees

 Dear Parents,

If you have been recently pestered by a sixth grader to purchase any luxury pastries, we would like to offer an apology. Last week was our Chanukah class. With a holiday as dynamic and loved as Chanukah, we felt that it was very important for our sixth graders to see different ways that Jews celebrate the Holiday of Lights. The class opened up with this  Sephardic Chanukah song (https://www.shearithisrael.org/content/ahaba-betanugim-hanukkah)

 preformed by Rabbi Ira Rhode of congregation Shearith Israel, America's first Jewish Congregation Yep, you read that right, AND they have a great history to boot, which you can read about here: https://www.shearithisrael.org/history

The next stop on our cultural journey of Chanukah was Israel, where we got to see the beauty of cutting edge Israeli Sufganiot which must be seen to be beleived-- just look at one of this year's offerings from a major bakery chain in Israel: https://www.roladin.co.il/מתחם-החגים/חנוכה/ 

.  Those tubes stuck in some of them are "chaserim", which provide an extra squirt of filling when you reach the part of the doughnut that doesn't have any! 

 

After our cultural journey, we read Chapter 2 of  the 1st Book of Maccabees,  studying the will of Mattathais, whose five sons led the revolt afer he died (can you name all five brothers without google or wiki?  There's Judah and....? See below for the answers).We then tested the vast knowledge of our studentswith a Chanukah Trivia game. We would like to honor the students who won the Chanukah Trivia game by enshrining their names on the first ballot of the 2020 Sith Grade Hall of Fame:

Nava

Julian

Becky

Ayla

Oliver

M&M

Chag Urim Sameach! A happy festival of Lights!

and the answer is.....

According to 1st Maccabees,  Mattathias had five sons: Yehonatan(also called Gaddi/the Lucky),  Shimon(also called Thassi/the Counselor), Judah (also called Maccabeus/the Hammer), Eleazar (also called Avaran/the Spear), and Yonatan (also called Apphus/the Diplomat).