In preparation for Purim this week (Yay!), we started our lesson today by taking a deep dive into the Megillah, a.ka. the Scroll of Esther. We looked at the differences between Megillah and Torah scrolls, noting the beautiful illustrations and ornaments  that can be found on the former. Torah scrolls remain beautiful in terms of their calligraphy, but without embellishment.

Here's a medieval illustrated Megilah as an example.

We listened to different regional chanting of the book of Ester: Ashkenazi, Yemenite (Gabe's personal favorite), 

Moroccan,   Yerushalmi, and Miron's favorite, the Spanish Portuguese, 

courtesy of the amazing alto Cantor Ocanto-Romo of Congregation Ohev Shalom in PA.

Then we looked at the Liturgy of the holiday, listening to  and reviewing the Al Hannism prayer (used on Chanukah, Purim and sometimes on Yom Haatzmaut).  We spent time talking in our chevruta (study pairs) about the meaning of the holiday. Next, we took an anonymous survey about how personally important Purim is to us, and how we view it in contrast with the other costume holiday middle schoolers know about, Halloween. We ended the lesson with another edition of “What's Gabe Lying About?”, which was played this time with Israeli news headlines.  

 

Don't forget to bring a tallis for next week!

 

For this week's  lesson on American Jewish history, we took a deep dive into the events of October 7th, 1965. That moment in history, of course, was when Dodgers ace Sandy Koufax sat out game one of the world series, as October 7th was the first day of Yom Kippur.

The decision to sit out game one of the world series sent seismic shock-waves through the American Jewish community, as a non-Orthodox American Jew to with a famous American identity refused to give up his practice on Judaism on its holiest of days.  We also looked at events in our daily lives where we had to balance our Jewish and American identities, such as missing school to attend high holiday service or arguing at the dinner table. 

Koufax was a trailblazer to those who wanted to hold true to both  their religious and  secular lives;  American Jews could now ask themselves "If he did it, why cant I?"  Koufax also hand thrown out a challenge at American Jews who  had-  or were readying to eject their Jewishness in the name of their American identity; American Jews could now  be asked "If he did it, why won't you?"


This Sunday was our first look at Purim material for the year, and what better way to introduce the topic that with an essay from our good friend Tiffany B. Now of course, Tiffany's essays always leave a lot to be desired, especially within the realm of facts, and that is where our sixth graders come in to help. In groups, they went over Tiffany B's work, and earned points  for finding her mistakes and fixing them. At the end of the activity, the students tally up their corrections, and whoever has the most points gets inducted into the Sixth Grade Hall of Fame. This weeks Hall of Fame Inductee is Maxwell G,  who found 37 things wrong with Tiffany B's paper. Way to go Max!