Dear Parents, The children have been focusing on the Simchat Torah holiday! We celebrated with the entire school in the sanctuary, singing Simchat Torah songs and dancing around the Torah scrolls. We learned that Simchat Torah signifies the Rejoicing of/with the Torah, celebrating the completion of the end of the yearly cycle of reading the Torah, and the beginning of the new cycle. We visited with Rabbi Josh in the Sanctuary, where he showed the children the Torah scrolls and explained how we roll them again from the beginning, reading parts from it each week. One child remarked that “if we wanted to read the whole thing all at once, we would have to sleep here [the sanctuary] and then we would miss our mommies and daddies.” The children learned that the Torah holds the stories of B’nei Yisrael (the Israelites), our ancestors, and that the Israelites originated in Canaan, migrated to Egypt and back to Canaan before entering the land of Israel and naming it after themselves. Each child had an opportunity to read the last verse of the Torah with Rabbi Josh. Rabbi Josh also told the children about the Mitzvot (commandments) from the Torah that guide us in our daily lives, and that each letter and word in the Torah is written carefully by a special scribe. The children were very proud to have this honor! We had a meaningful and insightful discussion, comparing and differentiating between the Torah scrolls and one of our Hebrew books, Shaul HeChatul (Pete the Cat). The children took time to Compare and Contrast; they noted and compared the size and shapes of the letters, the lack of ‘dots’ (vowels) in the Torah and that the Torah did not have any pictures. Some additional observations included:
“The Torah is in Hebrew and the book is in Hebrew.” “Well, the Torah is in Hebrew because Hebrew was the first language that was ever made.” “The book is in Hebrew because it’s from Israel.” “The Torah has a dress and the book doesn’t.” “They have different kinds of pages; the Torah is a scroll.” “They have different stories; the Torah has lots of stories, but the book only has one about a cat.” “The Torah has a story about Moses and more stories.” “We can’t touch the Torah with our fingers but the book you can touch.” The children sang Simchat Torah songs during music with Ditza and danced with the colorful flags that they made. Two of the songs are Sisu veh Simchu B’Simchat Torah (Rejoice and be Happy at Simchat Torah) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8daG_5aXh7g and Torah Tziva Lanu (Moshe commanded us a Torah). Special Dates:
Shabbat Shalom! Shoshi and Meirav
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Shoshi Persellin Archives
March 2020
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