Posted on January 23, 2018
On Sunday in Kiah Bet we began discussing Tu B’Shvat. I was impressed at how much many of the students remembered about the holiday; that it is considered the New Year of the tress, in Israel it is a time to plant trees and that the holiday falls at the end of January or in February. Many of the students also have great memories of planting parsley on the holiday when they were younger. We took the conversation a step further by looking at the holiday in relation to the Jewish calendar, learning that “Tu” represents the number 15 in Hebrew letters (ט and ו) and that the holiday falls on the 15th of the Hebrew month of Shevat. We learned that each Hebrew month is a lunar month, a full cycle of the moon and that many of the Jewish holidays occur in the middle of the lunar month. If it is a clear night on Tu B’Shvat next Wednesday night I encourage you to go outside and look for the full moon.
We read the book”The Perfect Prayer” by Donald Rossoff which is based on an old teaching about the sounds of the word Shema and we continued learning the V’Ahvta prayer with Canter Ken and creating hand motions to accompany the words. After Ken left we studied the English translation of the prayer, reading about remembering God’s commandments wherever we are. The class is about to begin to illustrate our interpretation of the prayer on a mural in our room, I can’t wait to see how it comes together.
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