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Be a Mentsch!! – Lessons from the Torah

As educators of Jewish children, we enthusiastically guide our children toward becoming compassionate, dependable, and morally upright human beings. In short, our primary responsibility is to help each of our kids discover what it means to be a “mentsch.” So what does the Torah mention about mentschen? Well, there is the list of 613 laws recorded and classified by Maimonides in the 12th century.

This month-long project highlights four kid-friendly Torah stories and four of the basic mentsch-making values that they inspire.

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The Big Ten – Inside and Out: An Exploration of the 10 Commandments for Shavuot

Shavuot provides a wonderful opportunity for study sessions. This project proposes the rediscovery of the Ten Commandments through multiple activities based on the different perceptions and spectrums from which they can be studied. The project also incites the learner to explore nuances in the relationship between the one who Commands and the one who is Commanded, and apply the themes of the Commandments to modern life. The participants will approach the subject by exploring their own ability to define classification categories and creatively write parodies based on the Decalogue.

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Lag Baomer: Much More Than a Number

The program begins with an activity dealing with the Jewish calendar between Pesach and Shavuot and the analysis of the meaning of the counting of the omer, followed by another activity relating to the numerical value of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet (gematria). Then the values that guided the Jews in the generation of Akiva and Bar Kochba are analyzed and illustrated with two cooperative games, and finally the historical events and Jewish leaders remembered on Lag B’Omer are reviewed.

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The Torah Personified

If at Rosh Hashanah we rethink our relationship with G_d, on Yom Kippur we attempt to renew the bond connecting us to ourselves, and at Succot we find our place within the community anew, then Simchat Torah is the Jewish holiday on which we again reflect on the relationship we establish (or fail to establish) with the Torah as a significant text for our identity and our tradition.
The author compares and contrasts academicist paradigms with the significant study of the Biblical text in communitarian environments, inviting us to set the “objective” approach aside—if only for a moment—in order to achieve a focus that, instead of dissociating us from the text, places us in a dialogical relationship to it.

by Rabbi Joshua Kullock

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R-e-s-p-e-c-t, find out what it means to me: A Lag B’Omer Message

This article returns to the roots of Lag Baomer to explore the origins and reasons behind the ways in which the period of the counting of the omer is observed. By delving into the history of this time period (just after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E), in particular the path of Rabbi Akiva and his students the power of optimism, perseverance and most specifically respect are revealed.

by Rabbi Micha Turtletaub

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