Opening day
Welcome back parents and students!
I hope you all had a good summer and I would like you to know how honored we are to have your children continuing or starting their religious and Hebrew studies with us. If you haven’t turned in your registration forms, Debbie Freedman will be on hand Saturday, Sept. 10, to help you with that process. We have a wonderful opening day planned.
Hebrew studies begin at 8:30.
The Alef class, led by Max Shamblott, will jump right in with learning the Alef Bet letters mem, shin and “ah” sounding vowels. The Bet class, led by Andrea Buck, will do some reading and writing refresher exercises. The Dalet class, led by by Rabbi David Steinberg, will resume their prayer studies and reading/translating of the first line of this week’s Torah portion.
Religious studies begin at 10.
In addition to welcoming everyone back and hearing one thing about everyone’s summer, our preschoolers, led by Linda Glaser, will make challah and our kindergarteners, led by Alice Levin, will make their Torah puppets. Both groups will come together to discuss the Jewish custom of Simchat Habat “rejoicing over the daughter” and read “The First Gift,” a book about how people get their names. Our mixed class of first, second and third graders, led by Suzanne Jokela-Moskovits, will take a look at their own English and Hebrew names as well as hear more about Jewish baby naming customs.
Our fourth and fifth graders, led by Leah Goodlaxson, will learn how to find book, chapter and verse in the Torah, go on a Torah scavenger hunt to discover what they will be learning about this year, and begin a discussion about the concepts of Am Yisrael, Eretz Yisrael and b’rit. Our sixth graders, led by Chris King and Deborah Petersen-Perlman, will discuss their closeness with God, share people’s understandings about God and get an introduction to K’tuvim, the writings of the Tanakh, which they will be studying in detail over the next few months.
All students will go up to services around 11:20 to celebrate the naming of the daughter of Heather Lassard, a former teacher in our school. Most will return downstairs for Hebrew TPR (Total Physical Response), an innovative program I was introduced to this summer at Siegal College of Judaic Studies that involves children hearing and responding to Hebrew before they start reading Hebrew and learning grammar. The sixth graders, however, will stay upstairs to hear Chris King read the Haftarah, as they will also begin learning Haftarah trope this year.
And that’s just our opening day. I look forward to seeing all of you.
Andrea Novel Buck