BRINGING THE LIGHT OF HANUKKAH TO YOU

Happy Hanukkah! Thank you to the families who joined us Sunday morning for our Iron Chef Latke Bake Off! Our students created chocolate, banana, carrot, and apple potato latkes, and we think they were the perfect blend of sweet and savory. Try a batch at home, or better yet, let your children help you prepare some latkes for your family Hanukkah Celebration. 

In class this week, we traveled back into time and talked about Hanukkah, the Temple, and Ancient Greek history. To put everything into perspective, we had a mini lesson on biblical time and the calendar, and used the ancient Olympic games as our point of reference. Our conversation took a quick detour and we had a brief discussion about circumcision, or "brit milah" and how the Jews were forbidden to circumcise their baby boys in an attempt to exterminate the Jewish people. 

We had a wonderful discussion about being leaders and bullies, and how the Maccabees may have been both, and we landed in a very interesting conversation about courage and standing up for what is right. We talked about religious freedom in particular, and the importance of educating our non-Jewish friends about the true meaning of Hanukkah.  We talked about being proud of who we are, having the courage to stand up for what we believe, and making sure we respect the beliefs of others, while insisting they respect our beliefs as well.  

Finally, we talked about the importance of supporting our Jewish community, and how lighting the hanukkiah in the window shows solidarity with Jewish people around the world. The lights of the hanukkiah are meant to bring light into the world, and we encourage you to spend some family time together creating memories as the flames of the candles burn low. 

Happy Hanukkah!  

THIS IS WHO WE ARE

As many of you know, our goal in Kitah Dalet is to help our students understand their responsibility to make the world a better place by building relationships with GOD, other people, and the community at large. We constantly push our students to think about their actions, and challenge them to do the right thing, even when it is difficult. We had an interesting discussion about being leaders, and the importance of making choices that have a positive effect on the world. We shared our thoughts about having a negative impact on others, and how when we follow others, we don't always make the best choices. On the other hand, we talked about our own urges to do bad over good, and took a look at some of our personal strengths and weaknesses. Students shared their most positive and negative personality traits, and we shared our answers with our classmates. 

We are nice, kind, holy, positive, funny, helpful, smart, and thoughtful, and we are mean, annoying, negative, questioning, judgmental, selfish, rude, and loud, just to name a few. We talked about how many of us struggle with the same inclinations to do bad and good, and all of us have to work hard to resist the urge to do bad over good. Most importantly, we must remember GOD wants us to be our best selves, and to constantly work towards being the best we can be. 

To conclude our discussion, we watched a short video clip on Cain and Abel, and saw how we are indeed our brother's keepers. Of course, we now understand that "brother" refers to community and others, and we must step up and care for others as well as ourselves. 

Please plan on joining us Sunday morning for our Hanukkah Family Program, we are excited to share the morning with you.