November 16th, Developing a Relationship to God

Even though there was a chill in the air on Monday evening, the warmth our Seekers students brought to the Romemu Center was unmatched by any of the natural elements. This week, we continued our discussions about God in our unit on Jewish theology. 

Tali's class worked on reframing some questions around God. She posited that instead of asking "Do you believe in God?" or "What does God look like?" maybe we could ask "When is God?" "When do you feel connected?" "When do you feel awe/wonder?" These questions helped our students identify feelings of holiness, rather than grappling with questions that do not have immediate and certain answers.

Grace's class was similarly asked "When do you feel holy, special, or connected to yourself?" Theo explained that she feels holy and connected to herself when she feels caring towards other people around her and when she shares in important moments with them. In response to the question "What is something unique and important about you?" Kuba exclaimed that he feels special when he is building something new.

Arielle's class considered the different names for God. They discussed how those different names relate to Judaism and devised their own best and worst names for God. Sammie was thoughtful about this assignment, and shared his answers eagerly with the class. 

Adira's class created personal spirituality maps to reflect on the different ways in which they felt connected to God. Micah said "I connect to a higher power when I am dancing." Leora added "Today, I believe in the power of group discussion." Adira's class is our oldest class and they are doing a fantastic job delving into these complex ideas and relating it to their own lives.

And now...for some Hebrew Highlights!

• Grace's class played "Aleph Bet Spaghetti" to practice Hebrew letter recognition in a multi-sensory way. Each student received a piece of felt and a pile of dried fettuccini. They broke apart the fettuccini to form Hebrew letters, and made sure to pay extra attention to illustrating the differences between letters that looked very similar (such as hay and chet, or vav and zayin.)
• In Arielle's class, Lark and Anna have both made incredible progress in learning Hebrew script!
• Leilah's younger class began learning about Chanukkah! They learned the difference between a menorah and the Chanukkiah, practiced counting to ten in Hebrew, and began learning the Chanukkah blessings.
• The students in Leilah's older class have been learning how to write their Hebrew names. Next week they will present their Hebrew names to the class.

Monday was a special day because after Seekers we had one of our monthly family B Mitzvah workshops! Our B Mitzvah cohort is a two year program where B Mitzvah families learn together about emerging adolescence through a Jewish lens, build community and explore aspects of their Jewish identity and practice. Rabbi Ingber and Rabbi Rivera lead the teachings this week and we learned about the sacred acts of putting on tefillin and tallitot. Our students are remarkable, and we cannot wait to continue learning with them. 

Until next week chaverim! 

L'hitraot!