Freedom School 5/4 Class Recaps
K-6 and Parents: This weekend, we had our culminating workshop of Building our Spiritual Core, focusing on the objects of prayer.
by imersing ourselves in a core theme of Passover: “from slavery to freedom, from narrowness to expansion.” We explored this theme by unpacking two core texts of the Haggadah and our Saturday morning (shacharit) liturgy: Psalm 118 and Mi Chamocha prayer. We embodied the concept by moving our bodies in different contracted and expansive ways — and we also felt our ways through the meaning of the prayers by singing them with Hazzan Asher. Finally, we created art pieces using a process from the Jewish Studio Project to unpack our relationship to these concepts, and then co-created a seascape of us moving, together, from narrowness to expansiveness. Check out our mural below:
K/1 w/ Laura: K/1 students continued to explore the counting of the omer and the traits/characteristics associated with the weeks - looking at the trait of gevurah, meaning discipline or holding boundaries. The students made their visions of trees of life, which will hold the badges for each of the traits we’ll study, and then we did a gevurah “obstacale course” - many different activities, led by Benjamin our Somchech, around the building in total silence. Could they hold that boundary? They could!
2/3 w/ Anyssa: This week the 2nd/3rd grade cohort reviewed the concepts of anavah (humility) and bikkur cholim (visiting the sick). We played a couple rounds of “telephone” in English and Hebrew(!) to practice active listening in order to get ourselves prepared to learn the V'haeireninu prayer. We did a humility relay to review our commitment to practicing anavah - 2 teams competed in a series of tasks which practiced anavah in different ways (complimenting each other’s strengths, picking up trash in the classroom, and creating affirmation cups for each other). As a bonus, as we wrap up the year, the students made a mural testimony to the strength of the community in the class.
4/5 w/ Doria: It was a meaningful Shabbat for 4/5 as we continued building our spiritual core and learned about the important memorial holiday of Yom HaShoah. We grounded our discussion in the life and poetry of the Hungarian poet and resistance heroine, Hannah Szenes. Students showed tremendous maturity and care as they asked questions related to the Holocaust, which led to conversations about memory, mourning, and how the lessons and stories from the Shoah (both about oppression and resistance/liberation) are relevant to our lives today.
6th w/ Jaime: This Shabbat, the 6th grade students dabbled in the mystical arts of golem-making. We explored the Ashkenazi folklore story of the golem of Chelm, who helped the rabbi, and thought about what middot (traits) we might need assistance with in our own lives.