Kitah Bet Update

Be happy, it's Adar!
Kitah Bet has been having lots of Purim fun these last couple of weeks, and the fun will continue this week.!We have made and decorated masks, created a Purim matching game and recreated our own Purim story ( a la Mad Libs).

Please bring in your contribution for the Mishloach Manot project that we will working on this Sunday. This will enable us to send gifts to members of the Jewish community who would not otherwise receive any.

Shabbat Shalom
Morah Robinson

Kitah Hey Class Update

Dear Parents,

Our students have spent most of the year learning Jewish Values through our Torah studies.  A way in which the kids " give back" has been in participating in making Play-Doh for children who are living in community Shelters. Under the guidance of Morah Gawel are kids have been creating packages which include blankets & books etc. to be delivered to local Shelters in Metro Detroit. This Sunday they will continue this mitzvah & will be making Mishloach Manot packages. One of the Mitzvot for the holiday of Purim is giving gifts of food to your family & friends. Purim begins this Wedns. evening, March 23. CSZ will be having Megillah reading, Carnival & a fun night for all, I hope you will be able to join us. Looking forward to seeing you there!

 

Shabbat Shalom,

Cillia Kleiman

 

 

 

Kitah Gan Update

This week we were lucky to work with Kittah Aleph. We broke into small groups and each group, led by a madrich, did a character of one of the main people in the Purim story. As part of their work, they dressed cardboard cutouts as if they were their person. Then they discussed what their character would say during the Purim shpeil that the class will put on next week. We started rehearsals this week and hopefully will have great videos to send home of their performances next week.

We also had a guest story reader share a Purim tale involving a real little bear! Rabbi Richman, one of the rabbinical candidates shared a great story from the PJ library.

Please remember to send in items for mishloach manot on Sunday.

Shabbat Shalom,

Morah Emma and Morah Alisa

Hebrew Class Update

Dear 4th - 6th grade families, 

 Although next week is Purim, this week we switched our focus to the holiday of Pesach in order to allow enough time for our studies. The students began working on reading and becoming familiar with the 4 Questions, the items on the Seder Plate and the order of the Seder. Click here and scroll to the bottom of the page to hear Hazzan Propis chant the Four Questions. We hope that everyone will be prepared to "wow" you all with their knowledge during your holiday celebrations, as well as to perform the order of the Seder with the accompanying hand motions. So far everyone is doing a great job and we look forward to continuing our learning over the coming weeks. 

 

Wishing you all a peaceful Shabbat with your families. 

 

B'Shalom,

Morah Dona Levinson 

Morah Toby Schlussel 

Morah Katz Hebrew Class Update

This coming Sunday, we will take part in putting together Mishloach Manot.  We will prepare care packages in honor of Purim and are excited to work together to bring a little sweetness to the community around us.

Although Purim is next week, we have already begun discussing Pesach.  We have been reviewing the Four Questions, Order of the Seder and the Seder Plate.  We are working towards having each one of your students having the ability to lead all four of the questions and teach all of your participants the song (with hand motions) of the Order.  

The kids have great insight into the meaning of many of the Pesach symbols and we have been discussing the Hebrew vocabulary of the Haggadah.

Click here and scroll to the bottom of the page to hear Hazzan Propis chant the Four Questions.

We wish everyone a safe and restful Shabbat!

Morot Katz and Zachor

Kitah Vav Class Update

Hello All!

 We had a great week this week! We are moving forward in our Shemot text and talking about the section where Pharaoh decides to put a road block in front of the Jews, so he refuses to let them have straw (needed for making bricks), and Pharaoh expects the Jews to fill their brick quota, without the materials needed. Clearly, it is impossible.  The foremen (also Jewish) are in charge of the slaves and things go a bit haywire.  The slaves blame the foremen, the foremen blame Pharaoh, Pharaoh blames Moses, and Moses blames God for things going South.  This passage reminds me of my childhood home.

 My brother, sister, mother and I were always pointing fingers and passing the blame up and down the chain of command.  It was a mad house.  I also remember (ok.. in all honesty, things still kind of operate this way) that even though my brother and sister and I did not get along - as in I would have bitten off my sister's arm to ride shotgun on any given day.. and at 43, I probably still would...  - and we fought incessantly, that when my parents were being "unreasonable" (you know.. like they refused to let us have ice cream 3 x in a day, or they thought that playing indoor water balloon tag at 1 a.m. was a bad idea)... when that kind of 'parental abuse of authority' was happening in the Silverman household, that my brother, sister and I would band together to "take down" the dictatorship that was my parents.

 Don't get me wrong. We HATED each other.  I spent the better part of my childhood convincing my sister that she was adopted and trying to change my brother's perfect A report card to Cs, just for entertainment (I was, I might add, quite skilled at using carbon copy paper on his report card. Luckily, I was a child of the 70 and 80s, because my snark never would have survived the digital age), but when my mom or dad was ... you know... being a parent, David, Jessica and I were tight.  We would do whatever it took to make sure that the Silverman kids WON the war against the raging dictatorship of mom and dad.  We didn’t give up. We were united.  Now the second we got our way, we continued hitting and pushing each other, but that's another story... another time...

 We talked about this dynamic (minus the part where I used to try to derail my brother's perfect report card and dismember my sister), and about how we have groups of people that we engage with, with whom we don't get along, BUT once we have a greater enemy, we tend to band together.  The kids TOTALLY got this.  All you have to do is say: think of  a class that you don't particularly love the teacher (naturally, I told them that I was SURE I was not in their minds :)), then think about the kids in that class and the one's that you don't particularly get along with or like.  Now think about a time when that teacher was super unfair: what did you all do?  Unanimously, they said "we all get together and talk about the teacher." Some things don't change.  We did the same thing in the 70s and 80s.  A "greater evil" is the greatest unifier.

 Now, back to Shemot.  The Israelites are all fighting with each other. They are mad at their fellow slaves. Mad at the taskmasters. Mad at Moses. Moses is Mad at God.  And God does not act like my parents did in good old 1979, instead of doling out consequences and subtly veiled child-friendly curses, God tells Moses "I got this covered."... or something like that.  God basically says, "wait til Pharaoh sees the show.. .and MAN do I have a good one to put on."  This is a turning point in the narrative. The Jews will band together and unify against Pharaoh.  That is, until things go good for a minute or two, and then they all complain again, but we are not there yet!

 To emphasize this point, we had a lego activity where the kids had to build 50 legos in 10 minutes, all of equal size and all with wheels on them. They were in groups, unable to speak to each other  and they could only use one hand to build.  Each group had a taskmaster who could talk and tell them what to do and yell (within reason.)  The task was impossible. There were only 8 wheels in the bin.  The kids got frustrated and mad. They started breaking rules. They blamed each other.  It was complete entropy.  And it perfectly exemplified the system that fell apart in the torah.  We watched a bit of the Lego movie (more to come on that and how we will tie it in). Finally, the rabbinical candidate came Tuesday and spoke to us about anti-Semitism a bit. Sunday, Mr. Miles, our Ramah fellow extraordinaire will join us to bring our lesson to a new level.  Can't wait.

 Have a great week, and just an FYI, that I did restrain myself and my sister still has all of her limbs intact. And I am also sure that sitting in the front seat as a child is not a safety issue, but a group of moms somewhere in the late 80s decided that they couldn’t take listening to their kids fight over shotgun anymore, and so a law was mandated to put all children under 12 in the back seat. Really: it is only logical....

 See you Sunday,

Leah

Hebrew Class Update

Dear 4th - 6th grade families, 

 This week we worked with all 3 grades on the Kiddush (blessing of the wine). We began by explaining to the students that the Kiddush is said every Shabbat by Jews all around the world, and that its words remind us of the Torah's teaching that our ancestors were freed from slavery in Egypt 3,500 years ago. They then worked very hard on reading each word, and with the help of our very knowledgeable Madrich, Sam Arnold, we learned the melody and sang together as a class. Some of the kids were already fairly familiar with the prayer, but most were not. It was a wonderful week of learning together.  In order to reinforce the reading and correct pronunciation of some of the more challenging words, we ended both sessions with a fun game of Hebrew tic-tac-toe :) 

Although Purim is not quite upon us yet, before we know it we will be celebrating Pesach. In the coming weeks we will focus on reading the MaNishtana (4 questions) as well as the order of the Seder.

 Wishing you all a peaceful Shabbat. We look forward to seeing everyone again on Sunday. 

 

B'shalom,

 Morah Dona Levinson 

 Morah Toby Schlussel 

 

Morah Katz Class Update

Shalom 4th- 6th Grade Families-

We had a great week of learning and sharpening our Hebrew reading skills through various reading games, like Tic-Tac-Toe, Popcorn and Follow Along Stump.  We are so proud at the high level of reading your students have attained this year.  They are becoming much more fluent and precise.

We look forward to learning together this upcoming Sunday.  Remember to Spring Forward before your go to sleep on Saturday night.

Shabbat Shalom,

Morot Katz and Zachor

7th Grade Class Update

Dear Parents,

This week we began a discussion on sustainability and the Jewish perspective on environmentalism. On Sunday we studied biblical texts which reveal the importance of protecting the earth and explored the idea of whether or not the Earth was created for man, or if man was created for the earth.

On Tuesday we continued our discussion on the environment by focusing on the environmental impact the CSZ community has. We spoke with the CSZ leadership on the congregation's waste output. And, we began thinking about ways we can give back to the community.

Best,
Morim Hollenberg and Rice

Morah Gawel Blog

Hi all! We spent the week working on our new text, Shemot.  This is the story that we tell at the Passover table, so tell your child that you are expecting him/her to add some NEW and interesting tidbits to the Seder discussion this year! We are spending a lot of time discussing anti-Semitism and how anti-Semitism is actually the catalyst for our enslavement in Egypt.  The Torah tells us that a new Pharaoh ruled the land, who did not know Joseph… he did not know how a Jewish man had saved his country.  And what he saw was LOTS of Jews.  We were fruitful and we multiplied and it scared him. Pharaoh was nervous that the Jews would rise up and join his enemies and this scared him.  Why did Pharaoh hate us?  He was scared. He was nervous. We symbolized to him an unnamable threat, that made him decide to act out and do something.  And the rest, as they say.. is history.

So how do we get history to stop repeating itself?  We learn it.  We learn from it. We change our actions.  I showed the kids the first recounted example of anti-Semitism and a child in the back of the class asked “but what does this have to do with anything in our lives today.”  It was a good bridge to our conversation. I briefly touched on what is going on in Europe.  The kids asked about the holocaust. I discussed how events like the holocaust do not happen in a vacuum, but things “rev up,” and people become complacent and then there is a giant problem at our feet and some people put their heads in the sand… others act… what do we do? 

The first answer is to not let things get to this point.  To identify when anti-Semitic fervor is rising, and to stop it. We spent the last 2 weeks looking at images in history of Jews portrayed in advertising and in propaganda billboards.  We saw some alarming images: hairy men, big noses, sly/sneaky looking people, disheveled people, cheap and rich people, overly powerful and greedy people; Jews portrayed as sub human: animals, octopi, Neanderthals etc… we discussed why someone might want to dehumanize a group of people?  (easier to attack them and treat them in an inhumane way), and why people might dislike Jews?  The kids were very astute:  They are jealous! We are smart. We are often wealthy. We are generous. We are successful.  People tend to hate that which they don’t understand and that which they are jealous of!

We discussed: discrimination, stereotypes, anti-Semitism and  prejudice. We used Harry Potter to illustrate this point: Muggles, Half Bloods, Pure Bloods, etc..  The kids had a lot to say. And Sadly, many have witnessed anti-Semitism in their own lives.

We began to discuss the Lego movie “Everything is awesome when we are part of a team!” and we discussed how one of the good things that comes out of horrible situations is that we tend to band together. When many people feel wronged, we often forget our differences and band together against our greater enemy. Think about how your kids fight amongst each other, BUT when they are angry at YOU, they join forces.  So, Pharaoh might have mistreated us, but we “acted as a team,” and did amazing things.  More on this next week.

Have a great weekend,

Morah Leah

Morah Kleiman Class Update

Dear Parents,

Our class has been exploring the history of Michigan's and Detroit's Jewish community.   We have had educators, from the Jewish Historical Society of Michigan , work with our class. They have brought Detroit's Jewish history to life, using an interactive curriculum designed for religious school students from 5th - 7th grade. The students were introduced to early pioneers who traveled by canoe from Montreal, Canada & returned for Rosh Hashanah every year. They played a game, using Yiddish expressions and learned about the ways these entrepreneurs made a living. It was lots of fun and the kids really enjoyed it. Our class really absorbed the materials taught and had fun while doing so. It was great to be a part of this.

 We are looking forward to our tour this Sunday March 13, of Jewish Detroit!  Please have your children at religious school early to board the bus at 8:45am. We are leaving promptly at 9:00am. I hope some of you will join us. It is a fun and interesting tour and am looking forward to going.

Any questions please feel free to contact me or Allison Gutman.

Shabbat Shalom

Cillia Kleiman