Kitah Zayin Update

Dear 7th Grade Parents,

I hope you had a wonderful month of Tishrei celebrating the Fall Jewish holidays! This week we focused on the Torah which we began again this Shabbat. We spoke about what the Torah is and what makes it a Holy text.

Then we discussed the first chapters of the Bible, Bereishit/Genesis. We studied the text of the creation story found at the beginning of the Torah . That lead to discussions of science and Torah and which account of history is correct. In the end, we agreed that both versions of history are correct that that they are not in conflict. Once we were able to set that controversy aside we thought about the divinity of the Torah. We learned that the Torah is G-d speaking to us. We thought about the Torah as a blueprint for us to live our best possible Jewish life. Then we learned that prayer is our opportunity to speak directly to G-d and how canonized prayer is a useful tool in our conversations with G-d.

We also thought about how we would introduce the important information in the Torah to the Jewish people if we were to play the role of God. Some students wrote poems, others drew pictures of the essence of the Torah. It was a great exercise and provided us insight into our different world views.

On Tuesday we continued our discussion of the meaning of the Torah focusing on some of the mitzvot like kashrut and shatnez. Then we explored the importance of and difficulties language raises.

Shannah Tovah!

Morah Hollenberg