Tikkun Olam Activity

Yom HaShoah Activity

Follow this link to start your activity.  Make sure to take notes:

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/remembrance/2014/previous_years.asp 

Resources for Holocaust Learning

As we enter our Holocaust unit we wanted to give you the opportunity to preview the materials we will be sharing with the class.  We know that this is a challenging topic to learn about and thought it would be best to provide you with the resources we will be using to help you prepare your student for something that may be unsettling.

This is meant for you to review on your own and only share with your child if you believe it will be disturbing or difficult for them to handle in class.  Please remember that this does not have context and we will be adapting these for use in our classroom.

We will have an ongoing project that students may step out of class to work on if they do become overwhelmed.

It is not our intention to scare or overwhelm the class but we also want to give an accurate portrayal of this intense time period.

Propaganda in the Press - http://www.ushmm.org/propaganda/exhibit.html#/gallery/results and http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/thumb.htm

Kristallnacht - Scholastic News article 

*Ghettos - David's Diary 

*Concentration Camps - Elie Weisel's "Night

Propaganda in the Camps - *Theresienstadt Resistance, The Fuhrer Gives the Jews a City (Video)

*Resistance in the Camps - Café Resistance

*Starred items were originally published in the Detroit Opera House's "Brundibár: a Teacher's Guide (Zimberg, 2014)." 

Jewish Music Across History

Chazzan Gross visited with our seventh grade class to talk about the history of Jewish music. 

We loved the videos that he shared! 

Yad Ezra

For 24 years, Yad Ezra has provided supplemental kosher food and other necessities to those in need in the Jewish Community. Yad Ezra provides an average of 1,600 impoverished families (almost 3,600 individuals) with food, health care items and household goods every month.

Learning Before our Visit

In preparation for our February 2nd Yad Ezra visit, we welcomed Mr. Katz into our classroom to talk with us about the organization. 

Our Class Visit

After touring the facilities, Yad Ezra staff tasked us with separating a metric ton of redskin potatoes for Yad Ezra clients. An organization donated the potatoes to Yad Ezra and we separated them into small baggies, throwing out the bad potatoes. These would be given to Yad Ezra clients free of charge. We felt like we did a good deed in helping Yad Ezra's staff sort through the products in their warehouse.

Talking Torah

A student in Kitah Zayin chose to do an independent Torah study. We were learning about the Ma'ariv service in class. In our discussion of the Shema, we learned that the second line is not found in the Torah. This student wanted to know why, despite it not being in the Torah, we include this line in our daily prayers. In her study, she learned that the second line is a Talmudic commentary on the first. Therefore, it is not something that Moses recorded in the Torah. She explained to her classmates that it is not appropriate for us (even for respected rabbis and scholars) to say our opinion of the passage as loudly as the original, in order to avoid "editing" the Torah. This led to a class discussion about the ethics of primary and secondary document study in Judaism.

Visitors from Eretz Yisrael

We were so lucky in our classroom to get visitors from Israel three weeks in a row. They told us about their cities and taught us some new vocabulary. They even lit Chanukah candles with us!