This week was dominated by basketball. In grade 6, junior high, and even in kindergarten, it was all the buzz. And trees.
The Tu Bishvat campaign has begun, and our tree leaders have been hard at work making sure everyone has the jingle stuck in their heads and that donations are flowing in.
In grades 2-5, Tu Bishvat is the conversation, and the irony is not lost on a soul. It is by far the coldest week of this Winter, and we are celebrating the blooming of flowers in our classes. But so it goes in the Diaspora.
In junior high, the students are working on their Shabbat presentations, in grade 7/8 I am seeing some excellent personal connections to Vayera, and in grade 9 we just finished reading about the Ashkenazi Jews in Israel. They were the first to start turning swamps into farms, build Jewish cities, and became the first leaders of the State. They enriched the Hebrew culture by giving themselves new Hebrew names like Ben Gurion as opposed to Grun. In the early days of the state, a new wave of immigration presented the Ashkenazim with a new challenge - how to integrate hundreds of thousands of Jews escaping persecution in Arab countries. Next we will study the Mizrahi journey in the State of Israel.
This week at Shabbat we'll be talking about the connection between the Torah, our lives, and trees. Think about those connections over the week as we approach our celebration of Tu Bishvat next week.
And if you can, stay after school Wednesday to see the basketball team in their second game of the season.
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