Community Helpers Theme: All About Rabbis

A rabbi must certainly know his alephbet and be able to read and write in order to continue studying Jewish texts and law!

A rabbi is certainly someone we see in our synagogues and day schools. We see them reading from the Torah and leading prayers. We see them teaching students of all ages. But what else do rabbis do? What must someone learn and be able to do in order to become a rabbi? Do all rabbis do the same things or do some have different jobs? From a very young age, Jewish children learn to treat rabbis with reverence and respect. As they get older, they will learn and see how many different roles rabbis can play in their occupations. Some do work in synagogues and lead services. Some are chazzanim and lead prayers in synagogue services. Some work as a mashgiach in restaurants and food factories to oversee kashrus (to ensure that foods, ingredients and cooking practices are all carried out to the standards of keeping kosher). Some are counselors, some are authors, some are teachers and all are students. Some study specific areas of Jewish law and help Jewish people answer questions and solve problems. Some rabbis might be a sofer or scribe, and perform the tedious and important job of writing Torah scrolls, mezuzahs, and other important Jewish documents.

One thing is true for certain--and that is that a rabbi must do a lot of learning! One of the first things a young Jewish child will learn is his alephbet, his Hebrew alphabet. That will lead to being able to read and write and from there, the possibilities are endless! For the purpose of learning about rabbis as community helpers, I set up a variety of alephbet activities for my son to work with. He announced at the end that he now wants to be a rabbi when he grows up; I'm not entirely sure, however, that he is not currently convinced a rabbi paints, makes collages and uses rubber stamps all day long!

This puzzle is still a bit challenging for my toddler, but the more he manipulates and handles each of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet, the more he will become familiar with each of them and eventually with reading and writing them. He already is able to identify each of the letters inside this book--something his own mother could not do until her mid-twenties!

I set out a large sheet of easel paper for working with. We began with some alephbet rubber stamps and washable ink...

Next we tried our hands at using a "quill" (craft feather) and "ink" (washable paint) to "write letters" just like a sofer who must write each letter of the Torah without any mistakes at all! That surely must take a lot of practice....

He especially enjoyed using paint and these alephbet cookie cutters to make prints!

We've been continuing work in our Twelve Pesukim book project. He loves reciting each of these Torah passages as much as he loves making collages on each page as we learn them together.

Adding the next letter to our Aleph Beis Train project (pictured at the top) seemed like a perfect way to wrap up our activities. We started this when he was just a little baby--and I did all the handiwork. Now he does the gluing all by himself! We even found a great video online that shows the writing of a Torah scroll. Although the video is meant for children, we found it a bit lengthy for my young toddler and parts were a bit above his level. I chose a few select portions to show him and he was so impressed with seeing a real scribe hard at work making each and every letter inside the Torah. While a sofer must work tediously to make sure that no mistakes are made as he writes, the most important work of a child is play. We do not focus on perfection but rather on opportunities to try through hands-on exploration and play. In that merit, I wish you all happy playing!

Around the World: Shalom from Israel!

This made for a great Table Time activity this
morning when the "teacher" overslept a bit
and hadn't had coffee before her pupil woke up!

Shalom from Israel! Our home preschool Around the World unit would not be complete without a visit to Israel. The curriculum I have created for the year will include a longer unit on Israel closer to Yom Ha'atmazut (Israeli Independence Day), but we did make a two day stop on our worldwide trip this week. We began our visit by learning about the Israeli flag using a playdough mat (just a print of Israel's flag that I laminated), some blue playdough, a rolling pin and Star of David shaped cookie cutters.

We used a couple of books we already had at home to assist us in our learning journey.

This book has great photographs of various destinations in Israel and takes the reader through the spectrum of the rainbow--including Hebrew words for color names!

We teach our son a variety of words in Hebrew and Yiddish. This book has great illustrations and a variety of useful vocabulary words that would enhance any Jewish home!

Our Israel visit was also a great opportunity to incorporate a long-term project we've been working on as part of our Jewish curriculum. We've been creating a book of the Twelve Pesukim, twelve Torah passages selected by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson as the twelve most important pieces of Jewish literature for children to learn by heart. My son has been learning to repeat and say these passages from the time he could first speak and he feels so proud to be creating his own book.

We had a lot of fun pretending to visit a kibbutz and playing with the farm animals there. He loved singing some of his favorite farm themed songs while we were at it!

We took a creative spin on learning about the Dead Sea and made some "Jaffa Orange Scented Dead Sea Bath Salts." To make your own at home...
You will need:

• Epsom salt
• Sweet orange essential oil
• yellow and red food coloring
• a ziplock bag and container/scoop for the salt

We scooped some Epsom salt into the ziplock bag. My son decided we needed four cups! To that I added several drops of essential oil and a few drops each of yellow and red food coloring.

Next it was time to seal the bag and shake it up! 

The results smelled wonderful and took on a lovely shade of orange! My son is very excited to try a bit in his bath tonight. These would also make a great homemade gift and could be made with any of your favorite essential oils and with or without food coloring.

 The bath salts smelled good enough to eat, so the last part of our trip included some edible (or drinkable) fun with squeezing our own orange juice! I recently purchased a simple citrus juicer from Walmart to use with my son. There are certainly a lot of electronic options out there, but I love the gross motor, fine motor and sensory development aspects of using the old fashioned kind. We love to do kitchen activities together and they can be very involved sometimes when it comes to baking and cooking. This was about $4 well spent and proof that you don't need a lot of tools or a lot of ingredients to have a great experience getting your kids into the kitchen!

We talked about and observed the parts of the fruit: the rind/peel, the pulp/fruit and the juice inside!

We did not have any Jaffa oranges available but we had recently bought some Cara Cara pink oranges and they were up to the task of being squeezed into some very sweet and tasty orange juice! It took some practice and demonstration to learn how to use his hands to squeeze and turn the orange halves simultaneously, but he mastered it and was quite pleased.

As an added bonus, he actually enjoyed trying (and finishing) what we made! Many times this is not the case with our baking and cooking adventures...

We had a great time on our visit to Israel. We have just a couple of more stops now to the continents of Australia and Africa where we will playfully and artfully explore the vast array of wildlife on a pretend Safari! Until then, happy playing!