Shabbaton

Last Shabbat I spent 25 hours at B’nai Amoona celebrating Shabbat with 31 amazing
4th and 5th graders. Students from B’nai Amoona, Shaare Zedek and BSKI joined together for our annual community Conservative Shabbaton. We sang, prayed, ate, played and laughed together. This was a great group of kids.

One of the most exciting things about a Shabbaton is the blending of formal and informal education. Students are able to experience the beauties of Shabbat, the T’fillot, the community, and even no cell phone, computers or i-pods for a full 25 hours. They are able to make meaningful and fun what they learn about in the classroom. Additionally, each Shabbaton we choose a theme that compliments their classroom curriculum. This year our theme was Bereshit, the book of Genesis.

This may not sounds so exciting at first but we challenged the students to make it though all 12 parshiot (sections) in the time we had together. We had relays to build the tower of Babel and help Rebecca water Elizar’s camels, we created Abraham and Sarah’s family tree and were guests in their tent, we performed raps and cheers about the Garden of Eden and Noah’s ark and we laughed at the Madrichim (counselors) skit when Jacob wrestled the angel.

Throughout the Shabbaton we worked on creating a timeline of the stories in Bereshit. And by the time the parents joined us on Saturday evening for Havdalah we all cheered as we put the last parsha in place, completing our timeline and reviewed the entire book of Genesis. If you missed this Shabbaton then you missed out on a special weekend.