Our Madrichim are amazing. We have 19 working in Pardes this year and they are simply fabulous. Madrichim are the teenage assistants who work in our classes, shadow our students and assist in our office and resource room. They work one on one and with small groups, lead classroom activities and are amazing dugmaot, role models.


Our madrichim program keeps our teens connected, involved and role modeling. It provides them with job skills that they can take to college and a refresher of their Jewish knowledge. It provides our students a whole group of “cool” teenagers for them to look up to and learn from, and it allows our student-teacher ratio in our K-7th grade classrooms to be around one to five.


A parent recently commented to me that their children love the Madrichim who have been in their classes. The parent then asked, “How do you manage to get teens here that early, 8:30am, on a Sunday morning.”

How do we do it? Interesting, we had more teens apply to be Madrichim then we actually had positions for this year (although since it is such a great experience, we quickly created valuable positions for everyone who was interested.) Another little known secret, we teach our Madrichim that if they want to be dugmaot they must be continuing learners themselves. Therefore all of our Madrichim are enrolled in some form of Jewish education. We love our Madrichim!

Tikkun Olan Project

On MLK Sunday we took 85 students to Gateway180, the largest emergency shelter in Missouri. It was an amazing day on so many levels. Our day school and religious school students joined together to participate in this Tikkun Olam project. As we were leaving for the morning, Andy Schwebel reminded us how important it is for us to be engaged in this work, especially on Martin Luther King weekend, because we are commanded by our Jewish tradition to help others whenever we can. At the shelter we learned that the average age of a homeless person in St Louis is nine and we discuss what it might feel like for the 60+ children in the shelter to be picked up each morning by the school bus while standing in front of a sign reading homeless shelter. Gateway180 allows women and children to stay for up to 30 days, their goal being to help these families do a

180 degree turn and get them back into a home. While we were there our students painted the dining room, packed 100 lunches, cleaned up the food pantry and played with the kids in staying at Gateway180. It was a great morning of service. My favorite part was watching our kids play with the children there. Some of our older students took younger children under their wing while our 5^thth graders to play with on the playgroup and teach each other games they could all play. At the end of the morning, when the 7^th & 8^th grade boys thanked me for taking them as they walked off the bus, I knew that we ha graders simply found other 5d done an amazing thing this morning for everyone involved.

Roshanim

We have a new class!!!

Roshanim (tadpoles) is a monthly class for children and their parent or grandparent who are between 3-5 years old.  During the class our youngest students will be introduced to Hebrew, Holidays, Bible stories and Jewish values through song, movement, arts and crafts and celebrations.  The class will give them a taste of the wonders and riches our religion offers. Young children love experiencing the joys of the Jewish holidays, hearing the tales of our matriarchs and patriarchs and singing the songs and prayers of our tradition. The early childhood years are a wonderful time to being to, “Teach it to your children” as we are taught in the Shema.  At this age children are sponge-like, ready to soak up Hebrew, Jewish values and holidays all keys in building strong future Jewish identities. 

Let us know if you know a 3-5 year old who would like to join Roshanim.

Chanukah

We celebrated this week in Pardes!

Between Sunday and Tuesday we consumed 22 dozen donuts!

We played dreidel

Invited parents to performances
 

Made yummy menorahs and created cards, with lots of bling thanks to Morah Deb, for our families and seniors living in nursing homes.
 


Light the Menorah


And watched some fun Chanukah videos. Watch them again as a family.

G-dcast Spins Hanukkah

I Light It 

Miracles 

One Day

 

Dreidel

Sesame Street: Hanukkah With Veronica Monica 

Shalom Sesame

• Hebrew month of Kislev
• Baby Bear Plays Dreidel

And who knew the Maccabeats were so popular in St Louis. As soon as we turned them on, the whole room was cheering and singing along. I guess we all flip our latkes in the air sometimes. I hope your family had a wonderful Chanukah this year!

Candlelight

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.

Tweet your Prayers

Our seventh grade Hebrew/Tfillot class was given the challenge of creating a Tweet, a 140 character message, of a communal prayer one could say during Minchah, the afternoon service. Here are some of our student’s Tweets:

Praised are you, Adonai our God, king and ruler of the universe, Todah Rabah, for my life, my soul: my family, my friends.

Blessed is Hashem, who is merciful in the court of justice. Blessed is Hashem who bestows his wisdom upon his subjects. Whose domain is over all nations.

Accept this religion I have given you and don’t turn down on it. Help the people I have made & give charity & respect them as if it was you.

Thank you Adonai for giving me love in this cool world.

Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech Ha-Olam, Todah Rabah Hashem, Todah Rabah Hashem, Atah Metzuyan. (Blessed are you God, King of the universe, thank you God, thank you God, you are excellent.)

Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech Ha-Olam to God for being there for me throughout my whole life & supporting me & my family. We praise you so please don’t stop on me now.

The Lord is our Melech. Thx for blessings as the Israelites. God is awesome. The Lord is the creator of the world. God is glorious and royal.

God places changes in our life. Some are good, but some we don’t like or we aren’t ready for. But change can be good. Change helps you grow.

We praise you our Lord. You sprinkle us with kindness. You are all forgiving. You are the Lord our God.

God, I love you very much, because you are the almighty awesomeness of the world.

God is a shield and a guiding hand and he is awesome.

God bless you who is the greatest who is the universe who is the only.

OMG! God is the BEST, he did cool stuff. I luv u God.

Kristallnacht Commemoration

Kitah Dalet (4th) and Hey (5th) walked into a classroom yesterday staged to look like a Jewish owned store on November 10, 1938 in Nazi Germany. The class then engaged in a discussion of how to speak up when you see and hear discrimination or intolerance of any people in order to commemorate Kristallnacht.