Team work! It’s a great thing, right? Sometimes. Sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes it goes wrong. The people in the story of Migdal Bavel (the Tower of Babel) get together and decide to build a city with a tower that reaches all the way up to the sky. God comes down to take a look at the tower and is not a fan. God mixes up the languages of the people so they no longer understand each other and scatters them all over the world.
Our learners got to play around with working together like the people in the story. The shorashim (1st graders) had to build towers out of blocks without being able to talk to each other. When asked why one of the towers was so much bigger than the other, a student answered, “Well for that one we were working together, and for the other one, we weren’t.”
The garinim (pre-K and K kids) were tasked with identifying a picture that was cut up into 20 puzzle pieces and distributed to everyone in the group. The only way for them to see what the whole picture looked like was to put all their puzzle pieces together. Here’s some of the conversation we had about that activity:
What was good about working together?
- Nobody is left out.
- No one is sad about not participating.
What’s hard about working together?
- Someone else taking your part.
- Having different ideas about what to do.
When do we work together at Makom Community?
- Setting up hot wheels to play with.
- Setting up cushions for tefilah (prayer, music, and movement).
Here’s what the kiddos had to say after we read the story about Migdal Bavel and God’s reaction to the tower:
How do you think God feels about people working together?
- Good!
- Sad, and that’s why God scattered the people everywhere.
- Out of control, that’s why God scattered them.
- Proud because you can finish jobs by working together.
How else can we work together at Makom Community? How can we respond when working together feels hard and we have to do it anyway? What ideas about working together can we put on our brit (two way promise) for the year? Stay tuned to find out!