What are some ways that we celebrate? When it comes to Purim there’s a lot of things for us to feel joyful about. Haman’s wicked plan fell through, Mordechai was appointed as an advisor to the king, Ester stood up for herself. We take these moments and unpack celebration and joy just as we would any other topic in our class. We are commanded to celebrate Purim with a yearly celebration of joy and feasting to remember times where we got worried, but things turned out for the better.
What would be a reason that we do the four mitzvot of Purim (sending gifts to each other- mishloach manot, giving gifts to the poor, listening to the Megillah, and feasting!)?
- Because we’re helping out people and people that have less than us. Just like in the story when someone was in a bad situation.
- Because the Jewish people are free and we need to take a moment to celebrate.
We explored further how resilience and sticking up for what we believe in can improve our lives. We each celebrate Purim in different ways:
- I go to BZBI and celebrate there (when it’s not a pandemic year).
- I bake a million Hamantashen with my family. We give a lot of them away and we love to make new flavors.
- I love the Purim Shpeil. This year we had a Purim Shpeil with the Bible Players at our shul.
On Thursday we closed the portion of our unit on Purim through the lens of challenge and resilience by thinking through the ways we had stayed strong in hard times.
What are the reasons that we take moments to have resilience as a community?
- When we wear masks, we do our part to slow the spread of Covid and make it end faster.
- Making the vaccine- when you think about it Covid is our new enemy.
Why do we block out Haman’s name and what does it show us about ourselves?
- It helps us remember the really bad things that he has done. Also lets you know that if you were going to do those things that it is bad
- It lets us know that he was such a mean guy nobody could stand him
Who were some people that we’ve seen be resilient in our own lives?
- My parents and my friends had to be resilient during Covid. We had to figure out a bunch of new ways to go to school and use Zoom
- We have a bunch of different ways that we meet for class now. One time at the beginning of the year our teacher got kicked off and it took us ten minutes to figure out what to do!
We all love taking these moments to celebrate what we’ve done. Class ended with us looking ahead to the Four Questions. We’re looking forward to Pesach! We’ll be celebrating another major win for the Jewish people- a time where people faced hard times and came out on the other side. And these amazing learners are well equipped to head out of the challenging time we’re living through, too.