Our Makom @ Home learners have been working hard and playing hard all month long! We have set out on “Textsploration” expeditions journeying through all the Fall Jewish holidays and singing songs about them too, including this one by Billy Jonas.
Our last text for Simchat Torah, the holiday where we finish reading the end of the torah and start over at the beginning, was about a non-Jewish person who came to two rabbis, Shammai and Hillel. He asked them to teach him all of torah while he stood on one foot. Shammai pushed the non-Jewish person away, but Hillel agreed to teach him, saying “Do not do to others what is hateful to you – that is the whole torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study!”
Our learners also got to be teachers and share what they think is the most important piece of advice (torah!) that everyone should know:
- Love God with all your heart and soul and might.
- Be kind, and if someone’s being mean to someone else, stand up for them.
- Be grateful for what you have because some other people don’t have it. Be grateful for what you have and what you don’t have.
- Treat people the way you want to be treated and don’t be mean even if they are mean to you.
We also sang a song that tells the story of this text and one of our kiddos offered a retelling of the story in emojis:
🧔🏻📜❓👨🏻🦳 🧔🏻🤾🏻📜
A brief translation, in case you didn’t quite follow that:
🧔🏻 non-Jewish person asks ❓ to be taught 📜 Torah.
👨🏻🦳 Shammai does not teach him.
🧔🏻 non-Jewish person goes to Hillel who teaches him standing on one foot 🤾🏻
and sends him off to study the rest of the commentary 📜.
We look forward to welcoming some new faces into our Zoom classroom when we start our next session on Monday October 4!