The Torah service last week Thursday was a huge success! Yasher koach to all of our learners for reading from the Torah. And thank you parents for joining us!
This was our second Torah service. Everyone was pretty relaxed and ready going into it, since this was our second time doing the complete Torah service with Torah reading this year. However, for one learner, our full Torah service with just our class on Tuesday to prepare for Thursday was her first time reading from the Torah!. So after she read, we sang the shehechiyanu all together to mark that moment with her. Another learner whose BMitzvah is coming up in a few weeks chose not to learn any verses of Torah for this service so she could stay focused on what she’s learning for her BMitzvah, and led the entire Torah Service instead. She’s so ready! We’re looking forward to celebrating with you. Everyone was engaged, enthusiastic, and well prepared. It felt like a very special moment to be able to gather safely indoors with parents to witness, participate, and celebrate.
We wrapped up tallit making this week. Everyone took on such unique projects, and used a variety of methods to make them, including: fabric paint, fabric markers, embroidery, sewing with a sewing machine, and gluing on appliques. For many learners, this required learning new skills, which they all did so well! We are looking forward to our family tzitzit tying program on Monday. Learners and their parents will reflect on the mitzvot and commitments to Jewish life they share in their family, while learning to tie tzitzit together. Following that, our tallitot will live at Makom for us to use when we are in Tefilah together.
After finishing these two big projects- we had fun baking hamentashen and celebrating Purim with the Jewish Enrichment learners back in Center City.
This is my final blog post at the BMitzvah teacher at Makom. It has been such a gift to teach these learners for the past 7 and a half months. They are such a wonderful group of unique, passionate, caring people, and it was truly an honor to play this role in their journey of Jewish learning and building Jewish community.