Why do we bother learning Hebrew here at Makom Community? Why is it important? How does Hebrew help us access the Jewish text and tradition that forms the foundation of our learning? One answer, provided to me by one of the Garinim (preK and K kiddos), is that it’s about Tefilah: Prayer, Music, and Movement. We sing a lot of…
Category: Weekly Learning
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Putting People First: The Makom Community Brit
Way back in September, our learners started exploring the text of Migdal Bavel (the Tower of Babel). Over the course of the last three months we really dug into that text and pulled it apart. We looked to the people in the story for examples of some great ways to treat each other and some not-so-great ways to treat each…
Bein Adam LeChavero: Loving the Godliness in Everyone
Some actions affect our relationship with God. In Hebrew we call those bein adam lamakom (“between a person and God”*). Some actions affect our relationships with other people. Those are called bein adam lechavero (“between a person and their friend”). We looked at some of the actions we do at Makom Community and thought about whether they affect our relationships…
Peace, Love, and Makom Community
There’s a midrash (commentary) that the people who built the Tower of Babel weren’t punished as harshly as the people who lived during the Flood. Those people were destroyed entirely – totally wiped out. The people who built the tower, though, they stayed alive, but had to spread out and speak lots of languages. Why were the consequences for their…
People First: What do we value?
What’s more valuable: a person or a brick? The answer, according to this week’s text, might surprise you. Do we value people? What actions and choices can we make to show it? This week we explored a midrash (rabbinic exploration of a textual question) that tried to answer the question: what was so bad about the people building the Tower…
Welcoming and Resilience: A Sukkot Story
This Sukkot has been an adventure! We were so excited to spend our afternoons in the fabulous Center City Kehilah community sukkah in Julian Abele park. And then Wednesday it rained. No worries, though; we regrouped and changed the plan. We met up at Makom Community and spent the afternoon practicing our welcoming skills for future days in the sukkah….