Living much of life online has been a challenging side-effect of the coronavirus pandemic for many of us. This reality made our Family Learning Experience of building an ark with the BMitzvah families so much more sweet! We gathered on Sunday outside Makom Community to study and create together, despite the chilly weather. The BMitzvah cohort shared some of the…
Tag: rosh pinah
BMitzvah Makes a Pilgrimage
In the days of the ancient temple in Jerusalem, Jews would travel to the temple for the three pilgrimage holidays, Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot. While today, we often think of pilgrimage as being more present in other religious traditions, the act of walking towards a holy place is a part of Jewish tradition. Whether knowing that makes it easier to…
Finding the Divine Online
“And then I realized that everything I thought was infinite actually depends on something else. The only thing that’s infinite is dependence.” Ooph. Zahdi’s words definitely rang true for me, especially over our virtual Zoom classroom. Lots of things have changed over the past few months, but some have stayed constant. In February, we went as a cohort to the…
Feedback for all, including God
“Is God good?” “What does God want from humanity?” Not the simplest questions to ponder on a Tuesday night, but our BMitzvah cohort and their parents dove in with open hearts. Following the theme of our current Rosh Pinah project, we focused on our questions about God. Our first activity exposed some of our conflicting feelings. We wrestled with those…
Are you there God? It’s BMitzvah!
Sometimes we spend too much time thinking about something and not enough time experiencing it. In BMitzvah, we’ve been working on a new Rosh Pinah project about God: creating art pieces that express our personal theologies. We’ve been learning about how Jewish texts show different ideas of God: God as the authority, God as everything, God as all-good and all-powerful, God…
Our American Jewish Stories
“Emma Lazarus! The New Colossus!” Drew pointed at the quote on the wall as we rounded the corner to the next gallery. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” read the famous quote. Drew told us about the quote’s position on the Statue of Liberty and Lazarus’ history as a writer, as Lazarous was…
Those Who Learn From History…
We all know that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. But what about those who do learn from history? My experience with our last Rosh Pinah unit on American Jewish History tells me that they are doomed to ask provocative questions. How can we re-balance the record and put women’s voices to the front? Can I design an…