Klezmer Band
Purim
Math Fair
Publishing Party
Kabbalat Mishna
Hanukkah
Mi Dor L’Dor
6th Grade at TEVA
JCDS Teacher Wins Award
Building the Sukkah
Rosh Hashana

The Joy of Klezmer at JCDS

In recent months, KLEZSTOCK, the 20-piece JCDS Middle School Klezmer Band, has played at events both inside and outside of school. Most recently they played at Matters of Taste, JCDS’s annual signature fundraising event. Prior to that, they entertained at a fundraiser for Gateways, an organization that enables children with special needs to receive a Jewish education. They also performed at the 4th annual Acapella Fest at Temple Mishkan Tefila to benefit Ethiopian Early Childhood Education in Haifa and the Mitzvah Heroes Fund.

KLEZSTOCK members play an unusually broad array of instruments including: piano, keyboard, violin, guitar, harp, trumpet, trombone, saxophone, flute, xylophone and doumbek drum. These 5th through 8th grade Middle School students of varying levels of musical experience practice weekly in ensemble to make heartfelt Jewish music for their school community.

The Richness and Zaniness of Purim at JCDS

Purim, celebrated on the 14th of Adar, fell on a weekend this year, but at JCDS we didn’t miss a beat of celebration and study! The students spent weeks learning about Purim, and the festivities began several days in advance with Kif-Kef Week, which roughly translates as Crazy Fun Week. On Monday, everyone donned pajamas; Tuesday brought Crazy Hair and Funny Hat Day; and on Wednesday, clothes were worn inside out and backwards. That same week students brought contributions from home toward Mattanot l’Evyonim, Gifts for those in Need, to assure that they fulfilled that Mitzvah alongside the silliness and fun. On Thursday, the older students and the staff marked Ta’anit Esther (the Fast of Esther), and on Friday students assembled bags of mishloach manot from hundreds of hamantashen and other wonderful treats baked by students here at school.

The following Monday (Shushan Purim), everyone arrived at school in masks and costumes. Princes and Spacemen, Santa Claus and rabbis, bottles of ketchup, cans of Sprite and masked bandits came together for our all-school Purim celebration. Making clear that the holiday itself had passed, we still had some celebrating to do together and heard a few select portions of the Megillah read aloud. The reading was intermingled with a Mad-Libs version of the story. Every few minutes we sang Purim songs and sent another group of costumed students parading around the room; it was a gala morning and it readied the Lower School students for an event for which they wait all year: the Purim Carnival!

The carnival, replete with games and booths of all kinds, is designed and run entirely by Middle School students. The atmosphere is joyful, the signs and booths colorful and truly create a thrilling experience for the younger children. Prizes are awarded, sweets and treats abound and everyone is happy! The Lower Schoolers are watched over and taken care of by their older peers, who remember well when they were the younger ones and therefore want to make the experience even more exciting and wonderful for the little ones! The teachers smile when, at the end of the day, the Middle Schoolers report: “Little kids are exhausting!”

Educational+delightful+generous+silly+creative+joyous+exhausting = Purim at JCDS

Click the play button to enjoy Gan Nitzan’s Purim Megillah:

Middle School Math Fair
The 2010 JCDS Middle School Math Fair consisted of hands-on workshops exploring the use of math in the Internet, Google search, taxes, TV shows, and games. Each student could choose two workshops to attend. The workshops were led by various experts in their fields, who broadened the students’ perspectives on applications of mathematics or new math concepts.

In the afternoon sessions, the 6th, 7th, and 8th graders attended a seminar with renowned guest speakers Bob and Ellen Kaplan, the founders of The Math Circle and The Math Circle Summer Teacher Training Institute (www.themathcircle.org) . This is their 4th year hosting a seminar at our Math Fair for which we are extremely grateful! Bob and Ellen have a talent for getting students excited about mathematics and drawing them into lively discussions. Their discussions centered on rational numbers, infinite series, parabolas, clocks, negative numbers, and much more.

Kitat Oren Students Celebrate the Publication of their Very Own Stories!
Since autumn, Kitat Oren (grade one) students have been writing true stories about their own lives while simultaneously learning useful and important writing skills. They have spent several months working on the entire writing process, from original “sloppy-copy” drafts, to final published editions of their work.

Classroom writing and editing lessons have included items such as:
- Writers compose pieces about subjects they know and care about
- Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end
- A strong piece of writing includes “author’s voice”
- Stories require a title that “grabs” the reader
- Extraneous words should be eliminated
- Illustrations drawn usually match words and ideas in story

Once their stories were completed and written in final form, each student had the opportunity to read her/his story aloud to the delight of an appreciative audience consisting of peers, teachers, parents and even some grandparents!

Other important features of this lesson were:
- As a reader, how to read for an audience
- As an audience member, how to be an active, thoughtful listener

After their presentations, Oren students reflected upon the process of the event, asking “What did I do well as reader, and what did I do well as a writer?”

Were JCDS a renowned publishing house, the morning could not have gone more beautifully. Kitat Oren students rose to the occasion as writers, readers, listeners, and mensches of an important classroom community!

5th Grade Kabbalat Mishna

On Friday, January 22nd, Kitat Tamar (our fifth grade class) celebrated its Kabbalat Mishna milestone event. The students began their study of Mishna this year in their Toshb’a (an acronym for “Torah sheb’al peh,” which refers to Oral Torah) class. Most recently the students have studied Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) so most of the ceremony was centered around this Masechet (section) of the Mishna. The students studied individual mishnayot and prepared skits to explain the sayings of the Rabbis to each other and to the parents who attended the celebration. In addition, each student did a biography project of a Tanna (a Rabbi in the Mishna) and each made a “Rabbi Card”. These cards were posted on the walls of the library. The students performed a play explaining what our Oral Torah is and how it developed. The student skits were incorporated into the play so that there was adult-generated learning as well as student-generated learning.

The students were addressed by Ruth and then received copies of Pirkei Avot which included bookplates written by their parents. All the participants and their families engaged in family learning of two mishnayot from Pirkei Avot. Then there was a discussion about the mishnayot to which both students and parents contributed. It was a lovely morning for all.

Hanukkah!

The entire JCDS community came together for our Annual Family Hanukkah Celebration, on Tuesday evening, December 15; the 5th candle of Hanukkah. Among the bright highlights of our school year, this event reflected many of our JCDS core values, while everyone present felt a shared warmth and happiness at being a part of this truly wonderful school.

Excitement for this night begins to build well before the start of Hanukkah. Earlier in December, JCDS proudly presented the voices of two student choirs: Lower School and Middle School, at Boston’s annual Kol haNeshama Jewish Day School Concert, dedicated this year to Hanukkah music, while benefiting Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center.

Since the first day of the holiday, a giant Hanukkiyah has been blossoming on the exterior front wall of the school for all to see. This Hanukkiyah certainly helps publicize the miracle of Hanukkah, as students and parents witnessed the work in progress every day, expressing a growing enthusiasm for the festival of Lights.

This evening’s celebration began with a pizza and salad dinner served by our Vaad Horim (Parent Association) followed by a range of Hanukkah activities for younger and older students. Live Hanukkah music, played by a talented band of teachers and parents, wafted through the halls heightening the festivities. In the Lower School, activities included everything from Israeli dancing, to Hanukkah stories read to Lower School students by Middle School members of our Speech Team, to a variety of Hanukkah-themed creative art projects. We even rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem with Legos and building blocks. In the Middle School, was a phenomenal “Soap Box Dreidel Derby!”

Parents, students, and teachers then gathered in our gym to light a Hanukkiyah and to join in song and sufganiyyot (Hanukkah jelly-doughnuts). Every class stood proudly and sang songs of the holiday, some familiar, some new, after which everyone took home this year’s edition of the JCDS Hanukkah song book. The gym itself, like many interior walls of our school, was adorned with colorful, creative original student art inspired by the holiday.

Our Hagigat Hanukkah demonstrates JCDS’ commitment to conduct ourselves as a joyful Jewish community, to live according to the rhythms of the Jewish year, to give prominence to music and art, and to form strong connections to Jewish tradition. We were not at all surprised to see many recent graduates among the guests….after all, who wouldn’t want to come back “home” to be with family and friends for this holiday celebration!

Mi’Dor L’Dor – 6th Grade Milestone Celebration

Our 6th graders celebrated a powerful milestone: Mi’Dor L’Dor – From Generation to Generation. This poignant event grew out of the class’ study of the book of D’varim, Deuteronomy, which tells of Moshe conveying the legacy of his teachings to B’nei Yisrael. The study also connects intellectually and spiritually to the students’ Facing History, Toshba, and Humanities curricula.

Through Facing History, students considered identity and the ways in which our stories define us. They, too, have explored how sharing our stories can reveal our identity to others as well as foster strong personal connections and communities. In Toshba, they study what constitutes Jewish identity and explore experiences, texts, and references that connect them to Judaism. In Humanities, students have read and discussed multiple narratives from a collection written by famous authors, each telling his or her story from early adolescence. These readings have helped each of them develop a sense of writing about oneself in the purest form. We are proud that our students have explored their personal and communal identities through the lens of three different and distinct classes.

The sixth graders’ transition from childhood into their B’nei Mitzvah year parallels the journey told in the Biblical text studied in class. The students interviewed family members to gather and learn stories about their own history and legacies. They then distilled these familial stories into carefully crafted essays (which were drafted, written, and edited in their Humanities class) and read them aloud at the Milestone event. Together their writings formed a beautiful tapestry of immigrant experience and family wisdom.

Another element of the Milestone also involved Tallit and Tzitzit. A week prior to the event, a panel of rabbis shared with the students their personal understandings of Tallit and Tzitzit and then answered the children’s question. Empowered with knowledge and understanding, each of these young adolescents will have to decide if, and how, to take on the Mitzvah of Tzitzit as their own Bar or Bat Mitzvah arrives.

An unadorned ‘blank’ Tallit was crafted for each student prior to the Milestone. The work on the Tallitot was done by numerous parent volunteers, and the actual design and decoration will be done by the students themselves. Parents then joined their children for Torah study on the Mitzvah of Tzitzit, and the students taught their parents how to tie Tzitzit on the corner of their new garments..

Integral to the meaning of the Milestone was for students to discern the most salient and personal elements of Jewish life and experiences in their own Jewish identities. Their conclusions were displayed during Friday’s event in a powerful slide show made by the students.

As at all JCDS Milestone events, the students were given the gift of a book from the school. The 6th graders received a Tikkun, the text from which one prepares a Torah reading for public recitation. With this gift, the school expressed its commitment that every student will learn Torah with depth and precision and will recite it, and live it, in her or his own voice.

To conclude the program, each student recited the verse from D’varim: “Ask your ancestors and they will tell you, your elders and they will tell the story…” (32:7). Our Mi’Dor L’Dor Celebration powerfully conveyed that the study of Torah and Jewish practice emerge from a living context reaching back across generations and continents. It expressed, too, that each of us has a story to tell and that each of us, in our unique way, contributes to the story.

6th Grade at TEVA

From Monday, November 16 through Thursday, November 19 our 6th grade joined 6th graders from four other Jewish day schools for our annual trip to TEVA, an educational retreat on Judaism and the environment held at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village, Connecticut. The TEVA program is a wonderful example of integrated education. TEVA educators conduct intense days of creative programming — from hikes to skits to songs to farming and natural remedies — and make every moment a fun and teachable one. We are especially proud that Martha Schwarz, JCDS ‘05, is among the professional educators on the program. The main goals are to cultivate in our students the core ecological values of Awareness, Interconnectedness, and Responsibility. At TEVA, these values emerge out of an explicitly spiritual Jewish language. In that sense, the students learn a new language at TEVA, or at least a new vocabulary. Two teachers and two 6th grade parents joined the 6th grade as chaperones. We look forward to bringing the power of TEVA back home to JCDS.

JCDS Teacher Wins Award
JCDS is very proud that Eliana Lipsky, Middle School Tanakh and History teacher, has been selected as this year’s recipient of the Samuel A. Nemzoff Book Prize by Gateways, Access to Jewish Education. The prize honors a teacher whose work exemplifies best practices in giving all students access to a Jewish education. Eliana is being recognized for her outstanding work in differentiating instruction so that every student can learn in the best way for her or himself. Eliana’s award also recognizes her leadership among the faculty in this area. Eliana has taught at JCDS since 2005 and also serves as an advisor in the Middle School. A contingent of teachers and administration attended the November 8th Gateways event at which Eliana was honored, and JCDS had to good fortune that our Klezstock student Klezmer band was invited to be part of the musical entertainment that afternoon. Mazal Tov, Eliana!

Building the Sukkah
Long-time JCDS parent, engineering wizard, and all-around tzaddik, Gary Elovitz directs the 8th graders in assembling the JCDS Sukkah. Through the magic of power drills and group effort, the Sukkah takes shape in front of the school.

Paper chains, chains of wishes, chains of pipe cleaners, Ushpizin cut-outs, and more snake out of classrooms and onto the Sukkah’s walls, or dangle from its roof. Rain makes the decorations a bit soggy, but beautification efforts and valiant and ongoing.

In T’fillot, students eagerly pass sets of lulavim and etrogim to one another so everyone has a chance to perform the very strange, very beautiful, and very rustle-y act that declares, depending on one’s belief: All of Nature is One; God is round about; the Jewish People are One; Here I am doing what Jews have done for a very long time!

Chagigat Rosh Hashana
Anticipating the start of the new year 5770, all students and staff gathered to sing, exchange Rosh HaShanah blessings, recite kiddush, and of course eat apples dipped in honey. In mixed-grade pairings, the entire student body learned stories and texts teaching hope and confidence that we can bring our best to the new year. Shanah tovah to all!