Category Archives: Activity

Activity: Seeing – LPS

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 Activity: Seeing

  1. As you do this, pay attention not only to what your senses pick up, but also about what is involved in the act of ‘seeing’ what is around you (you might find it helpful to think how each of the meanings of ‘seeing’ listed below are involved).
  2. Find a place to sit (it might be outdoors, inside a room, amongst people, or somewhere you are alone – you decide).
  3. Sit quietly for 10 minutes and concentrate on what you can see around you.
  4. Write down your observations. Come back and share them with your class.

Some ways we use the word ‘seeing’

(a) observe  (“I can see what you are doing”)

(b) understand  (“I see what you mean”)

(c) recognize  (“there are so any white cars in this parking lot it is hard to see mine”)

(d) visualize  (in a furniture store: “I can just see us sitting at this table in our kitchen”)

(e)___________________ (another meaning)

Activity: Seeing – UPS

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Activity: Seeing

Sitting in the circle, one person begins by describing someone else in the circle very carefully – other’s in the circle need to figure out who it is. The first person in the circle to guess who it is correctly has the next turn in describing someone else in the circle. To make it more difficult, start with describing the more general features (that s everal others share) before describing more unique features of the person (eg, ‘brown hair’ before ‘red ribbons in their hair’)

Activity: Rhetorical Questions – MS, HS

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Activity: Rhetorical Questions

In pairs make up a skit where the dialogue consists solely of rhetorical questions directed at one another. See how long you can sustain the dialogue so it continues to make sense. You can use both forms of rhetorical questions – ones whose intent is either:

  • to lead us along a path of reasoning (in which case the person asking the question then proceeds to answer it (e.g.; “Why am I saying this? Because…),
  • to point our attention to something we are already expected to know (e.g.; “Do you really want that third cookie?”).

Activity: Handmade Midrash: ‘This is the sign of the covenant’ – UPS, MS, HS, A

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Activity: Handmade Midrash: ‘This is the sign of the covenant’

12 And God said: ‘This is the sign of the covenant which I set between me and you and all living creatures that are with you, for all ages to come: יב  וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים, זֹאת אוֹת-הַבְּרִית אֲשֶׁר-אֲנִי נֹתֵן בֵּינִי וּבֵינֵיכֶם, וּבֵין כָּל-נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה, אֲשֶׁר אִתְּכֶם–לְדֹרֹת, עוֹלָם.
13 My bow, I set in the cloud, so that it shall serve as a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth יג  אֶת-קַשְׁתִּי, נָתַתִּי בֶּעָנָן; וְהָיְתָה לְאוֹת בְּרִית, בֵּינִי וּבֵין הָאָרֶץ

Make a ‘Handmade Midrash’ that draws on how you understand this text in light of the distinctions you explored in your community of inquiry. Make your midrash from colored construction paper by tearing forms out of the paper and sticking them onto a background sheet of paper.


Handmade Midrash is a process of interpretation developed by Jo Milgrom. Her process has a number of stages:

  1. Text Study
  2. Creation of an artwork
  3. Discussion in small groups
  4. Reflective writing on what you can learn through looking at what you created more carefully.
  5. Return to the text
  • The artwork is created through tearing paper and attaching it to a background. It is not about creating a realistic kind of picture, but capturing ideas and representing them – often through symbolic representation –the torn paper represents ideas in relation to one another. It doesn’t require you to be ‘good at art’ as you can represent ideas through abstract shapes, a blob, color, etc.
  • After you have created your midrash, divide into small groups to share what you have done and what it means. Here what other people see in what your midrash. Describe what was the hardest and easiest elements to do, what role color plays in your midrash, why you placed things where you did, how the parts relate to one another, etc.

After the discussion, take some time to do some reflective writing. You might like to think about some of the following prompts: Did anything surprise you in what you constructed? In what people saw in it? How did the ideas come together? How does what is happening in the picture relate to your own feelings and thoughts about the world you live in? How does it relate to your own feelings and thoughts about the Divine human connection?

Activity: Interview about what we eat – MS, HS, A

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Noach-9.1.7-Eating-Meat-Microphone-ImageActivity: Interview about what we eat

Interview two people in your family or community about the following:

  1. Is there any kind of food that you personally choose not to eat? Why?
  2. Do you think that what you eat affects your health?
  3. Do you think that what you eat affects your mood?
  4. Do you think you can look at what someone eats and draw any conclusion about their lifestyle? Their values?
  5. Do you think that what you choose to eat or not eat can makes you a better person?
  6. Do you eat meat? Do you think this affects the kind of person you are?
  7. In the account of creation God blesses us and tells us and gives us all seed bearing plants to eat. In Noah, after the flood he tells he blesses us again, but this time he also allow us to eat meat. Why do you think God changes his blessing? Do you think we should eat meat?

Activity: Interview about what we eat – PS

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Noach-Eating-Meat-Bird-Image

Activity: Interview about what we eat

Interview two people in your family or community about the following:

  1. Is there any kind of food that you personally choose not to eat? Why not?
  2. Do you think that what you eat affects your health?
  3. Do you think that what you eat affects your mood?
  4. Is there anything you can know about a person from looking at what they eat?
  5. Do you eat meat? Why or why not?

Leading Idea: Caring for our world

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Leading Idea: Caring for our world

This section of text about the Keshet comes after the flood – after God in his anger almost completely destroys the world. The Keshet is a reminder to God to avoid global destruction in the future. This raises a larger question about our relationship to the world and our care for it. Molly Cone’s poem invites discussion around our sensory experiencing of the world and our care for it. You might like to create your own poem or artwork that draws on the way your students’ own experiences of connecting to the world through their senses.

Secondary Source: Circles of Attachment

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Secondary: Circles of Attachment

Haktav Vehakabala
Nehama Leibowitz:   from Studies in Bereshit, pp.113


“לֶךְ-לְךָ מֵאַרְצְךָ וּמִמּוֹלַדְתְּךָ וּמִבֵּית אָבִיךָ”
“get you out of your country, and from your birthplace, and from your father’s house…”

Scholars have spoken about the unusual order of ‘leaving’ here. The verse should have read, in the ordinary way: “מבית אביך, ממולדתך ומארצך” (from your father’s house, your birthplace and from your country.”) This is the logical sequence, since a person first leaves home, then his place of birth and then his country.

The commentary הכתב והקבלה (Haktav Vehakabala)* suggests that there we are referring to a spiritual rather than physical withdrawal, beginning with more distant connections and ending with the most personal. Leaving your place of birth is not so hard as cutting the connection to your family. First, therefore, Abraham was told to cut his connection with his country, then his city and finally the most intimate bond, that of home.

*Haktav Vehakabala was written by Rabbi Yaakov Tzevi Mecklenburg, a German Jewish scholar of the 19th century. Rabbi Mecklenburg served as Rabbi of Koenigsburg, East Prussia for 35 years (1831-65). Haketav Vehakabbalah was first published in 1839.

Nehama Leibowitz

Nehama Leibowitz -1905-1997, was a famous Israeli Bible scholar who developed a particular style of Bible study that was very popular around the world.

Picture source: www.lookstein.org/nechama_biography.htm