Can you be cursed with bad health? If so, what does this mean?
Can a day be cursed? Explain
Can a person’s life be cursed? If so, did it need someone to curse it? Explain,
Can we be a curse to our parents? To our teachers? If so, what does this mean?
If I curse you by saying “May all your friends abandon you” is that the same as wishing that all your friends would abandon you?
Can people give curses or only God? If people can give them, do you think there is a difference between a curse given by God and a curse given by a person? Explain.
Can having someone curse you ever be a good thing?
Does giving a curse guarantee that the content of the curse will happen or come true?
Can you believe in blessings without believing in curses?
Can you believe in curses without believing in God?
A related issue to that of eating meat concerns our relationship with animals overall. What does Judaism say about our treatment of animals; how we should relate to them and care for them? Secondary source materials relate to this question of our care for animals. These are particularly well suited to LPS (as well as being relevant to older students).
Read the sentence on the left – which kind of “Go Forth!” do you think is invoked here? You can mark more than one, but make sure you can explain what you mean in each case. If you mark more than one, explain what it would mean to ‘go’ for each one you marked (eg: going camping might be ‘go forth’ because going to camp means you are moving geographically, but it also may be ‘go to yourself’ because when you are camping you discover you are now capable of doing things that you never would have thought you could do).
Go! Leave where you are for somewhere else
Go for yourself! For your own benefit — (eg: financial or physical benefit)
Go to yourself! Getting to know yourself better
Go to the person you will become! Growing up, becoming a better person
Kate, age 6: “I’m excited about starting a new school, I’m going to learn so many new things.”
Eli, age 5: “we went to the lake for the first time I thought I would be scared to go in the water but I learned that I really liked it!”
Zaitlan, age 8: “Going to summer camp last year was my first time away from home – I really became more confident and independent.
Ronnie, age 7: “We are going to visit our grandparents in Texas – I am really excited”
Kate: “I’m going to miss you when you leave, but I know the job in Boston pays a higher salary.”
David, age 9: “Once a week after school I go with my mum to the home where my grandparents live. I help them to go down to the dining room and sometimes I sing for them because they like that.
Go back to the Biblical text – if we view Avram’s journey through each of these lenses, how might we understand the meaning and significance of his journey?
‘Lech l’cha’ is generally taken as an expression meaning “Go forth”. But this isn’t the only way of reading it. While Lech l’cha on its own is a command (like sit! or stop!), lech on its own means ‘go’ and l’cha’ on its own generally means ‘to you’. What might these mean when put together?
In this unit we explore the following different readings of the phrase ‘Lechl’cha’.
Go forth: move forward, leave where you are (pick up your tent and go pitch it elsewhere)
Go for yourself: for your own benefit, for your own material good (financial, social, etc)
Go to yourself: discover yourself – go to greater self-understanding (as an inner existential journey – become aware of who you currently are, get in touch with yourself)
Go to the person you will become: Go toward you’re the person you will one day be (eg, your ‘better self’ or your destiny, or the person you are striving to be – as in the joke that has a mother describing her 6yr old son as ‘my son the doctor’) – this captures the idea that we are all on a journey of self-formation, and we become who we are over time.
Each of these offers a different understanding of Avram’s journey. The resources here both provide voices from within our tradition that speak to these interpretations and resources for students to apply the distinctions in their own lives and thus to come to internalize the different meanings as resources for making sense of different kinds of ‘Lech!’ in their own lives.
Dogs grow up fast. I heard that one dog year is the same as seven human years. If a dog lives to be 17 it is like he is 120 in human years. Gigi, my dog, was born on March 7th, and every year we give him a special birthday treat to mark that date. But if our year is like seven years to him, maybe we should be giving him special treats more often – first on
March 7th, and then again on April 28th, and then again on June 19th and so on. Imagine having seven birthdays every year! Today I was thinking – if he is growing seven times faster, then maybe one day feels to him like a full week feels to us? Imagine if the sun only set once a week – seven days of sunlight in a row. No wonder he sleeps so much during the day! But all this thinking makes me curious – how old is he really? Is age about the speed we grow up or about the how many years we have been alive?
“Shuli, what are you thinking about?” Ari is sitting with me on the step. “I’ve been thinking about growing up.” I tell him. “It’s about time!” he replies. I laugh. “No not like that – I‘ve been thinking about what growing up feels like and its connection to time.” Ari looks interested. “Sometimes I wonder why some people grow up more slowly, and whether growing up is something we do or whether it just happens to us,” he said. “You mean like Dvir?” I ask him. Dvir is in our class but he doesn’t do the same work as the rest of us. We take turns to help him. “Yes, I wonder what growing up feels like for him.” “Good question” I say, “we should ask him.”
Tal comes and joins us on the step. “Why do we say “growing up” anyway? “, she asks. “Maybe some things grow down – like mountains, or pebbles in a stream, or even problems. The older they are the smaller they get “. “You mean they start out big and rough and end up smaller and more refined.” Ari says, finishing off her thought. Meanwhile, I’m thinking to myself that maybe it isn’t so clear with problems – sometimes they grow bigger over time, not smaller.
“Trees are in between – they grow up and grow down at the same time”, Tal continues, “I wonder if the roots start growing down every spring at the same time new shoots are growing upwards?” “Imagine celebrating Tu’Bishvat each year not as the time trees send out new shoots and blossom, but as the time they send out new roots?” I add. “We’d all be told to come to school dressed in brown clothes with tree roots in our hair.” Ari would really like that!
Ari and Tal go inside but I stay sitting on the step. I’m still thinking.
I’m thinking that growing up is also like walking backwards. Walking backwards on the beach you can see where you’ve come from by looking at your footprints, but you don’t know exactly where your feet will be next. That is how I feel in life – all the things that have happened to me up until now and all my memories tell me who I am now – but I am not exactly sure who I will be tomorrow. An almond tree will grow up to be an almond tree, but I could grow up to be anything.
Leading Idea: Growth as the Realization of Potential
Another way of thinking about growth is as self-actualization – the realization of inner potential. This idea is also linked to Tu Bishvat. Situated at the midpoint of winter, Tu Bishvat is seen to symbolically mark the transition in trees from a period of dormancy to one of growth (and the coming of spring) in which they come to ‘realize their potential’ by sending out new growth, flowers and producing the next year’s fruits. This concept of growth as the realization of potential has led Tu Bishvat to be symbolically linked to such diverse endeavors as education (the laying of corner tones of universities), the building of Israel as nation and as a time to attend to our spiritual growth as human beings.
PDF 
