Shalom Shiraniks!

This week was filled with getting to know each other, learning about Jewish music and exploring ways in which we express our Jewishness.

We spent our first weekday session learning about the Jewish calendar and how it works.  The students learned that:

• The Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar (New moon, new month!)
• The new month is called Rosh Chodesh
• Rosh Hashanah (the head of the year) is both the beginning of a new month and the beginning of the Jewish year.  
• Most major Jewish festivals (lasting 8 days) fall in the middle of the month, during the full moon
• The cycle of the moon starts on the right (new, or waxing moon) and move through the cycle to the left (waning moon), just like the way we read Hebrew
• Jewish holidays fall into three categories:  Those that come from the Torah, those that come from the Talmud and those that come from the state of Israel
• Each holiday has it's own nusach, or tune for the prayers (more about this later!)

After learning about the calendar, the students began working on a class quilt project called "What's Your Note?"  In this project, the students created quilt pieces (from paper) that express their individual "NOTE":

N:  NATURE - What is your personality?
O: OVATION - What have you done that you are proud of?
T:  TALENTS  - What are your talents?
E: EXPRESSION - How do you express your Jewishness?

On Sunday, we finished our quilt pieces and learned more about the upcoming High Holy Days.  Among other things, we learned that:

• During the month of Elul, the month preceding Rosh Hashanah, we hear the shofar 
• The New Year begins with a period of ten days, called the Days of Awe, or Days of Repentance.  The first two of these days are called Rosh Hashanah
• Rosh Hashanah is celebrated with apples and honey and honeycake
• Kol Nidre is a time of introspection
• When we ask for forgiveness about something that we had done the previous year, we need to ask forgiveness from:
• God
• The person(s) we wronged (this is really the hard part!)
• Ourselves
• More to come next week...
  

We will be putting up the class quilt later this week, as well as starting to learn about the music that would have been heard in the First and Second Temples, so stay tuned!