Our High Holy Day season was filled with activities centered around the Yamim Noraim (Days of Awe) and the music associated with the beginning of the Jewish year. Once we had finished with Sukkot and Simchat Torah, we began our unit on the Temple and the earliest forms of Jewish music. We learned that the original "offerings" to G-d took the form of animal sacrifice (ew!) in the Tabernacle and the Temple. The priests were the only ones who prayed directly to G-d, in the Holy of Holies, the most sacred part of the Temple, where the Ark of the Covenant resided. They also used many musical instruments, including the lyre, the timbrel, the trumpet and the shofar. Priests were also singers! However, once the first Temple was destroyed, and the Jews began to spread out into the Diaspora, the first synagogues were built, and instead of animal worship, they began to send prayers to G-d. Over the centuries, the liturgy developed into what it is today, in its various forms, to include the leadership of a rabbi or rabbis, and a cantor to lead the congregation in prayer.
Some of our recent activities include:
Learning about Nusach
(the different tunes that we use in Jewish liturgical music)
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| Our class definition of nusach |
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| We compared the various holiday tunes - the High Holy Days vs. Purim, for example |
Making Honey Cake!
Learning about Teshuvah in Tefillah
Making musical decorations for the sukkah and shaking the lulav!
Making seasonal fruit salad with yummy pomegranates!
Making our own timbrels and using them in the sukkah!
Making Simchat Torah flags and using them during our Simchat Torah celebration!
Making our own lyres, just like they used in the Temple (well, sort of!) and tuning them to various scales!
Look for some videos of the Shiraniks learning new songs with Ben and creating a brand new parody song of their own, to the tune of The Brady Bunch!
Shalom!
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