A Week of Firsts

What an exciting week it has been in 5th grade JS! We have had many firsts this week: our first official Mishnah lesson, our first official Chumash lesson, our first time using our Lashon book and a first time Torah reader- WOW!
In Mishnah we starting discovering what a Mishnah actually is. Students looked through copies of the Mishanh and discovered that it is written all in Hebrew, that there is a lot of commentary written about it, and that it covers many different topics, including agriculture, women's issues (like marriage and divorce), and damages (personal injury law). They still have many questions about Mishnah: when was it written, how is it organzied, and when can we start learning it?? The answers will come next Wednesday- stay tuned!
In Chumash, we started discussing why God tells Avraham that many years from now, his descendants will be slaves in Egypt. Many of us (including me!) were troubled by this statement- why would God tell Avraham such terrible news? And why do the Jews have to be slaves at all? We had many different and thoughtful answers: maybe God wanted the Jewish people to feel empathy for other oppressed peoples, so we had to go through it ourselves; maybe we are being punished for something we did; maybe it is the only way to truly appreciate freedom. I look forward to hearing how these theories develop as we continue to learn the story of Shmot.
In Lashon this week, we have started to learn about Eliezer ben Yehuda, the father of modern Hebrew. We have learned that it wasn't so easy to get people to start speaking Hebrew again in the 1880's, and Ben Yehuda had to work very hard to convince people that Hebrew should be the language of the Jews. To understand his plight, we are working on a debate between Eliezer ben Yehuda, who believed that Hebrew should become the national language for the Jewish people, and the Haredim, who believed that Hebrew was a sacred language and should not be profaned by every day use. The arguments will commence next week- I look forward to finding out who will win!
Finally, kol hakavod to Inbal for reading Torah for the very first time this week- she practied for a long time, put in a lot of effort, and the result was amazing: she sang her part so beautifully! We are happy to welcome Inbal in to our community of Torah readers, and can't wait to hear her read again.
Shabbat Shalom,
Eliana