With the start of a new school year, a new Religious School year also begins for our kids. They start attending in late August and it will continue through early May. Our kids really enjoy Religious School. They learn all about Jewish culture and values through activities, crafts, and singing. And they are making some really good friends along the way.
Aiden's Class
Madi's Class
The first Jewish holiday of the year is Rosh Hashanah. We celebrated this holiday from sundown on September 9th to sundown on September 10th. This holiday is considered the Jewish New Year. It is both a time of rejoicing and of serious introspection, a time to celebrate the completion of another year while also reflecting one's own past transgressions and challenge ourselves to think, reflect, and dream with purpose and with intention. This is a time to eat round challah which symbolizes the circle of life and wish for a "sweet" new year by dipping our challah in honey.
Rosh Hashanah Dinner ~ 1st Night
Me with the kids
Family Photo
Silly Family Photo
The kids being blessed on the Bimah at during the service
Rosh Hashanah Dinner at Jamie's Aunt & Uncle's ~ 2nd Night
Challah and Apples with Honey
Josh and I
Homemade Horseradish Sauce -- Josh is such a fan!
Nate and Jamie
Yom Kippur is the next holiday in the Jewish calendar. It begins ten days after Rosh Hashanah. This day is the Day of Atonement, when we ask forgiveness for the wrongs we have committed over the past year. Many Jewish people fast on this holiday as a way of practicing self-control so they can focus on the betterment of self. This year, Josh and I participated as a way to connect to and remind us of the meaning of the day. Luckily, Jamie invited us to Break the Fast with her family. We were pretty hungry by then.
This year, we also volunteered during the Children's Yom Kippur Service. We taught the kids how to vision board. This was my Women's Leadership Institute's project. I wanted the kids to have a fun and visual way to express their dreams and goals for the new Jewish year. I was really impressed at how well the kids understood the objective and purposefully created their boards. We may need to incorporate this fun activity for our kids annually.
The kids vision boarding
Aiden's board
Madi's board
Breaking the Fast
Five days after Yom Kippur, we celebrate the next Jewish holiday, Sukkot. Sukkot is a fall harvest festival celebrated in a sukkah (a small hut that serves as a remembrance of the huts the Jews lived in as they wandered the desert for forty years.) The purpose of the holiday is to give thanks and rejoice for the bounty we have received from the earth. It is also customary to shake and bless the lulav and estrog, which are symbols of the harvest.
Our kids in the temple's sukkah
Shaking the lulav and estrog
We end the fall Jewish holiday cycle one week after Sukkot with a holiday named Simchat Torah. Simchat Torah means "rejoicing the Torah." This holiday celebrates the conclusion of the annual cycle of reading the Torah and beginning of a new one. The kids loved dancing with their plush Torahs and unscrolling the Temple's main Torah around the sanctuary so that Rabbi Schneider could read the final portion of the Torah from the Book of Deuteronomy and the beginning part of the Torah from the Book of Genesis. It was a very fun and joyous evening!
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