Sweet Start to the School Year

School got underway last Sunday. Students spent the morning outdoors making decorations they hung in the sukkah later in the week. School will continue outdoors at least through the end of September.

Protecting and Repairing Planet Earth

Students put their learning about Jewish environmental principles into action by conducting a cleanup of the Temple Israel neighborhood and planting some calendula seeds.

Hazan Et-Hakol (Food for Everyone)

In their study of Birkat HaMazon (Grace After Meals) prayer, Bet Hebrew students collected and delivered 440 pounds of food and $108 to the CHUM Food Shelf. Todah (thank you) to all who contributed and helped them fulfill the mitzvah of providing food for everyone.

Zoom Passover Seder Prep

Holding a “model” Passover seder on Zoom meant preparing the seder foods and delivering them to the students’ front porches the previous day. The haggadah we used was a compilation of pages from “A Children’s Haggadah,” “Simply Seder” and “Season of Renewal.”

Anxious for Normalcy

For the first time in nearly a year, I felt a few blessed moments of normalcy. 

Chris King, Elizabeth Kaplan and I were in the Temple kitchen – rolling out and cutting dough into circles, spreading them with raspberry jam and Nutella, then folding and pinching them into the tri-cornered shape of Haman’s hat. Although we were masked and spaced well apart at the stainless-steel baking cabinets, we were talking and laughing while we baked 150 hamantaschen for our students and fellow teachers. 

We were about an hour into the task, when a moment of silence brought us to voice the same realization: our activity made us feel so “normal.” 

I felt the same way again later that day when returning to bag the hamantaschen after it had cooled. I opened the 16th Avenue East door and the sweet smell of the pastries wafted down from the kitchen. The smell was wonderful. And it reminded me sharply of how long it has been since anyone has cooked in the Temple kitchen. 

When I have been at Temple to develop lessons and teach classes online this year, I am often alone in my office. Sometimes Rabbi David or Nicole or Mona are here, in their offices, or Marko is in the boiler room, but most often not. Even during regular office hours, entry by others into the building is highly limited. 

Morah Elizabeth packs up some hamantaschen for her preschooler’s at-home Jewish learning packets. This

month, her students learned about Purim.

The most activity I experience occurs on the last Mondays and Tuesdays of the month when Chris and Elizabeth put together the Jewish learning packets we send home to our preschool, kindergarten and first-grade students. Pick-ups of the packets involve one parent entering the back hallway, occasionally with a student in tow, and a few minutes of brief conversation with whoever of us is manning the door. For some families, it’s just a quick hand-off at the door.   

I know that all of us are anxious for more blessed moments of normalcy.  

As fortunate individuals in our Temple community receive the COVID-19 vaccination, local schools re-open to more students, and local businesses begin to open more to the public, I ask that everyone please continue to mask up, stay socially distanced and refrain from going out when you are sick. Normalcy will return. But for most of us, it and a vaccination remain many months away. 

Youth Education Director 

Andrea Novel Buck 

Giving Thanks

Thankfulness. Showing gratitude. Blessings – saying and counting them. 

These are the important underlying concepts our Bet Hebrew students have come to understand as they learned to read the Modeh Ani prayer, six food blessings, and the six words that comprise the traditional Hebrew blessing formula this past month. 

In a recent assignment, I asked them to say 100 blessings in a week. (A lesser challenge than the rabbi-prescribed 100 blessings a day.) While none of us, myself included, reached this goal, I was happy with their attempts and the things for which they chose to say blessings: Mom, Dad, pets, food, clothing, good weather (snow included), flowers, animals. 

As I write this, we are headed into Thanksgiving and a dark winter ahead, given the current local and national rates of COVID-19 transmission. I pause to say the Shehecheyanu blessing, to thank God for keeping us alive, sustaining us, and letting us reach this moment. 

I am thankful that we chose to start this school year at home and online – despite how challenging it has been for our teachers and students to engage in Jewish learning and our families to engage in Jewish community.  

I announced last week we have moved our upcoming children’s Hanukkah parties from outdoors to online. May the candles that we light together on those two nights, and all the other nights of Hanukkah, remind us that there is still plenty of light with us in this winter ahead. Let us say and count our blessings for that. 

Andrea Novel Buck 

Youth Education Director 

Online and In-Home School Gets Under Way

As I write this, virtual classes for 3rd through 8th grade students start in the next few days – Saturday, Sept. 26 for religious studies and Wednesday, Sept. 30 for Hebrew studies. And monthly packet pickups for preschoolers through 1st grade students begin Tuesday, Sept. 29. 

Our traditional lessons will be imbued with three themes – home-based Judaism, the concept of shmirat haguf (caring for or protecting one’s body) and being a welcoming “place” for our Jewish children. 

The Hebrew phrase of welcome is ברוכים הבאים (bruchim haba’im). Its literal translation: “blessed are those who come.”  

We won’t be “coming” to synagogue this Fall, but our teachers are and will be creating virtual and in-home opportunities for learning. And blessed are they who wholly participate in their efforts. I emphasize wholly because it will take an extra effort by families to make these at-home lessons work. 

Please wish our students, parents, teachers and myself, יישר כחך (yasher koach), strength, as we begin this journey.  

Andrea Novel Buck 

Youth Education Director 

School to Reopen with Distance Learning

 On Thursday, Aug. 13, the Temple Israel Board approved a reopening plan for the school that involves conducting religious and Hebrew studies for our 3rd through 9th graders online and Judaism-at-home activity kits for our preschool through 1st graders; and allows for some highly-structured in-person outdoor events for small groups of specified students (while COVID-19 14-day average case numbers in Duluth allow). Below is our teaching lineup for this Fall: 

 Religious Studies 

PreK – Morah Elizabeth Kaplan 

Kindergarten and 1st Grade – Morah Chris King 

3rd and 4th Grade – Moreh Andrew Podolsky 

5th and 6th Grade – Moreh Jeff Wallace 

B’nai Mitzvah – Rabbi David Steinberg and Morah Susan Rees 

Confirmation – Rabbi David Steinberg 

Music – Moreh Danny Frank 

Subs: Morah Heather Lassard and Morah Andrea Buck 

 Hebrew Studies 

Bet – Morah Andrea Buck 

Gimmel – Moreh Tom Buck 

Dalet – Moreh Andrew Podolsky 

Subs: Morah Heather Lassard and Morah Susan Rees 

Looking ahead, the school will hold a parent’s meet-up and curriculum pick-up before the start of school. A short technology survey and calendar will be coming soon. Currently, we are looking at school start dates of Saturday, Sept. 26 for Religious Studies and Wednesday, Sept. 30 for Hebrew Studies. 

 Youth Education Director Andrea Novel Buck 

News from the Religious and Hebrew School (June 2020)

We ended (are ending) the school year with two virtual events. 

On Friday, June 5, students will honor teachers and share some Jewish learning during a family Shabbat meet-up on Zoom. 

And on Saturday, May 16, students, their parents and teachers met on Zoom for an all-school picnic. Gift bags with bouncy balls, bubbles, chalk art and snack crackers were delivered to students’ homes earlier in the week. We did fun activities together. Morim Jeff and Andrew led us in a Jewish scavenger hunt. Rabbi David counted for us in Hebrew while we kept those small bouncy balls bouncing. We blew bubbles and covered sidewalks with chalk art. Moreh Danny led us in song. We listened to The Forever Garden, and watched a video of the weekly Torah portion, which aptly, was on sustainable farming.  

Moving the school online in April (due to Covid-19 concerns and Minnesota’s social distancing/stay-at-home orders that closed our physical classrooms) was an interesting experiment. And we learned a lot about what did and didn’t work. 

Overall, 50 percent of our students took part in all or some regularly scheduled classes or meet-ups with teachers on Zoom. And 70 percent of our students participated in one or more of our larger group meet-ups on Zoom.  

A few students completed homework type assignments, but more did not. Videos teachers made and posted to classroom folders on Google Drive went unwatched unless a teacher played the video for his or her students during a Zoom meet-up. 

A major hurdle was Zoom overlaps – where families with more than one student, or families with a student in one class and parent teaching another were trying to navigate being online at the same time. 

I am interested in hearing from parents what did and didn’t work from their end. Was technology or a lack of access an issue? Was there a better or preferred mode of communication? Were families too overwhelmed with working from home, participating in public schools’ online learning, and the pandemic in general to stay on top of our Religious and Hebrew School offerings? How can we design better virtual components? 

These are important questions as we begin to plan for next school year and the possibility of needing a hybrid learning model that allows us to move from face-to-face instruction to online quickly in the event of local Covid-19 outbreaks or hotspots. 

Moving the school online gave us the opportunity to “be there” for our Jewish youth during this scary time. Just that in itself counts as a major success.

Please help me extend a huge shout out to our teachers. They didn’t sign up for this mode of teaching when they agreed to teach in the Religious and Hebrew School this year, but they stepped up to continue this important and sacred work. 

Andrea Novel Buck, Youth Education Director 

Jewish Values: Protecting the Animals

Students in Morah Elizabeth’s and Morah Susan’s religious studies classes put into practice the Jewish value of tza’ar ba’alei chayim – protecting or preventing unnecessary cruelty toward animals.  

They first examined the Torah story of Rivka, who showed great kindness to Abraham’s servant Eliezer by greeting him at the well and watering his 10 camels. (Camels, by the way, can drink 30 to 40 gallons of water in about 15 minutes.) 

They braided polar fleece strips into pull toys for dogs and filled old socks with noisy paper for cats. Then they delivered the toys to homeless dogs and cats at Animal Allies. While there, our students toured the shelter, hung some of the toys on the animals’ cages, and petted a cat and its newborn kittens. 

Mazel tov on these g’milut chasadim -- acts of loving kindness. 

Purim Carnival 2019

Students send love and hope to Pittsburgh

By selling lemony drinks during Temple Israel’s annual meeting and soliciting donations from synagogue members and preschool teacher/author Linda Glaser, Hebrew and B’nai Mitzvah students were able to send an abundance of hope and love to Pittsburgh.

From their lemonade and tea sales, the students sent $307 to the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh to help victims of the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue and their families.

From their book donation effort and Linda’s generous match, they sent 58 copies of "Emma’s Poem” and “Hannah’s Way” to preschools and after-school programs in the Pittsburgh community to help children there learn about diversity and tolerance.

Linda’s books were named to the Association of Jewish Libraries’ first Love Your Neighbor List, which was created in response to the synagogue shooting and to rising anti-Semitism in the United States. The University of Pittsburgh’s Office of Child Development distributed the books as part of a larger book drive it conducted.

In an e-mail, Roger Fustich, operations director of the Office of Child Development, wrote “We appreciate your generosity and kindness! We started our distribution last week and certainly received very positive feedback. …You, Linda Glaser, your students, and congregation are wonderfully compassionate. We love you.”

Children's Hanukkah Party 2018

Kicking off the school year with Sukkot

Students’ thankfulness and wishes for the world are the foundation of the blessings chain we hang each year in the sukkah. Magen Davids covered in birdseed, tziporim of shalom, and bouquets of clippings from our buttefly garden add individualized touches of beauty.

Children's Hanukkah Party 2017

Students send comfort, care to Houston hurricane victims

G'milut chasadim, acts of loving kindness, and tikkun olam, repair of the world, are two Jewish values playing out predominantly in this year’s religious studies classes. 

Our 5th and 6th graders were challenged by Morah Susan Rees to develop a tzedakah (literally justice in Hebrew though often referred to as charity) project. They chose to adopt 29 Jewish families whose homes were destroyed by Hurricane Harvey and send them gifts of care and comfort over the course of the school year. 

The first gifts – fleece blankets and pillows our students knotted together – arrived in Houston in plenty of time for Hanukkah. Our students’ thoughtfulness extended to researching the favorite colors of the children from the families and having their names stitched into a corner of their blankets.  

This project has grown into a school-wide affair: Our preschool families chipped in to buy boxes of Hanukkah candles for the Houston families, which all our students dipped in various colors of wax.

It has grown into a synagogue-wide affair: Parents and DuSTY teens helped cut the blankets, tie knots and supervise the candle-dipping. Congregants and the students' relatives donated more than $2,000 to help cover costs. 

It has even reached into the Twin Ports community: Halvor Lines transported the blankets for free on one of their trucks bound for Houston.  

And it has fully blossomed down at Temple Sinai synagogue where those families received their new blankets and pillows, along with some Hanukkiyah and even a tallit, lovingly donated from our congregants.

Decorating the Sukkah 2017