When the people of Israel crossed through the Red Sea, they witnessed a great miracle. Some say it was the greatest miracle that ever happened. On that day they saw a sight more awesome than all the visions of the prophets combined. The sea split and the waters stood like great walls, while Israel escaped to freedom on the distant shore.  Awesome. But not for everyone.

Two people, Reuven and Shimon, hurried along among the crowd crossing the sea. They never once looked up. They noticed only that the ground under their feet was still a little muddy –like a beach at low tide.

“Yucch!” said Reuven, “there’s mud all over this place!”
“Blecch!” said Shimon, “I have muck all over my feet!”
“This is terrible,” answered Reuven. “When we were slaves in Egypt, we had to make our bricks out of mud, just like this!”
“Yeah,” said Shimon. There’s no difference between being a slave in Egypt and being free here.”

And so it went, Reuven and Shimon whining and complaining all the way to freedom. For them there was no miracle. Only mud. Their eyes were closed. They might as well have been asleep. (Exodus Rabbah 24:1)

Excerpt from The Book of Miracles, A Young Person’s Guide to Jewish Spiritual Awareness by Lawrence Kushner, one of my favorite teachers.  Re-printed with permission.  (Jewish Lights Publishing)

Rabbi Kushner teaches us that “to be a Jew means to wake up and to keep our eyes open to the many beautiful, mysterious, and holy things that happen around us every day.”  Celebrating Pesach offers us an opportunity to witness and take part in our daily miracles.  Whether big or small, honoring these moments will help us make our way from dark to light, constriction to expanse, personal slavery to freedom.  

Click HERE for ways to celebrate Pesach in your home!

There is a wonderful midrash that tells of God explaining this all to Adam on a lovely walk through the Garden of Eden. God says, “I created all My beautiful and glorious works for your sake. Take heed not to corrupt and destroy My world. For if you destroy it, there is no one to make it right after you.” (Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:13) Sound familiar?

Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. These are three different ways of saying bal tashchit. Every day we’re learning more and more about the environment and our role in it. Jewish teachers and texts have been talking about it since the very beginning. We are taught that righteousness includes the steps we take to actively care for our world, not to mention our appreciation for the extraordinary beauty offered to us in every direction. I like the way Rabbi Abraham ben Moses (1186-1237) puts it:

“In order to serve God, one needs access to the enjoyment of the the beauties of nature, such as the contemplation of flower-decorated meadows, majestic mountains, flowing rivers… For all these are essential to the spiritual development of even the holiest people.”

So this year on Tu B’Shvat, not only do I want you to go out and hug a tree, but I want you to take a serious look at the ways you can reduce your waste on a daily basis.

Ideas for Bal Tashchit? Here are a few of mine:

• Bring your own shopping bags to the grocery store with you. Enough with the plastic grocery bags!
• Reuse, reuse, and reuse again those plastic bags you have stuffed in every corner of the kitchen.
• Really remember to turn of the lights when you leave the room and Really remember to shut off the water while brushing your teeth, washing your face, and washing dishes.
• Use dishtowels and cloth napkins instead of paper
• Reuse your computer paper. Keep a stack of paper you’ve only used on one side and save it for next time. You can even use the backs of all that junk mail paper you receive every day.

I can’t wait to hear about your families’ green ways! Please send them in to green@shirlala.com or leave them as a comment. I’ll continue to update the list on a special page.

Oh, and did you know that the Torah is compared to a fig, too!
Because every fruit has in it something inedible: dates have pits, grapes have seeds, pomegranates have skin. But every part of the fig is good to eat.
(Yalkut Shimoni Joshua 1)

Teacher Review
Exodus 24: 9-11 (translation by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan)
9Moses then went up, along with Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, and seventy of Israel’s elders.
10They saw a vision of the God of Israel, and under His feet was something like a sapphire brick, like the essence of a clear [blue] sky.
11[God] did not unleash His power against the leaders of the Israelites. They had a vision of the Divine, and they ate and drank.

Lesson – part I

9Moses then went up, along with Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, and seventy of Israel’s elders.

Shavuot celebrates the revelation of Torah at Mt. Sinai. The Torah stories seem to reflect many different goings ups and downs the mountain. Sometimes just Moses, sometimes this particular group, the “70 elders of Israel.” They are considered to be representative of the entire community, the 70 different faces or voices of our people.

Ask: Which one of these voices are you?
With younger children, try using this sentence “I use my voice to..” and then echo back to them, “You are the voice of…”

10They saw a vision of the God of Israel, and under His feet was something like a sapphire brick, like the essence of a clear [blue] sky.

The beauty of 70 different faces is (at least) 70 different visions!
Ask: What was your vision? And what could that sapphire brick possibly have looked like? Some call it, “the footstool of God.”

11They had a vision of the Divine, and they ate and drank.

Why not have a delicious snack in honor of the moment?!

Lesson – part II  

“Rabbi Yose said: ‘How are we to understand the words, ‘and they saw the God of Israel”? Who can see the Holy One? Is it not written: “No man can see Me and live”? It means that a rainbow appeared above them in radiant colors resplendent with the beauty of God’s presence.”

Make a portrait of the Divine. Explore color, using everything and anything you got. These students used glitter and tissue paper. Try cray pas, watercolors, flower petals, anything with color.

* This holiday is sponsored by the numbers 7 and 10*

Teacher Review
Exodus 19:14 -17 Moses climbs up the mountain, the people prepare, the mountain shakes with excitement
Exodus 20: 2-18  Ten Commandments

For the art project
Supplies:  sturdy paper, glue, glue bowls and brushes, fine sand, tissue paper cut into squares

Lesson
Begin with a quick reminder of our path out of Egypt, across the Sea of Reeds. And here we are now in the desert wilderness surrounded by…  sand! Where are we going? How will we get there? What does it feel like to have the sand under our feet and the sun over our head?

Paint the bottom of the paper with a light brush of glue, start sprinkling sand onto it to be the desert ground.

Open a Jewish calendar and count together (in Hebrew!) from the days of Passover to the holiday of Shavuot, 1(echad)  2(shtayim)  3(shalosh) 4(arba)  5(chamesh)  6(shesh)  7(sheva)  and again 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 etc. 7 times over until you reach Shavuot. 

That’s how long our great great great great…great grandparents walked on the sand in the desert.
Sprinkle some more sand. Until… we reached Mt. Sinai.  

Paint more glue into the shape of a mountain and sprinkled the sand in the shape of the mountain.

Moses climbs up the mountain.
Re-enact Moses’s climb up Mt. Sinai.   Re-enact the shaking and thunder and lightning excitement of the dramatic moment when we received the gift of Torah.

Discuss how it feels to receive presents and how this is the biggest gift of all.

Tell a story: Midrash tells us that at the very moment of receiving Torah, all of Mt. Sinai spontaneously bloomed into a rainbow of colorful blossoms! 

Using the dip and stick technique, scrunch up colorful pieces of tissue paper to make  “flowers”, dip them in a bowl of glue and paste onto the mountain to make bursts of color all over the page.

The Ten Commandments
What’s in the Torah?  What did Moses and the people receive that day? All kinds of stories that teach us how to be the best we can be and lay out the rules for a good life.  Discuss the rules your students have that make them feel safe and secure in the home, at school and with their friends.  Also, the rules that make us Jewish (i.e. Shabbat) I don’t think it’s critical to go through the actual ten commandments with this age group.  There are some that are fun to discuss and you should feel free to play around with this.  The story here is about creating rules for good living.  

Music Suggestions (depending on what direction you go, there are many other fun choices)
Torah Tziva Lanu Moshe
Hakafah (Peter and Ellen Allard)
Tree of Life
Rainbow Round Me

Follow UP
Make tissue paper flowers to decorate the classroom and home.

I like to think about mitzvot as our Rules for Good Living.  The thing about mitzvot, is that we do them not because we’re nice people or we’re in a good mood, but because they bring consciousness into our daily life.

Here are a few examples,
Paying attention by saying a “thank you” Bracha for the food we eat
Making the world “right” by contributing Tzedakah
Lighting Shabbat candles to take time in life to rest and spend time with each other
Sharing, helping, noticing, loving
See? These are things we do every day! 

Mishnah is the kernal of Talmud, the main post-biblical Rabinnic writing. The Mishnah is a compilation of Jewish practice up until the end of the 2nd century. According to the Rabbis there were two Torahs delivered at Sinai. One to be written down (the Five Books of Moses) and one to be passed on orally. For in addition to the Five Books, the Rabbis conceived that Moses must have received extensive directions and explanations of the specific laws so that Moses passed on the Oral Torah to Joshua who then passed it on to the elders and so on.

Around 200 CE, Rabbi Y’hudah HaNasi assembled other Rabbis and they decided on the proper content of the Oral Torah and called it the Mishnah. For the next 300 years, Rabbinic academies discussed and debated the content of the Mishnah, and the result of their discussion was the Gemarah.

The Gemarah and the Mishnah put together equal the Talmud. The Talmud follows the format for the Mishnah. There are 6 Orders, more or less divided by subject. My friend Amichai Lau Lavie says that, “The Talmud is like your grandparents basement full of ancient boxes of ancient stuff, completely disorganized.”