I Was There at Creation!

We are about to celebrate the birthday of the world on Rosh HaShanah. Can you imagine what it might have been like when everything was new? What it might have been like when the first Fennec Fox met the first Hoopoe Bird and they both went to visit the first dolphin right at the edge of the water? You know, the water that became the water below when it was separated from the water above? Together, we will get to know the text from the very, very beginning of our Torah and right away we will imagine ourselves IN the story.

8 - 11 year olds

3 - 10 learners per meeting

Rosh HaShanah & Torah Stories

60 min per meeting

See course information for further details

Are you interested in this class?

Let us know and a member of the Truvie team will contact you.

Interested in this class

Course Details

Description

Together, we will get to know the text from the very, very beginning of our Torah and right away we will imagine ourselves IN the story. Were you a marble polecat? A camel? A desert horned viper? Maybe you were the water?

You don’t need to know any Hebrew for this class, but if you do know some Hebrew, you’ll have opportunities to use it!

Class 1: Get to know the story at the very, very beginning of our Torah! We will start to imagine ourselves IN the story.

Class 2: After refreshing our memory about the story in the Torah, we will get to work writing ourselves into it.

Class 3: We will polish up our stories, add illustrations, and compile them into a digital book to share with one another.

Requirements

In this class we will be creating stories and illustrating them. Students will need a surface they can use to draw on while they are engaged with this class.

Supply List

Plain paper and markers/crayons/colored pencils.

It will be very helpful if a grown-up can take a picture of the student’s illustration and send it to the teacher to include in the digital book.

Optional Supply: A favorite stuffed animal.

Teacher

Rabbi Ariel

Rabbi Amy Josefa Ariel (she/her) engages her students - early learners through adults - in creative, inclusive, dynamic learning. Always keen for a great kids’ story with reliable adults, three of her favorite middle-grade books are Patina, by Jason Reynolds, Almost Flying, by Jake Maia Arlow, and The Girl Who Drank the Moon, by Kelly Barnhill. She’s also the author of Friends Forever, a Jewish middle-grade time travel novel. Rabbi Ariel has been a Jewish educator and youth worker for decades, and it was her former students who convinced her to become a rabbi. She lives in Saint Paul, MN with her wife and the best dog ever. You can find her online at www.amyjosefaariel.com.

Parent Reviews (1)

Rabbi Ariel is amazing at connecting with children. She teaches in a way that honors who they are, incorporating their interests and personalities into class sessions and creating a space that is truly inclusive. My 4th grader, who “doesn’t really like Jewish things,” took a class about the creation story with Rabbi Ariel. His contributions, wacky as some of them were, were incorporated into the course (and into the creation story itself – they constructed a version of it during class!), leading to a truly participatory learning experience and high engagement with the content. Rabbi Ariel’s deep knowledge, unflappability, kindness, and genuine enjoyment of how children’s minds work make her a gem of a teacher.

Parthy Schachter on 21 September, 2022