November 2009
Now that the High Holy Days are over and there are no other holidays until Chanukah (months away!) I get to start my regular routine. Tot Shabbat has kicked off (2nd Saturday of every month), Lunch and Learn is back (3rd Tuesday of the month) Adult Hebrew will begin in November (Please let us know in the office if you are interested), my pre-B’nai Mitzvah students are trucking along nicely, and regular Shabbat services and Torah study are going along swimmingly, as well as all the regular meetings and business that we do at the Temple daily. This year I’m so pleased to say that I’ve added to my schedule. KAST.
Last year Melissa Hayden jumped in as our new KAST advisor in the middle of the year. Following D.J. and Shelley Moody was no easy feat, but Melissa rose to the challenge and has created wonderful relationships with our high school students. Happily she is continuing in that role this year, and we expect to even begin sending students to NFTY (national and regional Reform youth movement) conclaves this year as a way to connect our students with other Jewish teens throughout our area and even across the country.
Our youth group program includes both a social/youth group aspect as well as regular classroom study time on Sunday mornings. Usually our teens are here at the Learning Center for regular class about twice a month and they are off doing youth group activities (sometimes just fun sometimes more focused on social action) on the other two weeks each month. This year I will be teaching the weeks they are at the Learning Center. I am so pleased about this—I love working with the teens, and the curriculum they will be using is one I think they will really enjoy.
Our teens will be working with the Jewish Lens curriculum. They will spend the year learning Jewish values and Jewish text through the use of photographs taken by Israeli photographer Zion Ozeri. I had the wonderful opportunity to meet Mr. Ozeri two years ago when I attended a training he led on using this curriculum. This year our student will be working with an updated version with new photos and a website where they can talk with Jewish students around the world who are studying the same things. Throughout the year the students will gain a greater understanding not only of Jewish text and Jewish values (community in particular), but they will also learn more and more about the art of photography and how a picture might also be read as text. Part of their learning will include taking their own photographs of their Vancouver Jewish community, and what being Jewish in Vancouver looks like and feels like to them. After each class I plan to post a “picture of the week” in the Learning Center office so that our whole community will also be able to see what our oldest students are working on.
I hope to have an exhibit of all of our student work at the end of the school year in a public place where our greater Vancouver community might also see the wonderful things our students are learning and the important messages they have to teach. I could use some help on that score. I welcome any suggestions of locations and any contacts anyone in our congregation might have in order to make such an exhibit a reality.
I am so looking forward to spending this year with our high school students and I am really excited to see the great art they will create.