From Robin Meyerowitz 

Dear Parents,

Wacky Wednesday was such a fun day! The children really got into it, creating a hospital, a police station, an EMS station, and a fire station. Everyone got to try everything, and we learned a lot about the people who do these very important jobs. Thank you for sending in items to enhance our experience!

 

Morah Chera Garlick started as an assistant teacher in the 4-year-old classroom on Monday. She is a warm, loving, and attentive teacher. We l ook forward to the next few months with her in our school!

 

I am fortunate to be a member of Mesora, a cohort of Orthodox directors of Reggio Emilia-inspired early childhood centers. We have collectively begun a research study on the effect of the classroom environment as the "third teacher" (the parents and teachers are the first and second). We are measuring the power of the classroom environment to teach the students about the holidays of Purim and Pesach once the room is transformed to reflect the holiday. I have begun interviewing our students to assess their knowledge of the holidays, and will be documenting their learning in the next few weeks. Please check your email for a letter with more details about this. I look forward to sharing our fascinating findings with you!

 

Shabbat Shalom,

Robin 

Thoughts of the Rav    

by Rabbi Eliezer Bercuson  

The lex talionis - the principle of retributive justice - is the touchstone of much of history's anti-Jewish sentiment.  Rav Soloveitchik says these opponents of Jewish tradition claim that the law of "an eye for an eye" (Ex. 21:24) makes halakhah look cruel and vengeful, and, conversely, other religions compassionate and kind.  While the plain meaning of the Torah itself is that when one person blinds another person's eye, the former's eye should be blinded, our sages explain the practical law differently.  Chazal understand that, in such a situation, the damager should pay the damaged person the value of an eye.  Rather than "ayin tachat ayin," the law becomes "mamon tachat ayin."

Rambam considers this to be not a rabbinic interpretation of the law but actually a law intended at Sinai, a halakhah l'Moshe mi'Sinai.  That is, from the moment the Torah was given, G-d intended the law to be "money for an eye," not "an eye for an eye."  The Rav then asked: If the Torah had always meant that a damaged eye should be replaced by money - and not by an actual eye - why was the Torah phrased in such a way?

 

He answers that if the Torah had said "mamon tachat ayin," it would have degraded the image of the human body.  No monetary value, in fact, can be given to a human limb.  Human beings are creatures designed to serve G-d, and our bodies were made for that purpose.  It would be an insult to G-d's creation to place a monetary value on a human limb.

 

The divine penalty for blinding a person is, in fact, that the damager should be blinded.  However, the Torah does not give human beings the authority to carry out that punishment.  Human beings are imperfect; we err; we sin.  We cannot consistently or fairly mete out strict punishment.  The halakhah l'Moshe mi'Sinai prevents us from ruling on law in the same way as G-d could.  The Talmud (Makkot 7) looks askance at any Jewish court that uses capital punishment even once every 70 years.  Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon refused to ever use capital punishment.  The best that we can do is to provide the damaged party with some sort of restitution.

 

The lex talionis thus reflects the divine image of humankind better than any of its detractors ever could have imagined.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You never know where you might find a great place to read.

  

 

 

    

 

Dear Parents,

We continued our firefighter unit this week by working on our literary skills. The students demonstrated their knowledge of firefighters as we wrote a class poem called "Red, Yellow, and Orange." First we read a few different types of poems to the students, and then they were ready to create their own. Our poem is hanging up in our class. Please come in and take a look!

Throughout the unit, we have been reading many books with the class about fire trucks, firefighters, and the different jobs they do. We then wrote our own class story about firefighters going to put out a fire. The students added a lot of details to our story! This story is also hanging up in our class.

 

We are very excited about our upcoming field trip to the Brookline Fire Station next Wednesday, February 14th. We need a few more parent volunteers. Please let us know if you can help.

This past Wednesday we had our second Wacky Wednesday. This time it was all about Everyday Heroes, including firefighters, police officers, hospital staff, and ambulance EMTs. The students were divided into groups, and everyone got to participate in the activities in each classroom. The two-year-old classroom became a hospital. The children pretended to be patients and doctors. They wore scrubs, used crutches and a wheelchair, and saw a pretend IV. Our room was a fire station. The students dressed up like firefighters, went in our fire station loft, practiced dialing 911, and went in two fire trucks. The four-year-old classroom was an ambulance and a police station. In the ambulance half of the class, the students could stitch up paper people and make paper casts. In the police station, the students made fingerprints and police badges. They also used the top part of their loft as a "jail." It was a really fun day!

For Parshat Mishpatim , we talked about rules for making us responsible for our actions. Hashem teaches Bnei Yisrael how to treat people who work for them fairly. If you borrow something, you must remember to return it or replace it. Also, you should not speak unkind words about other people ( lashon hara ). We also talked about eating kosher foods, and discussed what makes something kosher. We read Fins and Scales: A Kosher Tale by Deborah Uchill Miller, which is about which foods are kosher. We then looked at different hekshers found on boxes of food in our class. Some of the students looked at packages in their lunches to find the heksher , and were so excited when they pointed them out to their morot and friends!

Parsha Questions :

1. What is the name of the parsha ? ( Mishpatim )

2. Why shouldn't we speak lashon hara ? (It makes people feel badly)

3. Why is it important to return other people's things?

4. If someone borrowed a toy from you and didn't return it, how would you feel?

5. What do the hekshers on packaged food tell us? (That the food is kosher)

Shabbat Shalom ,

Morot Leisa, Shayna, and Sara 

 

        On Wacky Wednesday, we visited each classroom. In the 2s room, we were doctors, nurses, and patients.

   

 

 

 

 

We took our jobs seriously!

 

 

 

 

We got to use toy stethoscopes...

 

 

 

 

...and real ones!

 

 

 

 

 

We painted the outsides of the planters before we filled them with soil.

 

 

 

In the 4s room on Wacky Wednesday, we practiced being EMTs in an ambulance, and even made paper casts.