Ma Chadash?Bites
30 Shevat l Parshas Mishpatim l Feb 12

Mishpatim Parsha Lesson- Chasing honor
For Year 2 of Parsha Lesson, I will be focusing on one practical middah, character trait, to think about in the week ahead and steps we can take to attain it.


Background
Many commentators explain that this week’s Parsha, Mishpatim, with all of it’s laws governing property, is connected to the 10th of the 10 commandments: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor.

The Seforno and the Ramban both explain that the reason why Hashem taught the Parsha of Mishpatim was in order that, through the various laws of Mishpatim, a person can clearly understand what is his property and what is his friend’s property. Clearly delineating to a person that his friend’s property is not his.

Question 
As the Gemara says on many occasions, the Torah’s laws are not written for people of abnormal psychology. The Torah’s laws are written for regular people, mature, thinking adults. 

Being that this is the case, how would these normal, regular, thinking adults come to think that their friend’s property really belongs to them? Even if someone were to be extremely jealous of someone else’s property, a normal person would never come to think that their friend’s property is really theirs!

Answer
Hashem knows us better than we know ourselves. Hashem taught us all of these halachos (laws) which govern how one must treat another’s property in order to strengthen and reinforce that another’s property does not belong to me. 

Being that man is prone to lust and desire, this therefore creates a very powerful subconscious bias to view another’s property as if it is really mine. True, that among people of normal psychology one would not come to see another’s car that is clearly his as if it is mine. But what if my friend won the car in a raffle that I thought I REALLY won? Or what if my sibling receives as an inheritance something which I feel should have gone to me? Or what if I was running to pick up $100 bill from the ground before my friend noticed my reaching for it and swooped in and grabbed it first? 

Because of this powerful force within a person, of jealousy, lust and desire, and because of a person’s amazing ability to rationalize almost anything in order to satisfy that which he wants, Hashem needed to put in place laws with which man can counter his subconscious.
 
Lesson
In order for a person to be a “good person” it is not sufficient to want to do good and consciously focus on doing good. If a person is not aware of and battling his subconscious, he has little hope of turning his noble aims into reality. 

The subconscious will co-opt a person ability to reason, to work overtime, in order that a person can maintain a positive image of themselves while doing that which the subconscious wants. A person's lusts, desires and other character traits will influence his thinking in order to accomplish goals which are satisfactory and sought by the subconscious. If so, what is the solution?

Hashem here is teaching us a great lesson as to how to deal with the subconscious: review, clarify and strengthen one’s understanding of that which is right and wrong, good and bad. By reviewing, deepening one’s knowledge and refining one’s understanding of that which is just and true on a conscious level will help to thwart the subconscious from being able to manipulate one’s behavior. 

First Step
A person should identify one specific area that they would like to become better in. They should then find Torah books and sources that discuss in more depth related concepts and ideas of the chosen area of study. After even a very short period of time, one will inevitably see much improvement and a clearer sense of judgement with regard to the area of challenge.

For example: if someone would like to improve in their interpersonal relationships, one can begin to study Torah sources which speak to the greatness of man. If a person can come to a clearer understanding and increase their knowledge of why it is that the Torah considers ‘Man’ to be the pinnacle of creation and the focal point of all being, then a person will find it much easier to treat others properly. 

This study will not give him tricks as to how to ‘deal’ with other people. Rather this will hone his knowledge and understanding in a way whereby his subconscious biases that lead to conflict will be cut off at their source.



Have a wonderful Shabbos!


Rabbi Eli Meir Kramer
 
What's happening...


General Studies

Mrs. Esty Luria- 2nd Grade
The second grade classroom is alive with learning! We are currently in the middle of our poetry unit in reading. We have been learning about rhyming poems and free verse poems. We have read many poems together as a class and in our reading groups.

The class learned how to look for key details to help find the theme of a poem. We also focused on different literary elements of poems such as repetition. We learned that a poet may repeat words and phrases within a poem to make a poem sound like a song and that repeated words or phrases can be used to create meaning in poems. We are now gearing up to write our own poems which the class is very excited about! 

Extra Curricular

Ms. Shulamis Shereshevsky- Art
Students have been exploring various art media and styles. We started with using oil pastels to create Impressionistic style art. We learned how to capture light and color, like Claude Monet with boats reflected on water (3rd), a bridge over water with flowers (4th), and, poplar trees (5th).

Taking off from there, we used the Pointillism method to paint detailed pictures with small dots, such as fish and octopi under the sea in 5th grade, the Eiffel Tower in 4th grade, and a rainbow over the hill in 3rd. We've experimented with some mixed media, as we created objects out of clay, and added them to beautiful background pictures drawn by our students. 

The art students really outdid themselves with our most recent artwork style; Zentangle! For this, they drew fruits and trees in honor of Tu B'Shvat, and filled the little parts with intricate patterns of various designs and colors, coming together to an amazing, detailed Zentangle.

In Second Grade, we have been developing our drawing and shading skills, as we sketched out teddy bears, snow scenes, dancing clowns, and more! We know to look for shapes and colors in a picture, and to use our artist's eye to figure out the pictures' parts! Recently, we've been working on adding expression to our drawings by turning little pictures of food and other things into little characters with eyes, mouths, and even hands and feet! The adorable little characters seemed to be dancing off the page! 

Can't wait to see which art skill and style we will be off to next!


Pre- School

Morah Susan Leibowitz- Nursery
Nursery is having so much fun with our winter unit so far! We learned all about snowmen and what they wear and we even made our very own classroom snowman friend Sammy the snowman using garbage bags and different items to stuff him with!

We learned how to count so well with our snowmen counting game every day at circle time and we are becoming experts at knowing all of our colors while doing so many colorful winter activities.

The Nursery even had our own winter Olympics! We went ice skating, played ice hockey and had a very fun sock snowball toss. Then at the end of our Olympics we each got a gold medal for having great sportsmanship and of course we are all winners in Nursery!!

Next we learned all about the different animals that hibernate, especially bears. We even made our very own classroom cave and got to sleep and snore in it just like the bear in our favorite book, Bear Snores On!! We had a very fun pajama hibernating day; we slept in our cave and ate animal crackers! Then we had a very big snowstorm so when we got back to school we went outside to bring snow inside.

We got to use food coloring and paint the snow all different colors! We are having so much fun experiencing this season, there’s so much more to come!!
Enjoy the video from our 1st Grade Chumash play!


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