CONFIRMATION CLASS NEWSLETTER #5!
To All the Confirmation Class Parents:
We had yet another lovely class on Sunday.
We started off by filling out a Journal question: "Being Jewish at my school, or in my daily life, is..." My responses will be returned to the students on Sunday.
We then jumped into studying the Torah text in which God calls Abraham to leave "his native land, his birthplace and his father's house" and go to an unknown land. The most common word in that text is "bless" or "blessing," and this launched us into the beginning of our study of the reciting of blessings in Judaism as a kind of mindfulness practice, keeping us mentally awake, aware and grateful for each moment. Among many other things, we learned why the ancient rabbis wanted us, ideally, to recite at least 100 blessings by the end of each day, and how Hebrew blessings may be grouped into three types: blessings of "partaking," blessings for the doing of mitzvot, and blessings of gratitude. We also had the opportunity to see how many traditional Hebrew blessings we could remember, as a class, as well as studying some unfamiliar blessings from an Orthodox prayerbook. We then studied an article that appeared in number of years ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association, in which a Jewish physician wrote about the wisdom contained in the traditional Hebrew blessing to be recited after going to the bathroom! (I bet some of you didn't know there even was such a blessing...)
Even though it is still relatively early in the school year, it's not too early to begin thinking about what is to come next spring. In particular, we will have a Confirmation celebration to plan, as well as the option of an Israel trip.
If any of you are conversant enough with the ins and outs of setting up an e-mail list for our parents on Yahoo Groups, please let me know so that we can get that going sooner rather than later, and I will get the parental e-mail addresses to you. As for NFTY in Israel, I would like to hear from you directly if your child will be going on the trip. When you get back to me, please let me know if you are planning on applying to the Temple for financial assistance.
All my best,
Rabbi Folberg