Hebrew High (7th-8th graders)
HEBREW HIGH
Hebrew High students explore Judaism through cultural, historical, and religious lenses through which they will gain a holistic perspective on what it means to be a Jewish teen ager. Through the modalities of text learning, art, theater, and debate, we seek to foster the development of each student’s Jewish identity that will act as the foundation for a future as an active member of the Jewish community.
Geared for students who have begun or completed their B’nai Mitzvah studies, this class will utilize the materials and personal reflections from the process in order to achieve continuity between pre-B’nai Mitzvah education and Jewish adult education.
The curriculum will contain three primary sections: Jewish Essentials, Peoplehood, and Jewish New York:
Essentials will engage students in key Jewish concepts including Torah (learning), Avodah (prayer), and Gemilut Chasadim (acts of loving-kindness). Through each of these topics, students will apply concepts from Jewish tradition to current events and modern-day dilemmas, emphasizing the real-world application of living a Jewish life.
Jewish Peoplehood looks at the different faces of Judaism, both in terms of religious distinctions among movements in America, as well as cultural differences among Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. Each lesson will present Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino “words of the day” that students will be encouraged to use in classroom discussion. Students will explore the history and traditions of Jews in countries all over the world, including, for example, Israel, India, and Morocco. While many students have a general understanding of the historical aspect of the Holocaust, in this section we will address its effect on the Jewish world, and engage students in considering the role that it plays in their Jewish identities.
The last section takes the students out of the classroom and into Jewish New York City. Here, students will have an opportunity to understand their personal Jewish experience within a global Jewish context by using NYC as our backdrop. This will allow our students to experience the fusion of the global and personal, as it is in this immigrant city where Jews from every part of the world have entered America.
This class meets on Wednesdays from 3:45-5:00 at JCP from mid-September thru May
Click here to download the Hebrew High Enrollment Agreement.
Instructor: Rachelle Grossman has over seven years of experience teaching young Jewish adults. Currently, she is JCP’s B’nai Mitzvah Coordinator, and in her hometown of Spokane, Washington she worked as a tutor and B’nai Mitzvah Coordinator for Temple Beth Shalom. After high school, Rachelle studied in Israel on Kivunim, a gap-year program focused on building global Jewish identity. Currently, Rachelle is a student in the Joint Program between the Jewish Theological Seminary and Columbia University. There, she majors in Comparative Literature and Society, focusing on literatures of immigration in New York City. Rachelle is also a Lipper Intern at the Museum of Jewish History in Battery Park. She can be reached by email at rachelletgrossman@gmail.com