Ma Koreh
Adam Carpenter – Head of Jewish Life Primary
Book Week provided inspiration for our Jewish learning in Year 3 this week. The students have been studying stories and midrashim from the book of Genesis, learning about the Jewish family tree reflecting on the ethical teachings that lie within these stories.
As the People of the Book, the Torah and Tanakh provide the basis of Jewish literacy and identity. Together we looked at the Sassoon Codex, the world’s oldest nearly complete copy of the Hebrew Bible. It was handwritten roughly 1,100 years ago on 792 pages of sheepskin and sold earlier this year for $38 million dollars! It is currently on display in the Anu Museum in Tel Aviv.
In our preparations for Rosh Hashanah and our Grandparents Day celebrations on Friday 8 September 2023, students have been learning songs and prayers that are part of the High Holy Day liturgy. The ‘Zochreinu’ prayer invokes the Yamim Nora’im image of the Sefer HaChayim – the symbolic Book of Life, that we ask to be written in for good and for life in the year to come.
We explored the idea of each of us being our own author, involved in helping to write our own Book of Life. With this in mind, students thought about what kind of actions they could do to create positive experiences in their Book of Life and the lives of others.
