Thank you to Heschel parent Michelle Landy-Shavim for guest writing this blog post.
Parents and siblings were welcomed by the Heschel Chidon Hatanach team for a family review session this past Monday.
Chidon Hatanach Canada is the Canadian National Bible Contest, where students from grades 5-8 participate in the annual competition on the Tanach as an extracurricular subject. The goal is for students to focus on, and understand in depth, the pshat, or literal meaning of the Biblical text. Participating students across Canada and the world learn specific parts of the Tanach on a three-year rotation (so the students in grade 8 are re-learning what they initially studied in grade 5, with additional material for the older grades).
The Heschel students have been learning together this year with Principal Moreh Alan during recess on a weekly basis. Thanks to the generosity of a donor family, Heschel was able to gift each student their own copy of the Hebrew-English Koren Tanakh, which will be kept by students as a learning resource, as a reminder of their Heschel Chidon experience, and as a foundational text in their Jewish library for years to come.
We were treated to a delicious pasta dinner, followed by a very special evening of studying together. The Heschel Chidon team has been studying various parshiot from Bereishit and, together, families and friends reviewed specific narratives. We reviewed the characters, summarized plots, gave fun new titles and suggested lessons to be learned from the stories we were studying.
The highlight of the night was a session of “Jewpardy.” Moreh Alan explained that he watches Jeopardy most nights, so he challenged the students and families to review categories such as, Numbers, Names, Places, Dreams and Quotes from the Tanach stories we were reviewing. Everyone accepted the challenge with big smiles and some healthy competition. Todah Rabah Moreh Alan, and B’Hatzlachah to all Chidon HaTanach participants this year!
