What joy! What simchah! What nachas!
Today, Grade 1 students created a spiritual משכן (mishkan)—a dwelling place for God. They contributed their voices, minds, and hearts to creating a beautiful Kabbalat Hasiddur service attended by family and friends.
For the past few months, Grade 1 students have been learning about community, and about the two kinds of “hearts” that create community: חכם לב, the “wise or skilled heart,” and נדיב לב, the “generous heart.”
They have been learning how we bring together our intelligence, skills, and talent—our חכם לב—along with a willingness to contribute and care—our נדיב לב—to create a strong community. In doing so, we create, just as the ancient Israelites did, a משכן—a dwelling place for God. The ancient Israelites created a physical משכן by offering their talents of carpentry, weaving, and jewellery.
Today, Grade 1 students helped create a spiritual משכן by offering their voices, minds, and hearts to create a beautiful Kabbalat HaSiddur service. Their families joined them in a community prayer, תפילה בציבור, and witnessed the חוכמי לב—the skills each of our students have learned to be able to read Hebrew prayers; families were invited to be נדבי לב—generous participants in our community prayer. Together, by creating community, we created a משכן, a dwelling place for God.
Shabbat Shalom,
Moreh Greg
