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Zman Simchateinu: A Game to Celebrate our Season of Joy

This large format board game allows play in any environment – from the floor to a lawn to desktops.

Using paper or Styrofoam plates and colorful graphics (which are provided in the game materials), this game offers an opportunity to review holiday-related content while students consider information in a new and creative context. The emphasis is on conveying information – not asking for it – and allowing students to consider what they know in new and creative ways. There are no wrong answers… just an opportunity to reinforce knowledge and enjoy the experience!

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Boothes for Babes

Historically, temporary booths, or sukkot, were associated with the shelters built and used by our ancestors during their Exodus from Egypt and the 40 years during which they wandered through the wilderness. But Sukkot is not simply a lesson in history. Agriculturally speaking, Sukkot marks the autumn harvest. This program is designed to introduce your children to both aspects of Sukkot through a multi-sensory approach that addresses each learner and affords the group a more complex understanding of the theme. Featured topics Include the sukkah; the lulav and etrog; Ushpizin (Guests); Harvest, Food, and Thanksgiving; Hoshana Rabbah; and more ... all presented in a clear, delightful, child-friendly, hands-on manner.

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You’re the Expert on Chagei Tishrei: Sukkot

This exciting program is individualized for and equally useful to classrooms and camps, schools and centers! It is similar to the method that many scouting groups use to promote experience and award merit badges. Here, children will select and accomplish a certain number of activities and, through their efforts, acquire increasingly higher levels of expertise about the Sukkot holiday.

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“Guess who’s coming to dinner?”

Mystics tell us that in each of these special guests there is a specific prominent quality connected to one of the ways in which G_d makes himself manifest on Earth (the Sefirot). By studying in greater depth some of the stories involving these personalities that became Ushpizim we will reach an understanding of whom and what we should make room for in the sukkah. And of course we will cover the subject of with what attributes we should prepare ourselves so that, should they happen to drop in, we can make them feel at home.
By Guido Cohen

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On heirs and pioneers

Why do we start the Jewish year by celebrating the harvest of the fruits of the land? Shouldn’t we start by celebrating the sowing season? Does it make sense to start with the end? Attempts are made to answer some of these questions in this article. And even though we might object that Sukkot in the Torah is the third and not the first of the Pilgrim Festivals, in this text the author tries to make some sense of the present-day Hebrew calendar, by comprehending what place should be afforded tradition as a whole, and how we can relate to it, both in our capacity as heirs and also as pioneers and innovators.

By Rabbi Joshua Kullock

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Joy in the Sukkah and on Simchat Torah

Through four activities and several celebrations, the children will be able to experience these joyful festivals and become familiar with customs of Sukkot and Simchat Torah.

The project includes three activities for Sukkot and one for Simchat Torah, providing ideas for the subsequent celebrations:

1. The sukkah, its construction and fragility
2. Ushpizin and hachnasat orchim; suggestions for a celebration with invited guests
3. Arbaat HaMinim—the richness of diversity
4. Simchat Torah—our big illustrated Torah

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Sukkot Traditions and the Joy of the Torah

This project can serve as material and guidance for heads of Sunday schools and Jewish children’s centers, as well as for Jewish communities, or for organizing a Sukkot celebration for families, with the children and their parents as guests.

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The Torah Personified

If at Rosh Hashanah we rethink our relationship with G_d, on Yom Kippur we attempt to renew the bond connecting us to ourselves, and at Succot we find our place within the community anew, then Simchat Torah is the Jewish holiday on which we again reflect on the relationship we establish (or fail to establish) with the Torah as a significant text for our identity and our tradition.
The author compares and contrasts academicist paradigms with the significant study of the Biblical text in communitarian environments, inviting us to set the “objective” approach aside—if only for a moment—in order to achieve a focus that, instead of dissociating us from the text, places us in a dialogical relationship to it.

by Rabbi Joshua Kullock

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Sukkot


Thematic project on Sukkot consisting of 3 activities.

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Ushpizin and Ushpizot: Stories for the Sukkah

Inviting ushpizin and ushpizot each day elevates and expands the joy of Sukkot. Sukkot is the ultimate opportunity to engage in the mitzvah of hachnasat orchim – hospitality. But on Sukkot we do not just invite friends and family. One Sukkot custom that became popular in the Middle Ages, based on the mystical text known as the Zohar, was to invite "invisible" guests to the sukkah along with "visible" ones. Following the article you will find a list of ready-to-tell stories for each of the traditional ushpizin and ushpizot. Bring these stories to life in the sukkah, and give children the tools to act out the stories further on their own and to act out the mitzvah hachnasat orchim. And it will truly be z’man simchateinu – the time of our rejoicing.
By Maxine Segal Handelman

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