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Yom Kippur

You’re the Expert on Chagei Tishrei: Yom Kippur

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.

Each activity begins with very brief introductory material, followed by a “Tricky Question” and a creative activity. A short answer to the question is also provided.

Classrooms and schools, which may wish to emphasize independent research and study, will benefit from stressing the introductory material and Tricky Question, perhaps utilizing the creative activity as an evaluation tool.

Camps and centers, on the other hand, may take advantage of small-group dynamics by making mention of the introductory material, using the question as a teaser or motivator, providing and discussing the answer, and emphasizing the creative activity.

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The Book of Life: The Inscription we Write

The Days of Awe have the potential to be filled with trepidation and fear as well as with wonder and possibility. No words from the machzor have more potential to elicit both than the haunting words of the Unetaneh Tokef’, in which we are told that during the Days of Awe our fate in written and sealed.

This lesson offers students ways of understanding the ‘decree’ that awaits each of us in the coming year and the varied ways that it might be impacted by t’shuvah, t’fillah and tzedakah. Students are lead through a process of creating a personal understanding of the concept of ‘averting the evil of the decree’ and produce a document that might be mailed to each later in the school year as a reminder of their intention.

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Yom Kippur Traditions, Values and Customs

Program 1: The Book of the Prophet Jonah - or, What Is Good and What Is Bad?
Program 2: The Prayers of the Day of Atonement--Yom Kippur. Past and Present.
Program 3: The Five Prohibitions. Why Jews Fast on Yom Kippur. Customs and Traditions.

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Rosh Hashanah/ Yom Kippur: Exploring Themes of Teshuvah

How does Teshuvah make us better people? What do the calls of the Shofar say to us? What do we wish to throw away with our Tashlich crumbs, and what should we keep?
This project will take participants through a series of encounters, culminating with a family program, which will explore Teshuvah through creative dramatics, learning the meaning of the various shofar calls and their relation to the chagim, art, poetry, and finally an interactive family activity with a meaningful "air tashlich" ceremony.
The activities may be run as a unit in sequence, or individually as desired.

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The Book of Jonah: The Relationship Between God and the Prophet

In his introduction to the Book of Jonah, Yair Zakovitch remarks that the Jonah is less a story of prophecy than a story about a prophet

(1)

. While Jonah’s actual prophecy to Nineveh lasts only a single verse (Jonah 3:4), the four-chapter narrative allows the reader to see a prophet struggle with his fulfillment of a prophetic call.

As a result, the question becomes how we can understand nature of the relationship between Jonah and God in this narrative, and how their relationship elucidates what precisely caused Jonah to flee, and what God sought to teach Jonah. This article outlines some approaches scholars have taken to understanding the nature of the relationship between Jonah and God in this narrative, using biblical, rabbinic, and modern sources.

By Joshua Rabin

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Conversing With G-d

So, we pray and act in so many ways as if we know G-d, the entity on the other end of the line of communication in our lives as Jews. What do we really know? What do we think? What do we believe?
This curricular guide provides an opportunity for students and teachers/group leaders to think about how we regard G-d, what our expectations are, and the limitations of the language and means we use to describe G-d and our relationship to G-d. The series of activities and strategies used here are intended to script a journey for all members of the learning community to take together as well as explore personal feelings about G-d and G-d’s place in our lives.

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Teshuvah - Tefillah - Tzedakah


This project for Yamim Noraim deals with the traditions and customs of the festivities through literary, artistic, and drama-related proposals.

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Stories of the Eve

Stories of the eve of Yom Kippur constitute a genre of their own in Talmudic literature. Strange and unpredictable situations present themselves to the sages at this moment when time seems to pass more rapidly than usual and the imminence of the Day of Judgment is already a fact. Nevertheless, during those instants before the day in all its sacredness has arrived, the mundane bursts in with force, with the aim of making us think deeply about the preparation necessary to face the solemnity of the coming day. To keep that very intense moment of the eve from catching us unprepared, let’s review some of these stories together and learn from what happened to the sages of the Talmud in those minutes of transition between the profane and the sacred.

By Guido Cohen

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Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement


“Indeed, on the tenth day of this seventh month is a day of atonement. It shall be for you a day of holy assembly and you shall afflict yourselves [by fasting] ... and you shall not do any work on this very day, for it is a day of atonements...” (Leviticus 23:27-28)

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An Attempted Escape

The Book of Yonah, with its multiplicity of implications, is perhaps the most unexpected of all the canonical texts. A children’s tale with no beginning or end? A documentary narrative? An allegory telling of the wanderings of the human soul? A parable illustrating certain moral postulates? And the most important thing–why is this included in the canon and thus preserved for us of the present age?
Practically all the characters of this short narrative behave strangely, at variance with their own nature and the precepts, thus disappointing the expectations of an experienced reader.

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