Birkat Chaverim
We are always interested in sharing activities that are of interest to Bnai Mitzvah. The chesed program from Torat Reva Yerushalayim is one of these. We appreciate Rabbanit Sharona Halickman's providing us information about the program. Torat Reva Yerushalayim offers Chesed (Community Service) opportunities for Bar and Bat Mitzvahs who live in Israel ...
This throwback pencil case post brings back some nice memories and is useful for the beginning of the school year. Many years ago I ran a workshop/chug of local pre-tweens and tweens. This was long enough ago that quite a number of these young women are married with children on the way. In fact one recently told me that she really enjoyed the chug, and ...
This is a special review for Mitzvot Unplugged because I asked my 11 year old daughter to contribute to it. In large part, because as soon as I got Pirkei Hallel she stole it to read. Additionally, the book has themes that have been of great interest to her in the past few months. She agreed to write and agreed to write in English. She does not want to ...
We are grateful to Rabbi Noah Greenberg for his guest post about Kesher Tefillin as part of this years Mitzvot Unplugged. Educators and parents are constantly striving to energize the bar/bat mitzvah experience. To give the budding Jew a Jewish purpose. Participating in Kesher Tefillin is transformative for its participants. It is a rich and powerfu ...
Did you notice that in the summer the prayer for the IDF, Mi Sheberach for Tzahal was changed? In July Rav Rami Barchiyahu, the rabbi of the Israel police services, received permission from the chief rabbis of Israel to update the prayer. The update now includes a prayer for police, that is praying for the members of the police force. History ...
The Lookstein Center’s 70 challenges for 70 days launches this week. In honor of Israel’s 70th anniversary, Bar Ilan's Lookstein Center for Jewish Education has organized a creative daily game from now until Yom Haatzmaut. The games are appropriate for individuals, school groups or home schoolers. There are four grade levels of difficulty to the games. ...
I am sharing my son's engineered gragger, that he made in his "young scientist" club at school. This is a great after school club for about 1st to 3rd graders (I think there are separate groups for the older boys) where they work on science activities. Sometimes its a one week project and sometimes a multi-week project. My son said that this gragger wa ...
I have been meaning to post an educator's guide to An Extra Seat for a while. This time of year is a good time to do it given the books focus on ahavat chinam and helping others. In particular, when witnessing so much is going on around the world today (hurricanes, monsoon...) and the acts that people are doing to help. Background: The story, written ...
Recently my friend David Curwin shared this post about David Daube on facebook and I felt that given Birkat Chaverim's connection to Bnei Akiva, and informal education, it was appropriate to share here. I thought David's commemorating David Daube was thoughtful as well as interesting to those who grew up in Bnei Akiva as well as a note to how educators ...
I am sharing some Hanukkah card elements that can be used in projects, here. These elements are a result of fooling around with Chibitronics LED circuit stickers with my kids. The Chibitronics LED stickers are really neat little stickers and I am itching to come up with different ways to use them. So far we have used them in cards but we had been thinki ...