Monthly Archives: November 2021
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Hanukkah begins Sunday, November 28.
We've rounded up some ready-to-go lessons and downloadable resources for Hanukkah to make it easy for you to provide meaningful learning experiences with your students.
Grades K-2
Find meaning in Jewish holidays
Students will learn about spinning
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Here are some new story books - and some other favorites - to entertain and inspire young children this holiday.
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Read more »As a preschool and kindergarten teacher, Hannah Bloom-Hirschberg spent many years nurturing small souls and soothing worries.
As a provider of professional development to Jewish early childhood educators, she teaches others how to find Jewish values in everyday life.
And as a parent, she uses those proficiencies daily, along with everything else that parenting young children entails.
The Covid-19 pandemic and the recently approved vaccine for children have tested those skills as well as opened up opportunities for many conversations with children.
When Bloom-Hirschberg’s 6-year-old son expressed some anxiety about his impending vaccine appointment, the Chicago mom and educator turned to story books as a way to explain complicated ideas.
“Judah Maccabee Goes to the Doctor is literally the most perfect, timely, resonant book for right now,” she says.
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Read more »Over a long and distinguished career, Eric Kimmel has written all kinds of books for children. His latest, Shield of the Maccabees, marks a new first for him - a graphic novel.
The new story, illustrated by Dov Smiley, is set in ancient Judea just before the very first Hanukkah and follows two friends - one Jewish and one Greek - as war comes to their land.
In an interview, Eric Kimmel tells us more.
Why make a graphic novel now?
Comic books were not considered literature when I was a kid. I hadn’t read any comics since junior high. My agent suggested I learn more about this format since it's now so popular. My friend Michelle McCann took me to Powell’s Bookstore in Portland and loaded me up
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Read more »By Rabbi Abraham Skorka
Excerpted from Returning to Life After the Storm: Hope and Wisdom from Jewish Sources, Behrman House, 2021
As you read this, the pandemic began about two years ago. Vaccines have since been created and have been found mostly effective, but too many people have also refused to take them, and too many people in the world have not had easy access to them.
