Jewish Life & Learning
Picture a vibrant Jewish environment.
That’s what you’ll find at BZAEDS. You’ll find children talking to Bentzi the puppet--who speaks "rak Ivrit"--only Hebrew. You'll hear middle school students singing Hatikva (Israel's national anthem) in B'Tzavta, their weekly town meeting. You'll see classes engaged in Torah study and tefila (prayer). And you'll discover a community that spans the spectrum of belief and practice, from faculty members to family members.
In our approach to Jewish life and learning, we strive to stimulate, enhance and engage the cultural and spiritual life of our students inside and outside the classroom.
What are some of the parts of students’ Jewish learning?
Hebrew
Shabbat & Holidays
Israel
Mitzvot
Torah Study
Prayer
Kashrut
Hebrew
In our early childhood program, students are introduced to spoken Hebrew and become familiar with the sounds of the language. Our youngest students share games, songs, art and simple conversation during Hebrew time. In senior kindergarten, Hebrew classes take place each day, and include activities that encourage the natural acquisition of spoken language and understanding, without a need for translation into English.
Students go on to learn the language using all of their senses. Listening comprehension and speaking fluency are encouraged as classes are conducted in Hebrew and evolve within an ever-growing vocabulary base.
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Shabbat & Holidays
We all look forward to Fridays at BZAEDS because we know that at 11:30 a.m. we’ll be gathering as a community for Shabbat lunch. Together we sing songs, chant blessings, give tzedakah, learn about the theme of the week and spend time creating special friendships and moments to remember.
Fifth-grade students and eighth-grade students also participate in a Shabbaton—an overnight, off-site, camp-like experience that allows students to get to know each other outside of the classroom, while celebrating and observing Shabbat from start to finish. This involves baking challah, making tzedakah boxes, learning songs, and reading and learning Torah.
In addition, the school provides a framework for students to learn about, experience and celebrate the various holidays throughout the year. As students move through the grades, they learn the blessings, perform the customs, sing the songs, prepare and taste the foods, and enter into the spirit of the holidays within the school community.
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Israel
There is an Israel presence throughout the school—maps and flags of Israel in classrooms, Hebrew on bulletin boards in the hallways, pictures of students in different parts of Israel and artwork created to capture the essence of the eighth-grade journey.
Israel education is a combination of experiential and academic learning. On Israel Independence Day, the entire school celebrates with a mini-Israel experience within the walls of the school. A reenactment of Ben Gurion's reading of the Declaration of the State of Israel takes place, followed by the singing of the Israeli national anthem, and then a community lunch featuring Israeli foods. There's a mini market to bargain and buy items using Israeli money, a Western Wall to put notes in, a hands-on archaeology activity and plenty of Israeli dancing.
Each eighth-grade class spends two weeks in Israel—touring, learning and solidifying their Jewish identities. This journey is the culmination of all the learning and studying students do from the time they begin at BZAEDS. Leading up to the trip, students take courses on Zionism, the foundations of Jewish history and Jewish identity. The Tiyul (journey) is the capstone of the Jewish studies program—an in-depth educational visit to the Jewish homeland that combines history, geography and spirituality with incredible mental and physical activity.
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Mitzvot
The "How-to Book of Jewish Living"—the Torah—is filled with guidelines that shape a Jewish life. There are guidelines that teach how we should:
- take care of the earth
- teach our children
- honor parents and teachers
- visit the sick
- be honest and trustworthy
- observe shabbat and celebrate the holidays
- be kind to animals
- avoid being wasteful
- build a just society
These guidelines are the basis of the values that we teach our students.
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Torah Study
Torah study begins in fourth grade—this is when students encounter Biblical Hebrew and the actual narrative of the Torah for the first time. There are many challenges and skills involved in learning Torah: 1) the basic task of learning to read the text fluently 2) the challenge to comprehend the meaning of the text 3) the opportunity to think about the ideas in the text and to determine what personal meaning they might have.
Grappling with the literary style of the Torah is a new experience. Students recognize different patterns of language, such as unexpected repetition of words, rhetorical questions, a narrator’s comment in the midst of a story and apparent omissions in the text. Each of these unique language patterns invites students to ask questions and to formulate possible explanations.
In our teaching of Torah, we adopted two of the standards established by the Jewish Theological Seminary for the teaching of Tanakh (Bible) in Jewish day schools: 1) Students will view the Tanakh as the formative narrative of the Jewish people – past, present, and future 2) Students will become independent and literarily astute readers of the biblical text in Hebrew.
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Prayer
From the youngest ages, students are introduced to blessings as a way of showing appreciation for food, drink and experiences. They learn the blessings said for Shabbat and holiday rituals. They also learn to say the Shema.
Lower School students have a weekly prayer experience with their teachers. They begin to build up a repertoire of basic prayers that are said in all denominations of Judaism. Middle School students at each grade level conduct their own prayer services each Friday morning. Students volunteer to lead different parts of the services, choosing the melodies. Everyone is invited to participate.
Through exploring various prayer books in middle school, as students prepare for their Bar and Bat Mitzvah, they are very familiar with the Shabbat service and with the prayer books they might encounter in whatever synagogues or temples they attend.
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Kashrut
As a Jewish community day school, we have a kashrut policy guiding us. As a general rule, students should not bring food into the school, as kosher healthy morning snacks and/or lunches are provided to students daily. However, any outside food brought into the school under special circumstances (such as birthday treats) must be certified kosher.
To this end, there are several kosher bakeries in the Chicago area, including Breadsmith in Skokie, North Shore Kosher Bakery, Sugar and Spice, Tel Aviv Kosher Bakery and Zelda's Sweet Shoppe. In addition, there is a kosher bakery that makes birthday cakes at the "kosher Jewel" on Howard in Evanston. There are also brands of cookies and baked goods that are certified kosher: Entenmann's, many Pepperidge Farm cookies, Culinary Circle deserts and more.
If you aren't sure about a kashrut symbol on a package, please check with Tzivia Garfinkel, head of Jewish studies.
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