Welcome back from Winter Break.  I hope that you are rested, refreshed and have had lots of time with friends and family.  Now we that have returned things are moving quickly in class.

Please remind your students to practice at least 5 minutes a day for the Torah Trope Challenge, next Sunday, January 14th. Practicing looks like… chanting Blessings for the Reading of Torah in Hebrew,  and chanting the V’ahavta in trope.  For complete details about this assignment, including links to all recordings, pdfs and resources visit the post: https://marlaaviva.edublogs.org/2017/12/18/torah-trope-challenge-3/

We began to examine the concept of Holiness or what it means for something to be Holy today.  We searched for words in the prayer book that contain the Hebrew root [קדש].  The students discovered many words containing the shoresh (root) and we were able to define these words to have something to do with holiness or sanctification.  We defined what it means to sanctify something: to make it or designate something as holy or sacred.  We will continue this discussion in the coming weeks.