Path to Confirmation

Dear parents and teens of the Path to Confirmation class:

Yesterday during CJL we made matzah pizza (for ourselves) and made and served matzah toffee “crack” for the whole CJL. Both turned out great. My goal in doing this was to show the teens that they could make simple and delicious food...Read more...

Dear parents and teens of the PtC group:

Last night we discussed our final projects and presentations for the end of the year. These research projects will be current issues in modern Israeli society, such as:

Dear Rosh Hodesh families:

Last night we reviewed the story of Purim, mostly focusing on both Vashti and Esther and their courage to stand up for what they believed in, at a time when women had no public or political voice. Stacy Shapiro joined us for this activity.

We welcomed the confirmands to our classroom for dinner, games, and discussion of their recent trip to Washington, D.C. I know that our 9th grade girls are really...Read more...

Dear parents of the Rosh Hodesh teen girls:

We had fun tonight talking about what we think of as "perfect" or "ideal appearance" in our society and why we think this way. Among other activities, we watched and discussed a video about young American women from different ethnic backgrounds and how they were surprised how much they disliked the result of their own images being digitally altered to reflect cultural norms.

We ate...Read more...

Dear teen girls and parents:

Tonight we discussed the Women's March and the controversy surrounding it. We looked at a few different articles written by women from all over the political spectrum and discussed what they thought and what we think about Tamika Mallory and her support of Louis Farrakhan. We also talked about where we go from here in support of women's rights.

As a special treat, we invited the confirmands in to...Read more...

Dear parents of the Rosh Hodesh women:

Today's meeting was a nice introductory one, even though we were missing two of our young women. The main topics were Intro to Rosh Hodesh and Identity. During our session, we

Dear parents of Path to Confirmation students:

Last night we finished our unit on Diversity (for now), this time focusing on music. We talked again about the diverse makeup of people in Israel and how they each brought with them from their various lands their liturgies, their foods, their...Read more...

Dear parents of the Path to Conf class:

Happy Hanukkah to all! Wednesday night we discussed identity, Jewish identity, and American Jewish identity, and how American Jews might preserve their Jewish identity while living in an overwhelmingly non-Jewish majority country.

Something that you may want to discuss with your teen is how might different generations of Jewish immigrants (1st gen? 3rd gen?) might feel about this relationship of preserving their own identity while integrating with the greater society. Last night we used the metaphor of plastic wrap for synthesis, cheesecloth for integration, and aluminum foil for differentiation, but feel free to use a different material if you like.Read more...

Dear parents of the amazing Path to confirmation class:

As I’m sure you probably heard from your teen, their “Love Your Neighbor” projects were presented last night. I could tell that they had all spent some time thinking about the focus areas, the way our synagogue deals with these areas,...Read more...

Dear parents of the Path to Confirmation class:

At CJL we all discussed our “Love Your Neighbor” projects. Some of them will be ready soon; others may need more time due to absences. So, we will most likely be presenting them on November 14. Rabbi Jaech came to visit our class in order to...Read more...

Dear Pathway to Confirmation parents:

One of the elements I've added to this year's curriculum is the study of selected Jewish texts.  In class, we ended up discussing a few quotes attributed to Rabbi Hillel and talking about Hillel, Shammai, and the old tale about the man who approached both rabbis with the request to "teach me everything about Judaism while I'm standing on one foot."  Many of the students hadn't heard that...Read more...

Dear parents of the wonderful Path to confirmation class:

Shana tova!!! It was such a pleasure to welcome our returning students yesterday evening. They are a lovely group and I hope they enjoy themselves this year while learning a lot about all sorts of subjects.

As you all know from the letter we sent during the summer, this year we will be using a different format for learning in this class. Instead of me teaching all the...Read more...