Tucson Hebrew Academy is gearing up for Hanukkah!
To celebrate, our teachers and students have planned fun and meaningful activities to take place over the eight-day festival that include:
- Starting the day with an all-school Hanukkah candle lighting.
- Making Hanukkah Judaica in Art class (ceramic oil jugs, Hanukkiot, and dreidels).
- Collecting olives and making olive oil. Upper school students will also use an olive press in order to teach them about the miracle of the oil.
- A special dreidel project for the upper school that sixth graders will then deliver to Handmaker.
- Making Hanukkah cards for the residents of Handmaker.
- Student council is planning three days of Hanukkah activities for upper school, including ending the week with a white elephant gift exchange in their homerooms.
- Every child and staff member will also be given a gift of gelt, candles, and a dreidel.
THA’s famous Hannukah show will take place over Zoom. The Hanukkah show script and parodies are written by Cantor Emily. Sam Feldman, THA’s talented music teacher, will then create music videos from the songs. Hamorah Sigal has made amazing sets that are going to be featured during the recording as well.
Recently, sixth graders have been studying Sefer Shmot and just wrapped up a unit of the chapters surrounding the giving of the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai as well as Midrashim (an ancient commentary on part of the Hebrew scriptures) about the experience.
Seventh graders have been studying Sefer Bamidbar (Book of Numbers). They completed their first installment of a travelogue, writing about two of the major events that we have studied so far from the perspective of a fictional Israelite character. This was done in partnership with the ELA teacher, who helped students to critique and refine each other’s work.
In Upper school Tefillah, sixth through eighth graders have been exploring the meaning of the Ve’ahavta prayer, working in small teams to each illustrate a specific phrase.
