Spotlight on Sessions
Today during their bunk activity, the G4 girls gained some journalism experience by formulating questions and interviewing both Chacham Aryeh Greenberg and Rabbi Owen about the sessions that they had taught that day. Below is the synthesized information. This project was a collaborated effort between myself (Makena), Rabbi Owen, and Chacham Aryeh:
Chacham Aryeh has had 20 plus years of teaching experience instructing boys for their Bar Mitzvah. He describes Mr. Azose as his main influence and as a person who has inspired his love for teaching. Today, Chacham Aryeh taught two sessions: one to the B4 boys and one to CITs.
During the B4 session, Chacham Aryeh helped Jeffrey Owen and Isaac Levy improve their reading accuracy in terms of pronunciation of vowels as well as the proper chanting of Sephardic tunes. One of Chacham Aryeh’s teaching strategies was to have the boys listen to him chant or read text and have Jeffrey and Isaac catch his intentional errors.
For the CITs, Chacham Aryeh taught about reading solitreyo, a special script used to write in both Hebrew and Ladino in 1885. The lesson was accompanied with contextual history about the places and people that used solitreyo. Chacham brought in posters of enlarged manuscripts written in solitreyo by the last Chief Rabbi of Rhodes, Rabbi Reuven Eliyahu Israel. The goal was to spark the CIT’s interest both in the script itself as well as the time period it was written in.
Rabbi Owen and B4 counselor, Zak Shayne, taught a session to B3 titled, “The Torah and the Land of Israel.” The main ideas of the lesson came from Rav Avraham Kook. The goal of this session was for campers to see that the Torah helps us view the world and relate to Hashem in the proper way. One idea that Rabbi Owen taught was that wherever individual Jews go in the world, the Torah provides them with a blueprint for improvement. Another idea was that the Torah provides the Jews with the way to live as a nation in the land of IsraelTo exemplify the first idea, Rabbi Owen took the campers to different places around Camp Bishop and discussed how the Torah guides us in different settings. At each location, the students were asked to think about how Torah influences our view of the place. At the barbecue under the porch of the mess hall, the campers identified Torah ideas such as kashrut and mezuzah. At the waterfront, the campers listed eruv, tza’ar ba’ale hayyim (animal cruelty of sport fishing), and the obligation to teach one’s child to swim. Finally, at the porch of the lodge, the campers mentioned many mitzvot, such as sefer Torah, tefilin, tefila and mechitza. Through these examples, the campers came to understand that Torah provides each of us with lens with which to view the world and to improve our relationship with Hashem.
To illustrate the second idea that the Torah is a guide to the Jewish people for building a Jewish nation in Israel, Rabbi Owen shared examples of Torah-institutions in Israel that serve a national Jewish agenda. Examples such as the Rabbanut (the Rabbinic Court), Kohanim (priests in the time of the Temple), a king and a Sanhedrin (Jewish Supreme Court) all serve to build a Jewish nation in our homeland that supports the development of each citizen and of the nation as a whole.
Tomorrow’s session will focus on the State of Israel. Check the Facebook page for pictures and don’t forget to “like” and friend S.A.C!
