By Ashira Weiss – Lubavitch.com
With school closed in cities and countries around the world, thousands of Jewish children have logged in to the Virtual Hebrew School, a project of CKids of Merkos 302.
The Virtual Hebrew School was produced—from conception to launch—in just about twenty-four hours. As the week ended with school closures everywhere, the WhatsApp and Facebook groups that Chabad Hebrew School directors use to network, began blowing up. Everyone was scrambling for ideas on how to supplement the kids’ Jewish education while their Hebrew Schools were closed.
“Torah learning never ends,” said CKids director, Rabbi Zalmy Lowenthal. “Being this close to the Passover holiday, we had to find a way for the children to continue learning despite the disruption.”
Friday morning, a group of directors and the CKids board, led by the Hebrew School’s principal Rabbi Dovid Weinbaum of Dix Hills, NY, held a conference call and began to form a plan.
Within hours, an online Hebrew School program—complete with interactive activities, musical prayer, games, and a review quiz—was prepared. The objective would be to teach the Passover story in two streams: one geared for Kindergarten to second-graders and the other for third- to sixth-graders. CKids prepared the video, Facebook Live feed and social media notifications so each Hebrew School director could share the program with their student body.
The CKids team worked all of Friday until minutes before Shabbat began and overnight Saturday once Shabbat ended. The team created a curriculum and scripted, filmed, edited, and uploaded video lessons to a new Virtual Hebrew School page on the CKids website. Mrs. Gillie Shanowitz, a CKids board member and director of New York Hebrew in New York City, said, “There was this urgency that thousands of kids will wake up Sunday with no Hebrew School to go to and what are we doing about it? For many kids, this is their only Jewish education, so it was up to CKids to step up and give our directors the tools to continue their crucial work.”
“Mipi Olelim V’yonkim yesadita oz (Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength),” said Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, Vice Chairman of Merkos. “Therefore it’s integral that the children keep on learning.”
CKids is a project of Merkos 302.
The second virtual online Hebrew School class will be live, this Sunday, March 22 starting at 10:00 AM at ckids.net/hslive.
This week’s lesson is: How do you dough? Matzah vs Chametz.
Here is our lineup of top educators that will be teaching each class:
K-2:
Davening
Rabbi Alevsky (New York)
Teacher
Morah Leah Engel
Games
Rabbi Berel Paltiel
Matzah Factory Video
Rivka and Chaya Weinbaum
Grades 3-5:
Davening
Rabbi Benny Hershkowitz (Mexico)
Teacher
Morah Chana Gansburg
Games
Rabbi Berel Paltiel (different than other grades)
Model Matzah Bakery
Rabbi Dovid
Grades 6-7:
Davening
Rabbi Aron Rabin (Florida)
Teacher
Rabbi Moishe Rapoport
Games
Rabbi Berel Paltiel (different than other grades)
Model Matzah Bakery
Rabbi Dovid
Our virtual Hebrew School fun resources site with Davening, stories, games etc… is up and running under the ckids.net/hslive ‘explore our fun resources page’ tab. We encourage you to send this to all your students to keep busy with during their time at home!
Will this be recorded so folks in various time zones can tune in later than ten a. M.?
My daughter really enjoyed this, thank you to everyone who organized and shared this 🙂