Written by Beit Sefer Director, Clare Kinberg
AARC Beit Sefer just concluded a year of welcoming: new teacher Marcy Epstein, new students, new members of the congregation and community. Our year was interactive, cooperative, and loving.
Interactive
Led by congregant and artist Idelle Hammond-Sass, we kicked off the year’s “Welcome” theme by joining the Ann Arbor Jewish Sanctuary and Immigration Network’s “Butterfly Project: Migration is Beautiful, Never Again is Now.” All Beit Sefer students participated to help make tiles and pictures that illustrate the beauty of migration.
Our interactive year continued with a weekend campout at congregant Carole Caplan’s beautiful flower-laden farm, where families, friends, and community members came together to build a sukkah. We ended our “in-person” year with a field trip to the Botanical Gardens for Tu B’Shvat.
Two of our students became bar mitzvah this year. Even with the service and celebration place on Zoom, many other Beit Sefer students and families attended. The b’nai mitzvah services really felt like community events.
The G’dolim, our oldest class, enjoyed the contribution of several parent guest speakers who presented family histories to the class. The Kitanim, our youngest class, invited older members of the congregation into the classroom to share from their lives. The intergenerational experience often included food, song, and stories.
Anita Rubin-Meiller danced with us and shared stories of her grandparents, her family’s migration to the US, and photographs. She brought her grandmother’s beautiful candlesticks and read a story to the students.
Jack Levin, a visiting grandfather, told stories of Lithuanian journeys, whitefish and pike swimming in bathtubs, and what it feels like to be a boy on the inside and a grandpa on the outside – the enlarging circle of life.
Lori Lichtman, told stories of her grandmother from Hungary and brought delicious traditional treats.
Cooperative
Our school is built on parent, teacher, and student cooperation. Parents help keep the school running: each family carries out small tasks that bring big benefits. Each week one family brings a snack of challah (or another delicious bread) and fruit for the whole school. The students often enjoy the homemade treats of the deeply appreciated baker-parents. Parents planned the Sukkot campout, and helped with the Purim carnival. Three teens who had recently become b’nei mitzvah helped in the classrooms each week. All this involvement demonstrates to our students that being Jewish is a lifetime commitment expressed in many ways, including the mundane as well as the spiritual.
Loving
Beit Sefer is a small school where learning happens with a lot of love.
