PHDS/NEAT NEWS

Providence Hebrew Day School / New England Academy of Chanukah Performance Chanukah Volume , Issue November 30, 2018 We look forward to seeing everyone at the Calendar Notes 22 Kislev 5779 performance on the fourth night of Chanu- kah, Wednesday, December 5, at 7pm. Stu-  There is no Kriah homework dents in choir (boys in Grades 1-3 and girls over Chanukah Inside This Issue: in Grades 1-2) should wear white tops and  Monday, December 3—NO blue/black skirts or pants. Girls in Grades 3- AFTER SCHOOL CLUBS Shabbos Programming 2 5 who are performing in the play have their (including Lego, Improv, and Middos Program 2 own costume information. The Chanukah art boys’ Art) In the News 2 projects of students in grades 1-5 as well as Mazel Tov 2  Monday, December 3— the fifth grade Krias Yam Suf dioramas will Thanksgiving Assembly 2 Mishmar Mesibah for boys in also be displayed. Grades 4-8 and their fathers Classroom Chatter 3-4 From Rabbi Scheinerman 3 Mishmar!!!!!!!!  Tuesday, December 4—Pre- K and Kindergarten Chanu- Thank you to Mr. Pinny and Mrs. Elisheva kah Programs Berlin for sponsoring the refreshments last week and to Rabbi Shmuel Alter and Mrs.  Tuesday, December 4— Chana Faiga Twersky for sponsoring them NEAT Chagigah for Women this week. Sponsorship of refreshments for and Girls—7:00 pm future weeks is available. The cost of spon-  Wednesday, December 5— sorship is $18.00. You can reserve a week in PHDS Chanukah Perfor- advance if you’d like to. Please contact Mrs. mance—7:00 pm Karp at (401) 831-3215 to arrange a spon-  Friday, December 7—No sorship. School Give ’n’

Since this is the last newsletter for the month of November, a tracking form is included in this week’s family envelope. Please submit your November Give ‘n’ Get hours to [email protected] or to the GNG mailbox at PHDS. Please remember to log any hours spent on the Pledje campaign for TWICE the actual amount of time on the campaign (i.e. 2 hours of phone calls = 4 hours GNG) If you have any questions, please send an email to [email protected] Page 2 PHDS/NEAT NEWS Shabbos Programming Mazel Tov This week: • Mazal tov to Elie Shooman on his bar this Likras Shabbos is at 3:10. Shabbos. Mazel tov to his parent Dr. Andrew and Mrs. Tzippy Shooman. Bnos is 2:15-3:15. • Mazal tov to Rabbi Dovid and Mrs. Faigy Lipson Ahavas Yisroel Group is 2:20-3:10. on the birth of a baby boy. Rabbi Lipson is a PHDS Pirchei is 2:20-3:20. graduate. Mazel tov to the Providence grandparents Rabbi Yosef and Mrs. Miriam Lipson. Thank you to Rabbi Shmuel Alter and Mrs. Chana Faiga Twersky for sponsoring the snacks for Bnos • Mazel tov to Rabbi Pinchus and Mrs. Bashi Gurber and Pirchei this week. on the birth of a baby girl. Mrs. Gruber is a PHDS/ NEAT graduate. Mazel tov to the Providence grand- To sign up to sponsor snacks there is a sign-up parents, Rabbi Yosef and Mrs. Miriam Lipson. chart on the bulletin board outside the school of- • Mazel tov to Rabbi Chaim and Mrs. Aviva Harpaz fice, or you may contact Mrs. Golden at 421-6996 on the bar mitzvah of their son Yosef last Shabbos. or [email protected] to confirm which Mrs. Harpaz is a PHDS/NEAT graduate. Mazel tov week you will be sponsoring the snacks. Please to the Providence grandparents, Rabbi Avrohom and contact Mrs. Golden with any questions. Mrs. Lynn Jakubowicz. Kol HaNaarim is at 6:15 at The New England Rabbinical College—262 Blackstone Blvd.

Thanksgiving Assembly

Kindergarten through Grade-5 attended an assembly Middos Program just before Thanksgiving put on by Rhode Island Re- source Recovery about several ways to take care of our Last week, both the 5th grade and the middle earth: reduce, reuse, recycle, and rot. The superhero of school girls had a pizza party for completing their Resource Recovery, Maxman, was the main present- Middos challenge. This week, after taking a break er. He took the students through all the different mate- for Thanksgiving, we have resumed the program rials that can be recycled in Rhode Island and offered with chesed. Each child is looking for opportuni- some ideas of ways to reduce, reuse, or rot those things ties to help others to habituate their thinking about that cannot be recycled. Some students were selected to the needs of other people and how they can help. show what they had learned by coming up to the front to participate in some games and everyone got up to sing and dance to the Maxman song, which reviewed all In the News the information in a really fun way! We talked about showing we are thankful for our earth by setting out to Mazal tov to fifth grader Meyer Bielory who won take care of it in the best ways we can. Please help your a $25 gift card in the Machzekei Torah weekly children to apply what they learned by recycling, reus- raffle. The Machzekei Torah learning forms are ing, and reducing in your own home. Thank you to sent home weekly via email. Mrs. Terrell for arranging this assembly. Page 3 PHDS/NEAT NEWS Classroom Chatter • Pre-K is very busy prepar- • Kindergarten is learning continues to be a class fa- ing for Chanukah. We about the “King of the Jun- vorite. We have written made props to help us retell gle,” the lion. We have poetry, summaries, and the history we learned; read several science books complete descriptive para- megaphones, crowns, ol- about these great, big cats graphs. Learning has been ive oil jars, and and will be learning lots engaging and fun for all. shields. Using bingo mark- more about how they live in • In Chumash, the fifth ers, Chanukah-shaped the wild. We have also read graders have been learning sponges, cookie cutters, and several funny poems using all about the mann. It is paint, we made drip mats the letter L, including the exciting to be studying the and wrapping paper. We old song called "I Love to pesukim and Rashi that also made surprises and Laugh'. discuss this special food. Chanukah cards for our par- • In second grade, we are The mann helps us to real- ents. Next week, we host- learning about the five steps ize that Hashem provides ing our parents for a Chanu- of the writing process: pre- each of us with what we kah games party. For this write, draft, revise, edit, and need, and we must open event, we made Chanukah publish. The students have our eyes to recognize the cookies. written a paragraph about Source of all our brachos. • The Pre-kers are learning their favorite thing to do in • The fourth and fifth grade about their five senses and fall and are taking it Mishna class has complet- how important these senses through the steps of the ed the first perek of Mak- are. This week the children writing process this kos, where we learned the tried to eat their snacks week. They are looking laws of false witnesses, without using their sense of forward to bringing home and we concluded with a sight. They realized very their published pieces soon! siyum. Next week, we will quickly that it was difficult. • Grade three continues to begin learning the first The children made their learn cursive handwrit- perek of Gitin, which names in Braille by gluing ing. The lowercase j is our deals with the laws of on little lentils for the let- current letter. Our Reading sending a get, a divorce ters. Every week, a different theme explores a variety of document, with a messen- sense will be explored different environ- ger. through projects, stories and ments. Students are curious • Have you heard of the fa- hands on projects. about how others live and mous “Green Monster” at are interested in the forces Fenway Park in Boston? • Kindergarten learned about of nature. Our unit in Sub- Fenway Park is where the a mitzvah that goes on in traction is coming to a Boston Red Sox play your head. No one knows close. Grade three is learn- baseball, and there is a 37- or can tell what you are do- ing regrouping and subtract- foot wall as part of the di- ing. You can do this mitz- ing across zeros. The final mensions of the park. The vah anytime and anywhere. concept we are studying in wall makes it difficult to Can guess? Ask a Kinder- Social Studies is what it hit home runs. Well, gartner! means to be a good citi- PHDS now has their very zen. Writers Workshop own new “Blue Monster” Page 4 PHDS/NEAT NEWS in the gym. How is that pos- Witness writing competi- students constructed and sible? Well, this was neces- tion. The guidelines for this colored two paper pet sitated because when play- competition have presented "parents" and four pet ing kickball, it was becom- students with the challenge "offspring," complete with ing too easy for the students of writing meaningfully genotypes. They are wrap- to kick home runs. Now about an era of history that ping up their study of ge- with the more than ten foot they did not personally ex- netics by learning about blue wall we have assem- perience. As they work on pedigrees and some uses bled, students have more of this project, they are work- of DNA analysis for fo- a challenge hitting home ing through some great les- rensic purposes. runs. It has really changed sons about research, draw- • In seventh and eighth our kickball games during ing distinctions in their grade geography, Mr. gym. And everyone is en- work between fiction and Pinsker's class completed joying our new stadium! nonfiction, and writing sen- its unit examining pre- • The sixth grade Gemara sitively about emotionally modern maps of Latin class has begun an involved charged subjects. America and learning discussion of the responsi- • The Lab is rocking with about the Mayan, Aztec, bilities of a guardian of a rocks! Students in sixth and Inca civilizations. lost object. The Gemara of- grade Earth Science have This provided background fers a number of proofs, and completed the chapter on for the new unit on mod- the students have been chal- minerals, and are now put- ern Latin America, which lenged to figure out who ting that knowledge to good began with a discussion of these proofs support and use learning about different the major seaways, with why. We also have started types of rocks and how they particular emphasis on the looking at Rashi occasional- are formed. They enjoyed development of the Pana- ly to clear up difficult watching their crystal trees ma Canal. 6th-grade U.S. points in the Gemara. take shape, and also had fun history students examined • Don't leave wooden blocks manipulating their recycla- the Louisiana Purchase just to the Kindergarten- ble boxes into various crys- through the lens of Thom- ers! The sixth grade girls tal shapes. This class was as Jefferson's writings on thank the Pre-K and K for fortunate to be in the Lab at it, which illuminated his sharing their blocks with us the precise time the latest agrarian outlook for the so we could "build" the Mars Rover touched down United States economy. walls of the mishkan. on the Red Planet. They • The seventh and eighth were quite enthusiastic dur- grade girls are taking their ing the last minute of the first parsha test on all the count-down, which they parshios hashavua from the saw on the NASA website beginning of the year until in real time. now. Their goal? To place • There are some odd look- topics in their correct par- ing pets in the Science Lab sha. these days—paper pets, that • Middle school English stu- is. Using their knowledge of dents are participating in genetics, the seventh and Torah U'Mesorah's Project eighth grade Life Science Providence Hebrew Day School New England Academy of Torah 450 Elmgrove Avenue the brothers have been unjust for all dreams are doomed to eventu- Providence, RI 02906 Phone: 401-331-5327 rejecting his dreams outright, ally disappoint. Fax: 401-331-0030 they in turn are convinced that he Yosef's dreams are realized only Ms. Pereira - ext. 10 or [email protected] and his dreaming constitute a ver- after he has been severely chas- Rabbi Scheinerman - ext. 21 or itable danger to the unity and sur- tened by his brothers' enmity, [email protected] vival of Yaakov's family. Mrs. Weiner - ext. 18 or [email protected] slavery, and imprisonment in Rabbi Lapin - ext. 15 or [email protected] It is not only the contents of Egypt. Even after he seemingly Mrs. Purec - ext. 26 Yosef's dreams—the ideas that he has them in his grasp, it is still a Financial Office - ext. 11 will dominate the family—that contest of wills. Again, Yosef's Dear Parents, disturb the brothers, but the very dreams are finally realized but This week’s parsha deals with dreams. fact that he is dreaming raises only after he has been subjected Educational institutions—we includ- their suspicions and fuels their to many hard years of unpleasant ed—are constantly forced to be dream- enmity towards him. In the strug- reality. The brothers, realists to ers and to look for initiatives to imple- gle between Yosef and the broth- the end, are shocked to see that ment into our programs. Many of these ers, the conflict is between the the dreamer has emerged trium- initiatives get approved and funded, but lofty and inspirational theory of phant. The dreamer saves the some unfortunately end up being filed and its sometimes- world from famine while the real- away “for the future.” Still, despite that mundane practice, the reality of ists end up being its customers. not all dreams are brought to fruition as what can be achieved even Through this, the Torah teaches quick as we would like them to be, though it may not be exactly what us that we need both dreamers without dreams, we’d become compla- one dreamt of achieving. and realists within our ranks. A cent in our methods and stagnate. The conflict between Yosef and nation built exclusively on In an essay that discusses this dilemma his brothers is never really ended. dreams, without practical reality of dreams vs. reality, Rabbi Berel Wein It is compromised by both sides intruding, will find reality rising describes the basis of the argument be- recognizing the validity of the to foil the realization of the tween Yosef and his brothers. There is position of the other and living dream. But a nation that ceases to a difference (to put it mildly) that is with that reality. The Jewish peo- dream of reaching greater heights outlined clearly between Yosef and his ple in its long and difficult histo- will stagnate and not survive. brothers in this week's parsha. ry have somehow been able to Both the brothers and Yosef are combine the spirit and dream of Yosef is the quintessential dreamer, his "right" in their pursuit of building Yosef with the hardheaded real- head in the stars and his youthful exu- a nation and of spiritual growth. ism of his brothers. Both traits berance and certainty in the truthful We need a healthy dose of both are necessary for our survival and outcome of his dreams becomes very values and views in our Jewish accomplishments, both as indi- irritating to his brothers. Since he lived world today as well. viduals and as a nation. Someone a world of Eisav and Shechem, the without dreams and ambitions to I thank the administration and brothers felt that this dreaming was the reach heavenward and conquer staff for being dreaming the height of impracticality, if not even ir- the stars will never be a truly cre- dreams that allow us to strive for responsibility. The brothers have their ative or original person. But if continued growth. feet firmly planted on the ground, in the this drive is not tempered by a Good Shabbos, reality of the world in which they exist, realistic sense of the situation and with clear recognition of its inherent Rabbi Peretz Scheinerman the society that surrounds us, then dangers and threats. While Yosef feels Dean