BH. Tevet
6, 5779 / Dec 14, 2018
ב“ה
Community Newsletter of the Maimonides Hebrew Day School of the Capital District Candle-Lighting: 404 Partridge Street Albany NY 12208 (518) 453-9363/3434 www.maimonidesschool.org 4:04 Shabbos Ends: produced by Rabbi Mendel Rubin & students in the TNT (Torah ‘n Technology) Program 5:08 Maimonides is accredited by the NYS Board of Regents & is a beneficiary of UJF-NENY
MAZAL TOV SHEPHERDS Mazal Tov to Rabbi Mendy & MHDS alumna on the birth of a baby boy this past Tuesday, and to all the Laber uncles and aunts and grandparents Rabbi Avraham & Nechama Laber, and great-grandparents live locally, too!
maimonidesschool@gmail.com
MAIMONIDES 404 Partridge Street Albany NY 12208
MAZAL TOV CARAS FAMILY On the birth of a baby girl named Chana on Wednesday night, to parents R’ Michoel and Leah, and the baby’s siblings at Maimonides.
This MC Newsletter is sponsored in honor of the birth of
Chana Caras
Born on Hey-Teves and named in memory of the Rebbe’s mother by Michoel and Leah Caras
NURSERY WAGON SHAPES Nursery students used the Parsha Vayigash’s wagons that Yosef sent to bring down Yaakov and his family to Egypt to learn about shapes: circles and rectangles.
MAZAL TOV ROSENBLUMS To Seth, Amarit & family on Ayelet’s recent Bat-Mitzva. Much Nachas!
HEBREW WINTER CLOTHING Morah Devorah’s first graders made a colorful classroom bulletin board (see above) of winter clothing and their Hebrew words. The second graders are taking the same winter clothing exercise to the next level with more complex vocab (see their word list on left). Please dress warm!
CELEBRATING BOOKS Rabbi Rubin did a special “Hey (5th of) Teves” presentation on “Shaar Blatt” (title page art and words) on 18 different classic books from different time periods and places around the world, including some Torah journals that Rabbi Motti edited and published in Australia and England! All the kids got a treat: a whoopee pie. Why whoopie pies, what’s the connection? Like book covers, the cookies hold (together) the creamy richness within. But it goes beyond external physical covers. Indeed, the whole function of a book is to provide context, setting & format for ideas & feelings. You can’t hold the creamy inside by itself without those more tangible cookie holders. And while black & white text may not seem appealing to some; whoopie pies remind us that black & white can be lusciously rich!
FISH IN A TREE 4th graders are reading this with Mrs. Maher about a student who has troubling reading but no one realizes that at first until one teacher did.
THERE’S MORE TO LETTER VAV Atop see Nursery students coloring their letter Vav, the 6th letter of the Hebrew alphabet. #6 is why there is a 6-pointed Jewish star inside. But there’s more. Vav in Hebrew means a hook, and they learned that the Vav shape is really a Yud with a stick (or hook) that pulls the Yud down lower. The concrete way they learned this was by having the portion of the Vav below its Yud folded as an accordion which can be pulled down into a Vav shape.
RAFFLE-AUCTION UPDATE > See page 3 for pictures of this year’s Auction, the post-Chanukah dinner, and a listing of the prize winners, although all who participated are surely winners for supporting Maimonides!