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Yom Kippur

    Yom Kippur

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    • Rebecca Baizen posted an article
      What If the Jewish Calendar Were a Journey, Not a List of Holidays?
      What If the Jewish Calendar Were a Journey, Not a List of Holidays? see more

      As September arrives, planning for Rosh Hashanah moves quickly in many Jewish early childhood programs. Apples. Honey. Shofar. Round challah.

      Soon we move toward Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah, often looking for connections among their themes and symbols.

      What if we also searched for the ideas that travel between the holidays?

      From Holidays to Ideas

      Consider the ideas children might encounter across the Jewish year.

      Rosh Hashanah can raise questions about beginnings, change, cycles, and return. What does it mean to begin again?

      Yom Kippur invites thinking about relationships, reflection, repair, and return. What happens when something goes wrong between people? Can relationships be repaired?

      Sukkot offers possibilities around shelter, gathering, belonging, nature, and change. What makes a place feel like shelter? What makes a place feel like home?

      Simchat Torah brings us to stories, cycles, endings, and beginnings. When we return to the same story, is the story different, or are we?

      As the year continues, Hanukkah invites investigations of light, darkness, change, and time. Tu Bishvat opens questions about growth, interdependence, and what happens beyond our sight. Purim raises ideas about identity, perspective, and what is hidden or revealed. Passover creates possibilities for exploring journeys, memory, freedom, family, and what people carry with them.

      These ideas do not belong to only one holiday.

      Shelter at Sukkot may return as home and belonging during Passover. Beginnings at Rosh Hashanah may resurface during Simchat Torah. Light explored during Hanukkah may reappear months later through shadows beneath a tree at Tu Bishvat.

      Planning for Continuity

      This changes the question we ask when planning:

      What is already alive in children's thinking, and where might it travel next?

      Learning does not follow a direct route. Children linger, wander, pause, return, reconsider, and sometimes discover something entirely unexpected.

      Perhaps our Jewish curriculum can make space for that movement.

      The holiday passes. Materials change. Seasons move forward.

      The question can remain.

      And when children return to it, they bring new experiences, memories, and possibilities.

      To continue exploring children's thinking, continuity, and revisiting, I invite you to read Chronicles of Children's Thinking on Substack.

      Miriam Belogovsky Playful Transformation, LLC