Dear Kadima members,

If your family has school age children, or if you know a friend or neighbor who is thinking about religious education, we are offering a new format for religious school this fall that may be of interest.

Instead of weekly religious school classes, we will be offering ten segments of family education throughout the school year in order to engage parents and children together in Jewish learning and in doing Mitzvot. We will introduce Jewish stories, history, art, music, holidays, and Hebrew vocabulary arranged around themes of mitzvot, sometimes translated as “good actions,” that put our values into practice. We hope that this program will strengthen relationships between our families with children. As we have talked with parents, we’ve heard that many would like support for creating Jewish rituals and holidays at home and that they want to discuss values and engage in social action with their children. We hope that this program will support their aspirations. We’ve also found that many families, either because of the distance they travel to Kadima, or because of conflicting activities or family arrangements, like the idea of participating in educational experiences on this schedule.

Our sessions will take place on ten Saturday afternoons, from 12:30 to 2:30, during the 2016-17 school year. A calendar will be sent out soon announcing all of the dates. Children who are in pre-school through elementary school are welcome to enroll, and parents and older siblings are welcome and encouraged to attend with them. It is our hope that at least one parent will regularly attend. Children will be grouped according to age for some learning activities, and we will all join together for others. Older students who are working on their Hebrew reading skills will have supplementary classes during the week, and post-b’nai mitzvah students will continue their Confirmation program on selected Sunday mornings with Rabbi Oler.

We look forward to building a strong community for our families with children, sharing meaningful and fun activities together, and creating a context for all of us, children and adults, to become more caring people.

Sincerely,

Mary Oler