Shalom!
It's been a few weeks since we were all in class together, and it was nice to catch up with everyone. As a class, we decided that if we want to learn cursive hebrew, we'd have to work a little harder so we can still get through the prayers we are studying. I have full confidence that together we'll be able to practice writing and learn as much cursive as possible!
That being said, we got new prayer packets. It's a super duper double combined packet with Modeh Ani and Mah Tovu, but we will be starting with Modeh Ani.
We learned that Modeh Ani is the very first prayer you say when you wake up in the morning. We had a short discussion about how some of us might not say the Shema every night or the Modeh Ani every morning when you wake up. But in Jewish tradition, we know that our soul leaves us when we go to sleep (that's where the Hashkivenu comes in), and in the morning, the Modeh Ani thanks G-d for returning our soul to us and giving us a new start to a new day.
We also learned a new root! חיה
It means life, and we talked a lot about the "heh" in the root and how sometimes it might be missing from words with this root, such as חיים. A good thing to remember is that the order of the letters of the root will never change, even though one letter might be missing in some words.
A great example that we looked at in class is החיים because the "heh" is missing from the end of the word, but it comes at the beginning. In this case, the root only consists of the "chet" and the "yood"; the "heh" went away. But we know that a "heh" at the beginning of a word is a prefix meaning "the".
Then we started reviewing some tricky letters in print. We are not going to start learning cursive quite yet because I want to make sure we master writing in print, which is very important as well.
Homework!
Root analysis activity (page 2)
Start the translation activity (page 3)
Reading homework:
Modeh Ani (front cover on the bottom)
Page 4, lines 1-3
Writing homework:
Page 4, lines 4 and 5
(Please use lined paper, and vowels!)
I know I asked you all to bring lined paper for your binders, but we are getting little notebooks (it's called a "Machberet") so you don't need to bring the paper.
Remember to fill out your reading raffle cards!
Have a great, snow-filled week!
B'shalom,
Arielle
solomon4@bu.edu
