Well! That was fun. I spent the weekend–as anyone reading this is probably aware–in Davis, connecting with people as we moved into Torah-writing time.

Lots of this sort of thing:

Teaching and learning with all age groups. More of that on later visits! (If anyone wants to cover anything particular, speak to your Torah committee, okay?)

This, of course:

My favourite bit of the ceremony: realising that if forty-two children shake blank parchment sheets, it sounds kind of like the thunder which accompanied the original Giving of the Torah.

We were writing the first six letters of the Torah, the word Bereshit, In The Beginning. Communities often choose six people to help write the letters; Bet Haverim, unusually, decided to choose representatives from across the spectrum of the community. They also shared a little bit about their stories, and we connected that to the letter they’d chosen to write. This was nice.

Before we started to write the Torah, I wrote the name of Amalek and symbolically crossed it out. I think most people didn’t get to see that up close, so here’s a picture:

After the ceremony, we spent the afternoon writing letters with individuals. I’m planning another post about just what that involves. In the meantime, a picture:

Images in this post, except the Amalek one, are from the album at CBH’s Facebook page. Check there for copyrights, attributions, etc.