SUNDAY FUNDAY CALENDAR

THIS YEARS CALENDAR

(please note that dates and lessons theme may change during the year)

Once a month from 3pm - 4.30pm see email for location

SEPTEMBER 25th - Rosh Hashanah

OCTOBER 16th - Sukkoth

NOVEMBER 20th - Mezzuzah / Shema

December 4, 10am at MAHJ Paris - Workshop : The story of hannukah

JANUARY15th - Shabbat - Hallah baking and kiddush cup decorating

FEBRUARY12th - Tzedakah - Making of my very own tzedakah box

MARCH18th - PURIM : The story of Queen Esther : Megillah making

APRIL1st - PASSOVER : Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt

MAY 27th - SHAVUOTH : Giving of the torah
JUNE - SUNDAY FUNDAY PICNIC

SAVE THE DATE : Sept 25th, 2011

COME AND LEARN, COME AND HAVE FUN...

WELCOME BACK EVERYONE !

Sunday Funday starts up again on September 25th at 3pm -4.30pm in Paris 17th

With the High Holydays not too far away we'll start off this year with preparing for Rosh Hashana through song, craft and stories.

Please feel free to bring along your favourite story book and/or a small contribution to our snack time.

LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING YOU ALL SOON.

What is Passover?

Pessah means "to pass over"

We call this holiday passover because when the plagues hit the homes of the Egyptians God passed over the homes of the Jewish people. Passover lasts eight days. On the first and maybe the second nights we get together with family and friends and tell the story of Passover

A Seder means order. A seder is a meal that has a special order. It has fifteen steps that help us remember that the Jewish people were once slaves in Egypt. We remember how God took us out of Egypt and brought us to Israel.

During the Seder we read from the Haggadah.

Haggadah means the "the telling" On passover we use a book called the haggadah to tell the story of the Jewish people leaving Egypt. It is like a siddur. It has prayers and songs in it. The haggadah tells of our move from slavery to freedom

But we not only use the haggadah to tell the story, we also have a seder plate on the table. It is a sort of show and tell object of the seder. Everything on it will be used or talked about during the Seder.

A long time ago, in the land of Egypt, there was a King named Pharaoh. He made the Jewish people his slaves.

They had to work hard building cities for Pharaoh. The Charoset Mixture : A mixture of chopped nuts and fruit reminds us of the ortar used to hold the buildings together.

The Bitter herb (maror) : Herbs such as horseradish and romaine lettuce taste bitter. Maror, reminds us that a life of slaverly was bitter. We cried big, salty tears. The salt water is salty like our tears. God saw the sadslaves and wanted us to become free. God sent Moses to King Pharaoh to tell him to 'Let my people go. '

When Pharaoh told us we could leave Egypt, we had started baking bread but did not have time to let it rise. We made matzah instead.

Matzah is unleavened bread. Unlike regular bread, matzah is made without yeast or baking powder, which makes bread dough puff up and become soft when baked. The dough is rolled flat, and small holes are punched into it.

This helps the matzah bake quickly. We call the food made with leaven chametz. Before passover and certainly before we have our seder we remove all chametz from our homes.

We eat matzah to remember that we had to hurry because it is better to be free.

Shank bone (zroah) : This is also called the pesah. In ancient Israel we would have brought a lamb to the Temple in Jerusalem to show our love for God. Today, we roast the shank bone of a lamb instead.

Green Vegetables (karpas) : Parsley and celery make us think of life, spring, and hope. It reminds that Passover is a spring holiday. It is dipped into salt water.

Egg (beytzah) : The egg is roasted. It reminds us of a second offering, it is also a reminder of new life - the birth of the Jewish nation

Our Passover lesson

During our last class we learnt about our next holiday coming up. This holiday is called Passover. We learnt through song about our main character of the passover story - Moses. Our song went like this : Where is baby Moses, Moses, Moses? Where is baby Moses, by the river Nile? He's floating in basket, basket, basket He's floating in Basket, in the river Nile The princess she is swimming, swimming, swimming The princess she is swimming, in the river Nile She finds the baby Moses, Moses, Moses She finds the baby Moses, in the river Nile She takes him to the Palace, palace, palace She takes him to the palace, by the river Nile There our Moses grows up, grows up, grows up There our Moses grows up, by the river Nile We looked at how Moses ended up leaving Egypt and then with the help of God comes back to free the Israelites from slavery Our craft too showed the story of Moses as a baby floating in the Nile and being found by the princess and brought up as an Eygptian prince. We remembered just like in our Purim story Moses was put in that place at that moment for some reason that was yet to come. The kids listened carefully and then went to work preparing the scene of baby Moses floating in his basket in the river Nile :

Thank you again to Gabrielle and JD for opening up their home on such short notice...

Hag Sameach

Celebrating freedom ...

A kite soars high in a cloudless sky. No one pulls it to the ground A child turns cartwheels in the grass, no one restrains her joy. That's how freedom feels. Freedom gives us the power to choose how to live our lives, which foods to eat, which clothes to wear which schools to attend, which friends to make, which God to pray to. Thousands of years ago, the Jewish people didn't know that joyous feeling we call freedom. They were slaves in Egypt crying out to be free. Imagine a narrow passageway, so tiny that our streched-out arms touch the sides, and we have to sit huddled up, knees bent, in a tight ball. That's how slavery feels. The seder is the story of the Israelites' journey from slavery to freedom. Everything we do on Passover reminds us of that journey that began in the darkness of Egypt , in the middle of the night, an ended in a land the people had never seen, the land God had promised them, the land of Israel. On passover, we look forward to walking again on that road to freedom, as if we ourselves were there. by Rahel Musleah

Our hamantaschen recipe

Our hamantaschen was filled with fruit jam or chocolate chips, or chocolate, however you can also fill it with a prune filling, poppy seeds, figs, etc.

Dough :

3/4 cup sugar

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/3 cup or 175g butter or margarine cut into pieces


2 tablespoons water


1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract


1 egg, beaten



Egg wash : 1 egg, beaten and 1 teaspoon water

Preheat the oven to 200°C (350°F).

Stir together the sugar, flour and baking powder in a bowl. Add the butter pieces and mix in with a fork until crumbly. Add the water, vanilla extract, and egg. Mix until the dough comes together in a ball.
If you have time you can refrigerate the dough for 20 minutes OR continue directly to next stage
Sprinkle flour on a work surface and a rolling pin, then flour your hands. Pinch off a piece of dough and roll it out. Cut dough with cutter into circles. Brush lightely with egg wash. Put a teaspoon of filling in te centre of the circle. Fold up three edges of the dough and pinch them together to make a triangle. Brush the entire cookie with egg wash.
Place on a baking sheet. Bake until light golden at the edges, +/- 20 minutes in a conventional oven (not fan). Let cool on a rack. Repeat

A variation : instead of using 2 tablespoons of water you could use freshly squeezed orange juice OR for fun you could sprinkle rainbow sprinkles on the top once the triangle has been made. The dough can also be used for simple cookies.

Our Purim Activity

On Sunday we prepared for Purim and what a funday we had !!

We read a very interactive and story of how Esther (also known by her jewish name Hadassah) was chosen as queen of Persia and how with the help of her uncle Mordechai she uncovered a plan that the wicked Haman was putting together to destroy all the jews. We learnt how brave Esther was and how wise Mordechai was. During our story lots of noise was made by all !


We say a new noisy song:
If you hear the name of Haman stomp your feet. (stomp feet twice) repeat
If you hear the name of Haman, if you hear the name of Haman, if you hear the name of Haman stomp your feet (stomp feet twice)
If you hear the name of Esther clap your hands......
If you hear the name of Ahasuerus turn around.....
If you hear the name of Mordecai shout hooray....

We then rolled up our sleeves and baked our own purim cookies and the traditional hamantaschen. As if that was not enough we also made little baskets to in which we put our purim cakes and sweets.

Reading our interactive purim story:










Singing our purim song :












Then hard at work: First we rolled the dough, then cut it in circles, filled it with chocolate, chocolate chips or jam, pinched the corners into the form of a triangle and into the oven it went:

Making our purim baskets :

And after all that hard work a well deserved snack to share :

Well done to all the kids !