Crossing the River Pre - Bnai Mitzva Program
 

Curriculum Overview

CTR 1 - 6th Grade

By the End of CTR Students will Know What Jews Believe:

• About God, our Creator
• About the body and soul (includes death)
• About making mistakes (al chet) and returning to the path (teshuvah)
• About the holiness (kedushah) of Torah
• About our responsibility to each other and to our community - tzedakah, beyt knesset, lifelong learning, creating a holy community
• About the year cycle: ordinary and holy, Shabbat, holy days and the rest of life
• How we honor God's presence  - kippah, talit, respectful behavior (derech eretz) to elders, teachers, one another, and also to ourselves
• How we celebrate holy times - with wine/kiddush, breaking bread (motzi), joyous singing, divrei torah (teachings)
• How we honor birth and death (brit, brit habat, tzedakah (giving), gemilut chasadim (acts of kindness), burial rites, shiva visits, etc.
• How we uplift marriage and divorce – chuppah (marriage canopy), breaking the glass, kiddush, making and keeping promises, respectful closure.
• How we treat life passages, such as bar and bat mitzva, conversion, and other joyous times
• How we treat each other

During the seventh grade year, students study the wisdom of Torah and examine through a Jewish lens who they are, the kind of adults they want to become, and how the mitzvot can help them achieve their goals.

Woven throughout the course are the following:

• Developing the "Art of the Question" - d’rosh, d’rash
• Understanding discussion from a Jewish point of view. This includes sequential reasoning, the importance of finding comfort with paradox, playing with multiple perspectives, learning how to respectfully disagree, and the love of ideas
• Critical thinking skills from unpacking Torah verses
• Emphasis on building a group container, connecting the students with each other
• Joy of learning Torah
• Finding relevancy in Torah today
• The meaning of letters
• Interpretation of words