igniting your shabbat services

Balak

Balak

Hello and welcome to Spark!

Spark is a new idea from Tribe, aimed at facilitating the smooth running of Toddlers’ Services, Children’s Services and Youth Services across United Synagogue communities.

Firstly, thank you for offering to run a Children’s Service in your local shul. The US is very proud of the numerous Children’s services that are run every week across the UK, and we would not be able to do this without you!

Spark has been designed in order to help you run your Children’s Services. Obviously, every Children’s Service is different, in terms of how many children there are; what their age range is; how long it is for; and how knowledgeable the children are likely to be of this week’s parasha.

Ideally, where possible, a Children’s Service should consist of some time used to discuss the weekly parasha, and some time devoted to davening. Spark is aimed at the parasha part of the service. It gives you an overview of what happens in the weekly parasha, and then a song, activity, discussion or Dvar Torah to run with the children – depending on their ages.

After the parasha summary on the next page, Spark has been split into 5 sections. Larger communities may have 5 different Children’s / Youth Services running concurrently. Each of these will be able to use one section for their relevant age group. If your shul does not have as many groups, then you should use the section that best suits the age range of your participants.

It has been created in a way to be flexible, so that it can be run in 10 minutes, if you have a short service, or longer if you have the time. If you also look at sections for other age groups, you may even find that you would like to use the ideas and information from more than one of the sections.

It is important to note that Spark should help you to run Children’s Services, but it does not completely run it for you. It is not designed to give to one of the children to read out to the group for them to run themselves. You are running the Children’s Service, and Spark is here to help you do it.

Largely, no props will be needed, but ideally you should read Spark before you start the Children’s Service, so that you can think of further ideas to complement it.

We hope that you and the children in the Children’s Service will benefit from Spark, we thank and congratulate you for doing it; and as always we welcome your feedback.

Shabbat shalom,

The Tribe Education Team

HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE

Balak

n Balak (King of Moab) asked Balaam (a sorcerer) to curse the Jewish people, because he was scared that they were becoming too powerful.

n God told Balaam that he could not curse them, as they were a blessed people.

n God sent an angel to stop Balaam in his travels. Only Balaam’s donkey saw it though initially.

n Balaam struck his donkey, and God made the donkey speak to him. Eventually Balaam saw the angel.

n Instead of cursing, Balaam ended up blessing the Jewish people 3 times against his own will, which angered Balak.

n At the end of this week’s parasha, some of the Jewish people began worshiping an idol

n Pinchas saw this and zealously killed a man and a woman with his spear.

ParaSHa SUmmary

BalakPrE-nUrSEry TO rEcEPTIOnTots

Parasha SongIn this week’s parasha, Balaam travels to Balak on his donkey, to go and curse the Jewish people. God sends an angel to stop them, and the donkey tries to avoid walking into the angel, even though this means that Balaam (who cannot see the angel,) is pushed into the wall. God makes a miracle and the donkey speaks to Balaam and asks why he is hitting him. The angel, who Balaam can now see, also asks this, and says that were it not for the donkey he would have killed Balaam already. From this we learn the importance of caring for animals.

Sing 'Old Macdonald', but stop after each verse and talk about how each of the

animals is cared for.

Discussion questions:

n Do any of the children have animals?

n How do they care for them?

n Is there anything they may / may not do with their pets on Shabbat?

BalakyEar 1 & 2Ages 5-7

In this week’s parasha, Balaam travels to Balak on his donkey, to go and curse the Jewish people. God sends an angel to stop them, and the donkey tries to avoid walking into the angel, even though this means that Balaam (who cannot see the angel,) is pushed into the wall. God makes a miracle and the donkey speaks to Balaam and asks why he is hitting him. The angel, who Balaam can now see, also asks this, and says that were it not for the donkey he would have killed Balaam already. From this we learn the

importance of caring for animals.

Activity: n Play the following animal game with the children;

n All the children should sit in a circle, and one child should say the name of an

animal. The child next to them should then say an animal whose name begins

with the last letter of the previous animal’s name.

n Play continues until someone cannot think of one.

n E.g. Bird – Dog – Giraffe – Elephant – Turtle…

n Play another animal related game;

n Split the children in to two teams. Each team has to think of a breed of dog in

turn. Play continues until one team cannot think of any more.

n E.g. Labrador – St Barnard’s – Dalmatian…

Discussion Points; n Do any of the children have pets?

n Which are their favourite animals at the farm / zoo?

n Do they know how these animals are cared for?

BalakyEar 3 & 4Ages 7-9

In this week’s parasha there are many references to animals. Balaam’s donkey sees an angel and talks to him, and then later in his third blessing Balaam also talks about lions and their cubs. Ask to children to read out the following role play.

It was the summer, and Ben and David were reminiscing over the year at school.

David: Do you remember last year? Do you remember how I used to fail every test until Mr Sendon came along?

Ben: Yes, but why did Mr Sendon make a difference?

David: He managed to make us feel like we were in control of our studies and that we could do better or worse based on our choices. He always used to say ‘You are a sleeping lion just like the Jewish people in exile.

Ben: Why?

David: There was a king called Balak who didn't like the Jewish people so he asked a non-Jewish prophet – Balaam, to curse the Jewish people while they camped in the desert. But in the end, Balaam ended up blessing and praising the people.

Ben: Yes I remember - he said that the Jewish people are like a sleeping lion, because even though we are in exile and not in power and don't have a Temple, nevertheless, no person has power over them. But what does that mean? Surely there have been times when other nations have had power over the Jewish people?"

David: The Chassidic masters say that only our bodies are in exile but our Jewish souls are free and in power. So even though it might sometimes seem that others have power over us, really we are free— free to do mitzvot and serve God.

Ben: So as lions, we might wake up any moment, but only to do good things!

Discussion Points; n What animals would the children compare themselves to and why? n Does it feel like we are a free people or in exile? We do not have the Temple, but we do

have Israel. n What do they think life will be like when we do have the Temple? n How far removed does this seem to when our ancestors have been in danger, just for

being Jews?

BalakyEar 5 & 6Ages 9-11

In this week’s parasha Balak requests that Balaam curse the Jewish people. Balaam tells him that he is only able to say what God allows him, and his first two attempts at curses, are actually blessings. Although Balaam is saying the words, it is apparent that it is not until the third blessing that he really understands why he should be blessing the Jewish people rather than cursing them. He is impressed by the way that they have set up their tents so that no entrance is overlooked by any other. ‘How godly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel.’ This teaches us to respect other people’s privacy.

Discussion points: n What is the definition of ‘privacy’?

n Why do people like privacy?

n Does an individual deserve privacy? How about if they are famous?

n How can each of us respect the privacy of other people?

n Is there no privacy anymore because of CCTV and reality TV shows?

n What about countries – does the leader of a country have a right to run it how

they like, without interference from other governments?

n Does this apply to Israel?

Balak

Dvar TorahThe Torah states, "And Balaam said to the donkey, 'Because you have mocked me, if I were to have a sword in my hand right now, I would kill you' " (Numbers 22:29).

What can we learn from Balaam's behavior? Rabbi Soloveitchik commented that usually a person hits a donkey because he wants it to go faster so that he can get to where he is going sooner. However, Balaam was a pursuer of honor. Therefore, when the donkey caused him irritation he considered it a slight to his honor and wanted to kill it.

When a person seeks honor, he doesn't realise how ridiculous he is being. Balaam said that he wanted to kill the donkey immediately, however it would have made more sense to wait until he reached his destination, and then kill it. Seeking honor prevented him from thinking straight. Moreover, the donkey started speaking. This was a miraculous event and Balaam should have been overwhelmed with amazement. However, what did Balaam focus on? Only one thing - his honor! And not only that, where was he looking for honor? From a donkey!

Every honor-seeker has aspects of this same craziness in his personality. The Chafetz Chaim used to say that true honor comes from when one seeks wisdom. Gaining more wisdom is honorable in itself and when one seeks it one will free oneself from seeking superficial signs of honor that are only illusions.

yOUTH SErvIcEAges 12-18

igniting your shabbat services

We hope you find our guide to this week’s Parsha useful.

Be sure to look out for exciting Tribe programmes in your shul.

Shabbat Shalom!

The Tribe Education Team

t: 020 8343 5656 e: info@tribeuk.com www.tribeuk.com