As Jews, we count the days from between Pesach and Shavuot. There are seven weeks, or forty-nine days between these holidays. The first thirty-two days are days of mourning. On these days of mourning, it is forbidden to cut or shave your hair, or to get married. Why? Well, during these days a plague went on killing twenty-four thousand of Rabbi Akiva’s students. Who’s students, Rabbi Akiva’s students.  The 33rd day of counting the Omer is Lag Ba’Omer. On this holiday, we celebrate when the plague that killed Akiva and his students stopped. We also celebrate the death of Rabbi Shimon.

Rabbi Akiva was one of the greatest torah scholars, although he definitely didn’t start that way. He actually started as an ignorant sheppard. He worked for a rich man named Kalba Savua. What? How could an ignorant sheappard turn into one of the greatest torah scholars of all times. Well you can learn about all this and more about Rabbi Akiva’s life by watching our prezi.

I enjoyed creating this prezi about Rabbi Akiva. I learned a lot about Rabbi Akiva’s life and accomplishments. It was fun to do this instead of studying. If we did this again I think it would be faster and better, because we now know how to use prezi better. I think we did good on working together and getting a lot of facts in.

http://prezi.com/faocbunnp32m/present/?auth_key=gt7xtoj&follow=j_xmuqk_bvz6&kw=present-faocbunnp32m&rc=ref-39859567

Once

by: Morris Gleitzman

“Everybody deserves something good in their life at least once.”

 (Morris Gleitzman, “Once” p.g.122 1939-1945)

Once I stood squashed in a train with tons of other people. It was my first train trip which wasn’t enjoyable. I knew exactly where we were going, to a death camp! The trip was miserable. There was nowhere to go to the bathroom, but the corner. There were too many people, and everyone was grumpy. A huge part of the reason everyone was so grumpy was because we didn’t have any toilet paper. Suddenly, I got an idea, I could rip out pages from my notebook for people to use as toilet paper. It was a good idea because we all were relieved to have something to use as toilet paper.

I decided it would be easy to put my notebook up on a bolt on the wall so people could just rip out a few pages to use, but the bolt came out. I kicked the plank of wood, and my foot went through. A few men came to help me pull my foot out of the plank. The men started kicking at the plank. Soon they had made a hole big enough that we could jump out. A few men did, but as they did machine guns on the roof of the train shot at them. Some of them made it, but some didn’t. I realized immediately that we had to risk it, but not many people wanted to. Of course, Zelda did. Here we go! (Based on the character Felix in “Once” by Morris Gleitzman”)

Mohammed al-Farra is a disabled toddler from Gaza. He has lived his life in Tel Hashomer Hospital in Israel. His parents abandoned him, so he now lives in Israel at the hospital. Mohammed al-Farra’s hands and feet were cut off. His mother wanted to stay with him, but was threatened by his father.

It is a great thing that Israel is taking care of him. We need to take care of people with disabilities. His parents and his country should have been proud to take care of him. If you see someone struggling with something you should help them.  Sometimes life is harder for other people so you should take care of them and help them through their struggles.

In math we learned about how to figure out a problem with no numbers. Well not exactly, but it sort of switches the problem around.

Dave’s Glitch At A Perfect Pitch

By: Lily H.

4-29-13

Dave loved his ipod so much,

He never stopped listening,

He memorized the words,

Even in dutch,

Although he’d never sing.

One day he tried to pull out his earplugs,

But they were stuck in his ear,

No matter how hard he tugs,

It never will work I fear.

Now he has a glitch,

But it’s at a perfect pitch,

So I snuck into his room,

And put on my favorite toon,

Cause that’s just what sisters do.

“The heavens are G-d’s Heavens, but their earth was given to Human Kind” (Psalm 115), this means that we as human beings have to take responsibility for the earth. That we have to do Tikun Olam, we have to repair our world and keep it nice and clean. We can’t litter! We have to recycle, reuse, and reduce wastes. We must protect our world.

For our mitzvah project we did a cleanup at the beach. We didn’t see much trash on the way up. On the way back we found a lot of trash, because of where we were walking. Would you rather be on a beach with litter everywhere or a clean beach? Taking these steps will make our earth enjoyable instead of dirty and gross.

Pathogens are everywhere around you. They are ready to make your body their home. They will inflame your tissue and multiply fast. We read a chapter in science about blood and immunity. I realized that there are so many weird and crazy things about these organisms, so I made a presentation with lots of fun facts about pathogens. While making this presentation I learned stuff like, we couldn’t live if there was no bacteria, or that viruses don’t perform the normal functions of living cells.

For this month’s Chai Reading project I wrote a review of “The Grimm Legacy”. 

At minyan we read a prayer that translates to english as blessed are you o lord who clothes the naked. We helped to clothe the naked, too on Friday. For one day the week before Purim we happened to of had a pajama day, but we couldn’t just wear pajamas we had to bring a pair to give away, too. We took all the pajamas the school had collected to Dignity U Wear. Dignity U Wear is a place that collects new clothes for people who need it.

What we did was first we brought the pajamas to Dignity U Wear. After we had gave them the clothes they asked us to sort some shirts. We sorted them into piles dependant on whether they were dirty or not. Doing this will help people who need it, because they will give out the good shirts. The thing is every single shirt had Bob Marley on it and if I see another Bob Marley anything I will go crazy.