The past month has been jam packed with so many holidays. We barely had time to reflect and internalize the messages and inspiration of the chagim. But through insightful and meaningful reflection, the girls of the seventh grade composed meaningful divrei Torah of their very own to share with their families on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.
As luck would have it, the perakim we started off learning this year (Shmuel Aleph 1-2) served as the very haftarah for the first day of Rosh Hashana. Rather than share a dvar Torah from the teacher or from another external source, each girl chose a pasuk that was especially meaningful for her and connected that idea to a greater theme within her own life. Many girls chose to connect the theme of Chana turning to Hashem asking for a son to the tefillot we each shared this summer as we begged Hashem to return the three boys in Israel safely home. Whether the answer to our bakashot is yes or no, we know that Hashem hears every tefilla we send his way.
In the days leading up to Yom Kippur we looked at the pervasive symbolism of the number forty throughout Judaism in areas such as Tanach and Halacha. By comparing these many examples, each student hypothesized what she felt the number signifies and formulated divrei Torah supported by the various examples we had learned about. These divrei Torah were shared at the students' respective seudot hamafseket before Yom Kippur- the culminating fortieth day of the teshuva process we began with Rosh Chodesh Elul. It is also on Yom Kippur, after a second round of forty days and nights on Har Sinai that Moshe Rabbeinu came down a second time with the Luchot HaBrit, signifying that, indeed, Hashem had forgiven us for the sin of the Egel HaZahav.
The feedback from the students was remarkable. They expressed how empowered the felt to be able to relate to the Torah so personally and support their own ideas through exegetical thinking (though this was not their word of choice). One girl shared, "One of the examples I used in my [Yom Kippur] dvar Torah was that we got the Torah after Moshe was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights. That got me thinking that Hashem really gave the Torah to everyone- to rabbis, to wise people, to girls, to boys, to adults, to kids... to everyone. Hashem gave the Torah just as much to me as he did to, like, Yonah or David HaMelech. When I wrote my dvar Torah, and especially when I shared it, I really felt that- like that the Torah is mine and I'm responsible to make it meaningful and understandable for me."
