Title: A Blessing for My Daughters; A NASHIM Program
Touchstone Text:
“We are the children of Israel”
Goals:
To draw a correlation between Israel and the matriarchs and patriarchs
To identify those who have influences our lives
To use the Hanhagah L’Dorot model of Generational Leadership to perpetuate our experiences into a blessing for our daughters
Objectives:
PPs will learn the midrash behind Israel as an acronym for the matriarchs and patriarchs
PPs will create a timeline of people who have influenced their lives and how
PPs will be able to use those experiences to write a letter to their daughters, literal or figuartive
Materials:
White paper (enough for 1 per PP)
Notecards with matching envelopes
pens
Timeline:
00:00 – 00:05 Introduction to program
00:05 – 00:15 Israel Introduction
00:15 – 00:25 Create a list of influential women in your life, from birth until today
00:25 – 00:35 Create a list of life lessons you learned from each of those women
00:35 – 00:45 Using the list of values/lessons, write a blessing that you would someday
hope to give to your daughters
00:45 – 00:55 Share some of the letters with the group
00:55 – 01:00 Seal Letters, Closing Instructions, Wrap Up
Detailed Procedure:
00:00 – 00:05 Introduction to program
We’re coming together to put on paper our individual thoughts on Gender and our Judaism. We’ll take the time to look at the people who have taken time for us, taught us life lessons, made us strive to be better people, helped shape who we are today.
00:05 – 00:15 Israel Introduction
Have PPs identify a list of the positive names Jews are referred to as (chosen people, Hebrews, etc.)
Identify “Children of Israel” as the specific name we are going to look at today. There is a midrash that states that we are all literally and figuratively the Children of Israel. If you look at the work Yisrael in Hebrew, its letters can actually be identified as an acronym for the matriarchs and patriarchs:
Yud – Yitzhak (Isaac), Yaacov (Jacob)
Sin – Sarah
Resh – Rivkah (Rebecca), Rachel
Alehph – Avraham (Abraham)
Lamed – Leah
If, in theory, we are all linearly the children of the matriarchs and patriarchs, and they acronymally create the word Israel, then by inference, we are literally and figuratively the Children of Israel.
00:15 – 00:25 Create a list of influential women in your life, from birth until today
Make a list of the wmen who have influenced you in a significant way, and the general timeframe of your experiences with that person.
00:25 – 00:35 Create a list of life lessons you learned from each of those women
Next to the names, create a list of values and virtues that individual taught you – ethics, morals, choices that have influenced how you live your life today.
00:35 – 00:45 Using the list of values/lessons, write a blessing that you would someday hope to give to your daughters
Each individual should write a blessing for their daughters – whether they actually have a daughter or not, they may have a daughter-in-law, a neice, someone they mentored along the way, etc.
00:45 – 00:55 Share some of the letters with the group
Ask those who feel comfortable to share their letters with the group. If no one does, then ask them to share some samples of the values/virtues they learned along the way.
00:55 – 01:00 Seal Letters, Closing Instructions, Wrap Up
Ask PPs to date the letters and write the location/event of when it was written. Ask PPs to seal their letters, to put them away and take them home. They should put them someplace safe (encourage PPs to have a special memory box that they can keep important things in). Tell PPs to use their discretion as to when to give that letter to their “daughter”.