A Jewish Hebrew Immersive After School Program
Judaics Project-Based Learning Expeditions
Mayyim Hayyim Social Story Project
How do Jews mark life transitions?
Kesher and Mayyim Hayyim, Boston’s community mikveh, joined forces to support kids and people with disabilities at the mikveh. Through Kesher’s project-based learning model, kindergartners through eighth graders created “social stories” for mikveh guests to make their immersion experiences more accessible.
Students learned how social stories use pictures and simple sentences to explain a new experience to someone. They then toured the mikveh and got an introduction to its place in Jewish tradition and the modern events that Jewish people mark with immersion. Then, each of Kesher’s Judaics classes was given a different lifecycle event to contemplate. The kids took photographs, created and edited the text, and put their stories together. The classes then presented their stories to the Mayyim Hayyim staff and their parents at two special events. We are so proud of how our students embraced and connected to this different space in the Jewish community and created a resource that can be used by visitors to the mikveh for years to come.
Check Out Our Stories
Click the image of each title page to our social stories, and see the full story!
Nitzanim
Anafim
Annotated Cookbook Project
How are customs developed and passed down?
From the guiding question, “How do customs develop, evolve and pass down?” the students asked:
● What is a custom?
● How do Jewish people tell stories, share customs, and mark time through food?
● Why did recipes develop differently in Jewish communities around the world?
● How are cookbooks constructed?
● What is collage? How can we tell stories through images, layering and texture?
Kesher students discovered that Jews around the world have used local ingredients that are easily accessible to create traditional foods for the holidays, like charoset. These food customs are reinforced through ongoing repetition, and provide a shared experience that is handed down through the generations. Traditions can also be created within families - Shorashim students (Kindergarten-grade 1)
explored how certain dishes or activities have become “traditions” within their individual families. This expedition also reached beyond our families. Nitzanim students (grades 2-3) interviewed a Jew-by-choice whose “coming to Judaism” story involved baking 2000 hamantaschen at a college Hillel. They used his suggestions when they made their own hamantaschen. Our Anafim students (grades 4-5) partnered with a handful of residents from the 2Life Communities at the Golda Meir House, gathering their food stories and traditions through in-person interviews. The children’s pages for the residents’ recipes are also in the cookbook titled B’tayavon בתאבון).
