Parshat Emor: Fields
I started off this week's lesson telling the kids that there is a very beautiful and important mitzvah in this week's parsha that I personally don't keep. That (sort of) got their attention.
I then explained the agricultural mitzot of "peah" and "leket" (which I can't really observe since I don't own a field):
"When you reap the harvest of your Land, you shall not completely remove the corner of your field during your harvesting, and you shall not gather up the gleanings of your harvest. [Rather,] you shall leave these for the poor person…” (Leviticus 23:22)
The mitzvah of "peah" is found in the middle of the section about the holidays. Just as on the holidays we must take a portion of our field as an offering to God, so too, we must leave a portion of our field for our fellow man. The message is the same - ultimately, the land is not really our own and our personal wealth must be shared.
Of course, these kids are very familiar with the concepts of "tzedakah," but through the mitzvah of "peah," I tried to get across to them the idea of feeling like you have enough to share with others. Maybe it is all kids but I feel like especially Israeli kids are constantly grabbing and hoarding and fighting over "how many" and "how much" they have and it DRIVES ME CRAZY. The message of being less possessive and controlling and attached to our material belongings is a constantly relevant one.
I was excited to use this parsha to do a farmland landscape using a one-point perspective (even though all of the lesson plans I saw were designed for middle school kids and I teach rowdy 1st-2nd graders!). But, I was super happy with (and surprised by) how great they did!
We briefly talked about the horizon line (קו האופק) and perspective (פרספקטיבה) and vanishing point (נקודת מגוז), using a photograph of a road:
First, with pencils and rulers (each kid getting his/her own ruler was a big hit!) we drew a horizon line, a vanishing point, and rows of crops. A few kids got confused but most of them were able to figure it out. I gave them freedom to color their papers however they wanted and they came out beautifully because oil pastels on colored construction paper just looks great!
There are lots of great lesson plans online for farm landscapes like this one. This is a helpful slideshow on the topic. I think this makes a great project...
SHABBAT SHALOM!