Parshat Shelach: GRAPES

Last week, the kids loved painting the watermelons so much that they asked if they could paint fruit again this week. Thankfully, fruit plays an important role again in this week's parsha!

This parsha tells the famous story of the 12 spies sent to scout out the Land of Israel. The visual symbol of this story - and for the Land of Israel in general - is a large cluster of grapes carried by two people on a pole, based on the following verse:

When they came to the Eshcol Valley, they cut off a branch with only one bunch of grapes on it. They carried it on a pole between two of them. They also brought some pomegranates and figs. So they called that valley Eshcol [Bunch of Grapes] because of the bunch of grapes the Israelites cut off there.

This image is particularly "Israeli" and can be found throughout both ancient and modern art to represent the bounty of the Land of Israel (the "land of milk and honey" - also from this parsha).

Possibly the most well-known association with this image is as the logo of Israel's ministry of tourism:

This is a fun article (in Hebrew) about the evolution of the "branding" of Israel with this logo. I especially enjoyed the 2006 humorous reincarnation of the "spies" meant to encourage local Israeli tourism:

So, I thought that grapes were significant enough biblically and culturely to justify using them as the basis for this week's project. Since I don't like to repeat the same medium two weeks in a row, I first considered doing a paper quilling project like this one. But, although I loved the idea in theory, when I actually tried to do an example project, I found I myself did not have the patience for the slow, tedious process it entails. General rule of thumb - if I don't have the patience for it, likely that an 8 year old won't either! So, I decided to give myself a break and repeat the same medium as last week which was paint on cardboard. In order to add a learning component, I intentionally did not provide purple paint but only blue, red, and white which forced them to experiment with mixing the colors to get a shade that they liked. Some students were super-frustrated that I did not provide them with ready-made purple (which only confirmed that it was a good move on my part :)) The other technique that I tried to explain was highlighting each grape with white in order to distinguish them from each other and show if they were in front or behind - this video helped me with this idea.

While I did manage to bring two big bunches of real grapes for this activity (which were quickly devoured!), I did not manage to prepare this fun prop which of course they would have loved (maybe next year...)

SHABBAT SHALOM!