Parshat Vayeshev: Sun, Moon, and Stars

I never thought that I would want to do anything other than Joseph's colored coat but then, of course, I got another idea into my head and went ahead and created a new lesson for this week's parsha.

In addition to Joseph's famous coat of many colors, Joseph's "colorful" dreams are also a major part of his story. Joseph tells his family that in his second dream:

"Behold, the sun and moon and eleven stars bow down to me."

This is clearly a very powerful visual image and I quickly became somewhat obsessed with googling representations of these celestial beings. Most of the images were based on Mexican artistic traditions in which the sun especially was an important symbol (stemming back to the Aztec sun stone).

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All over the art-teaching internet, this project is used to teach contrasting cool and warm colors. There are endless examples of this project using markers, pastels, paint, etc. It took me a long time to figure out how to do this the best way with my classes so that it was not just a coloring class. In the end, I prepared for them the basic circle shape (by tracing a bowl) and the facial features. They added their own sun rays, stars (ELEVEN), and detailing with black permanent markers and added color with pastels and crayons. Like many projects that I do, this would probably be more successful with older students but as usual, many of them still"got it" and produced some really neat pieces.

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While I was preparing examples at home, my 11-year old daughter commented "but imma, you know some people say it is 'assur' to draw the sun, moon, and stars because it is avodah zara." Turns out that is actually true but thankfully, most say that for educational purposes it is fine and, well, in general, prohibitions of this sort are not typically considered relevant today. Here's to hoping I don't get a phone call from the school's Rav....

SHABBAT SHALOM!