Nathan's Blog

How does life change once you reach the age of a Bar/Bat Mitzvah?

It shows the transition from childhood to adulthood because once you have your Bar/Bat Mitzvah you are considered and have all the responsibilities of an adult. Some of these responsibilities are, “become responsible for your actions”, “honor your father and mother”,”do not take revenge on others”,”do not shame others”, and “do not talk bad about others”.

Why are the Tallit and Tefillin important?

A Tefillin are two square black leather boxes that have leather straps attached to them. The two boxes represent the way that we serve g-d. The box we put on our head represents our thoughts towards g-d. The one on our arm represents our actions toward g-d. The Tallit is a Jewish prayer shawl worn by men who wore it everyday after the destruction of the 2nd temple. They vary in importance, size, and color.

Picture of Tallit

What did you find interesting?

I did not find much interest from this research because I sort of knew what half of this stuff was like a Bar/Bat Mitzvah and a Teffilin. I also do not think there is much to research because a lot of these items serve the basic purposes for praying and holiness.

What questions do you still have?

I do not really have any questions. I think through this research I answered all the questions and confusion I had.

Here are some images

 

Teffilin

Bar/Bat Mitzvah speeches

Today I would like to share my opinions with you about my 3 Mitzvot. I will list my 3 Mitzvot and explain what I feel about them.

 

1. Liviticus 19:27

This Mitzvot says how Jews should not cut the hair off the sides of our heads. This is because in different religions cutting hair off the sides of your head distinguishes other religions belief and love for their God. So God decided to make this commandement/Mitzvah to make sure other Jews do not imitate their acts.

In my opinion I feel like this mitzvah is something I could work on but currently I am experimenting with different hairstyles and it feels like during this current time period it would not be possible. I also feel like a lot of different Jews struggle with keeping a hairstyle like that and also break the commandment but as we age I feel like hair will become less important so I would probably just leave hair on the side of my head.

 

2. Exodus 23:12

This Mitzvah commands all living creatures to have rest on the seventh day of every week. This is because God wants us to imitate his act of creating the world on the seventh day. After creating the world god rested so on the seventh day of working he wants everything to rest.

I feel like most people with jobs could agree that they would have important things to have completed by a Monday or had an extra day to complete work that was due on a Saturday. This rest would implicate that Jews would not be able to work on Sundays which would mean getting work done late which could cause issues with their jobs.

 

3. Liviticus 11:4

This Mitzvah commands Jews to not eat non-kosher animals. The reason we can’t eat non-kosher animals is because kosher animals pass certain restrictions given by God.  1. The animals don’t have a special digestive system, like a cow, sheep, goat, or a deer.  2. The animals must have split hooves, like sheep, goat, or cow.

I feel like I also need to work on this but I also think for many Jews they have dietary restrictions which will not allow them to eat some kosher animals. Also you can still be a holy Jew without being kosher. Many reformed rabbis do not eat kosher as well.

 

Conclusion

Overall I think that following these rules are very important but for some people it just is not possible. Like me personally I think that having to rest on Sunday is a bit of an overstep because even I would have work due on Monday which was assigned on Friday.

Hello, my name is Nathan and today I will be telling you about…. My Innovation day project!

When this project was announced I had mixed feelings about everything.  Innovation day sounded a bit concerning because this is my first year in middle school and from my brother’s perspective I was expecting a big switch in how much harder it would be compared to grade 5. But in the midst of all that I guess it was a little exciting, mainly because I was partnered with one of my good friends, Aviv. So as we started it was surprisingly easy because we only needed to write around 2 paragraphs of information about electricity which we tackled down very fast. But then the difficult part came along, the project building. Me and Aviv decided to add a little more information to make it better. As we assembled our Canva to print our information I got sick and was gone for 2 weeks. Luckily Aviv is very good with wires so he finished the game which was based on Don’t touch the wire.

After finishing the game Aviv added some editing to our slides we were going to print. When I came back we started to build our board which Aviv bought, as it was assembled we were starting to realize some minimal grammatical errors but it was too late. We started to glue everything onto our board and soon enough it was finished. But we had only 1 day left, not including the weekend to finish everything. On our final day of working in school we glued on our final piece of information and the board was finished. But we had forgotten the main thing that would put our masterpiece together, our script. Luckily over the weekends I finished everything off along with our cue cards and we had presented well.

I think the main issue with our presentation was game design. We also had a few embarrassing errors in our information but everything went well. With just a few minutes to practice our script it was surprisingly good. I feel like I could’ve worked while I was sick. We could have guaranteed everything on time with almost no stress if I chose to work while I was away. Next year if I work with someone I will make sure to not procrastinate or give them unnecessary stress. But I feel like I learned for the better.

 

This is my partner but unfortunately I was not in the photo.

                            Bar mitzvah en Floride.

Quand j’ai eu 6 ans , mon frère a été invité dans une Bar Mitsvah en Floride. Quand on est arrivé en Floride, on a passé plusieurs jours dans l’hôtel. On est allé à la plage et on a nagé avec des amis. Pendant la Bar Mitsvah, celui qui a fait sa Bar Mitsvah nous a demandé de venir dans la salle pour manger du gâteau. Après la fête, mon frère et son ami Gabe sont descendus dans un garage. On a joué le jeu de cache-cache dans le garage jusqu’à ce que l’agent de sécurité soit venu nous arrêter.  Après, on est rentré avec mon copain, Gabe. Nous avons chanté des chansons dans la voiture. J’ai beaucoup aimé la Bar Mitsvah. On a eu beaucoup de fun ensemble avec la famille et les amis. 

Hi my name is Nathan and today I will be telling you about my Mishpacha project. This project is about family history, basically I need to ask family members like my mom, grandma, grandpa, and uncle about our family history. There are a bunch of questions about my family history, for example one of them is “Has any of your family members visited their country of origin?” Basically for this project I interviewed my grandma, grandpa, and mom. I did not really find much about it interesting, but I did think it was a little cool to find out some information about my family history. I learned that my grandpa worked at the JCC. I did not know that my mom was bullied in SRB because she did not know English. I also learned that my family did not want to move to Canada but they actually wanted to move to America. I did have really bad design in my project when I made it though. I think I 100% could have made a better presentation.

 

 

 

 

                           Learning skills.

I want to get better at focusing and try not to procrastinate.

Working harder, along with not having another person to help me with questions while doing a project majority of the time.

I find my goals to be more than realistic if I stay on track. I could do group projects alone to help me with procrastination and finishing work early.

This goal is very helpful. Not only does this goal help me with future jobs , because I would be able to focus on bringing work on time, I would not be stressed because I would not have a mountain of work to complete.

I am unsure when I will complete my goal but I will check in with my teachers. hopefully by the end of the year.

 

                                 French, Rabbinics.

I think I need to improve my grammar and understanding of  different skills like the passe compose and Sefaria.

I want to achieve an understanding of the overall language, structure and topics that come with it.

Studying at home, focusing in class and asking questions more frequently. Being able to complete and answer every question and worksheets that are given to me.

This goal is realistic as long as I’m focused. I would need help from the following: Mr.P, Moreh David, Madam Wonda, Mr.Wash and Morah Jaqui.

This goal is going to help me get into prestigious universities such as McGill. This goal will also make school and trips easier and more fun.

Hopefully for Rabbinics, the end of the year. And for French I would like to achieve it by the end of Grade 8. Over 80 percent for both of these classes would be an excellent start.

 

My goals were to learn more Hebrew words and the way I wanted to achieve this was by making more Hebrew projects and finishing cheat sheets. I think I also could have added word walls.

 

For my French verbs I said that I needed to ask my French teachers for help. I wrote Marie Jose or Madam Sylvie. I guess now Monsieur Daniel. I also could have added a Bescherell.

 

My progress.

 

So far when it comes to Hebrew, I have done a few more projects and I have learned more. I am a little confused about cheat sheets, don’t remember them. I think I could have used these cheat sheets for when i was struggling during a quiz which could have helped me permanently remember them.

 

For French verbs I think I have forgotten a little bit but I do have a quiz based on French verbs coming up soon. We have done some practice with french verbs but I think we are doing them based on the verbs we learned during this year.

Hi my name is Nathan and today I will be reflecting on my public speech about AI I did yesterday. I will talk about the bad and good, what I like about others speech and what i could have done to improve.

The bad.

I think I messed up a lot on the intro when I was creating the speech but I was sort of able to create a new intro as I went along, so it wasn’t horrible but it definitely wasn’t amazing. The average essay time was expected to be 3 mins but mine was about 40 seconds off, not that good.

The good.

I think I didn’t do bad topic wise and I had a nice outro “You probably thought this essay was AI generated from how good it is right” sounds a bit corny when I think of it now.

What I need to improve.

I think I could’ve used more complex words and I was speaking way too fast, I don’t know if I was nervous or something but it felt very unprofessional. I might be overreacting but I’m not sure.

What I liked about others speeches.

I really like Bernie’s. He was talking about germs and the immune system and I think it was over 700 words long. He was not nervous at all. Not a single voice crack or anything. And he spoke in depth of how germs attack the immune system and how the white blood cells fight back.

I also really liked Ethan’s. He was able to explain how animals attack in a very complex and deeply thought way. Even cracking jokes every now and then. Lots of personality was used during the jokes and the intro was amazing.

 

Hi my name is Nathan and today I will be talking about the peace agreement between Jacob and laban. Although we don’t exactly know what they agreed upon I will try to figure it out!

To start off we know that laban chased Jacob until Jacob decided to stop and agree about something known as the peace agreement. We know they probably had some sort of terms between each other or else they most likely wouldn’t have agreed. I think because Laban wants to make more money and be blessed for longer his terms were most likely about free labour. I think Laban would have said something about if he works for a few more years he will let him go, but Jacob would have probably argued about his rights. So I think that Jacob would have agreed if he could take his family with him after only a few more months of labour. I think they probably agreed to this and even if Laban tries to stop him again after the time is up, Jacob will probably bring up their agreement.

But don’t forget the rocks were witnesses.