Vayigash - Yehuda's Journey - פרשת ויגש - המסע של יהודה

To show the kids that everyone is able to change themselves and their behaviour. To teach the kids the story of Yosef and his brothers, focusing on Yehuda’s teshuva and change.

Twister with a Twist:

Kids will get into partners as they walk into the room. There will be a massive twister board on the floor. One person from each pair will stand on the outside of the board and the other person will sit opposite them. The mad at the front will explain the rules.

Rules:

1.      The kid standing is the body and the kid sitting is the brain. The kid sitting makes all the decisions and the body does whatever the brain tells it

2.      The mad will ask a question that will have 2 possible responses. The brain needs to decide which response they want to give, depending on what they decide will determine where the body places their body part. For example: ‘Would you rather ride on a train or a boat? If you would rather ride on a train put your right hand on red, if you would rather ride on boat put your left foot on green’

3.      When the mad yells ‘freeze’ both the body and the brain must freeze immediately, if you do not freeze you are out. There will be a few of these throughout the game so listen up!

The mad should yell freeze a few times throughout the game to maintain order and keep the kids listening. At the end of the game the mad should yell freeze and then divide the kids into groups depending on where certain parts of their body are. For example: ‘If your right hand is on red you are in the red team – go to Jezza now!’ (list of questions and resulting teams will be provided)

Yehuda’s Journey:

The whole tochnit is looking at the inner journey that Yehuda takes from the time he leaves Yosef in the pit, to the time he is told by the Viceroy of Pharoah (Yosef, but he doesn’t know) to leave one of his brothers behind in Egypt. The play at the beginning will start off the story and the play at the end will finish off the story. The middle part of the story is the station rotation.

Each team will be given the first part of the story just before they leave on their journey (Mads will be given the whole story and the order of locations for their team). At each location kids will be read the part of the story that they are up to. 2 teams will arrive at most of the activities at the same time, the games will be one team verses another team.

They will do the activity and then the mad will read them the next part of their story making it seem like that is only happening as a result of whether they won or lost the activity, really the result in the story will be the same no matter what. The kids shouldn’t know this!

At some points in the story you need to send kids places or come up with things as a team. Be aware of these and read the story so you know when it is going to happen. For example – A story for Yaakov and Reuven’s challenge

 Each group will be taken around the stations. Kids will move from place to place and the stations are moving as well. Each group will be doing the same activity at all times just in different places.

Stations -

Station 1: (2 teams)

Prison game - Advanced duck duck goose -  where if you catch the person who you chase, he becomes your prisoner, but if you don’t catch them, you are their prisoner.

Station 2: (2 teams)

Scissors paper rock- with people - Like a normal game of scissors paper rock, but the team needs to decide which object they are going to be and then they need to form this position together with their bodies, after the mad says ‘scissors, paper rock’. They will try and beat each other, it will first team to 3 wins!

Station 3: (1 team)

Cup & ping pong ball - Each person in the team holds a cup while the team stands in a line. The person at the front of the line will be given a ping pong ball. The team will need to get the ball from the starting point to the finishing point (probably around 20 metres). Noone is allowed to move their feet and the ball is not allowed to touch the floor or their hands, if it does the ball will need to go back to the beginning!

Station 4: (1 team)

Interactive play – Mads will perform a play for the kids (script will be provided). 1 mad at the station is Yaakov, the other mads have to try and cheer him up and make him laugh, but he doesn’t laugh. The mads can call up one or 2 funny kids to try and make him laugh. The team will only be able to move on when they make him laugh.

Station 5: (2 teams)

Human checkers – 8 people from each team will be the pieces. They will need to stand on the checkers board. The other 2 people from each team are the players, they will direct the pieces of where to go.

It is a normal game of checkers between the 2 team.

Reuven’s Challenge:

Reuven arrives at the pit where Yosef was left (each team will send one kid to check the pit – in the story). When the kids arrive at the pit there will be one mad there. This mad will issue these kids with a challenge. If they can do this challenge they will get a reward to take back to their teams.

Challenge – searching for Yosef – hidden around the room will be all the names of the brothers, except Yosef, each kid that comes will have to find all 11 names before they are given their reward. They will only have 60 seconds to do this.

Reward – When you get to the next activity the mads will tell you that you can’t move your feet during the game. With this pass, your team is now allowed to move their feet when they do not have the ball in their cup!

 Yehuda’s Journey - Story: (continued from the play) This is what the kids will get at each station.

1. You regret leave Yosef in the pit. You feel really bad and keep wondering what happened to him. But for now, you have something more important to deal with… What are you going to tell your dad? Should you tell him the truth or make up a story?

 PRISON GAME

You are sick of imagining what is happening to Yosef, it makes you feel sick. You decide that if you tell your father you left him in a pit to die he won’t be very happy with you. You decide to make up a story about what happened to Yosef. What is this story?

As a group think of the story you will tell Yaakov, when you get to the next location tell Yaakov your story, he will decide if your story is more convincing than the other teams. If he is more convinced by your story you will get a huge advantage in the next game!

2. Even though you have fooled your dad, you cannot stop thinking about Yosef, is he alive? Dead? Still in the pit? But what can you do? You left him there a couple of days ago, there’s no way he is still alive in that pit! What should you do about this? Should you send someone to go a check the pit and see if Yosef is still there?

 SCISSORS, PAPER, ROCK

You decide to send Reuven to check if Yosef is still in the pit...

Choose one person from your group to be Reuvan and send him to check the pit where Yosef was left

3.  Reuven comes back and has no idea where Yosef is, you all decide that is probably dead! Eaten by a wild animal or something ... You are now really sad, you can’t eat, you can’t sleep and most of all you cannot believe what you have done... All of your brothers are blaming each other for what happened, they are arguing with each other all the time. You can see that this isn’t good for your family. What can you do to bring your family back together? Also, there is a famine in Canaan, you are running out of food. Everyone is looking at you for a solution... What are you going to do?

 CUP & PING PONG BALL GAME

You decide that first of all you need to show the family the importance of working together. You all go out and find the last remaining food. Then you decide that you must take your brothers to Egypt to try and find more food.

4.  But before you leave, there is something you must all do. Yaakov, your dad is still really depressed because of the death of Yosef, you decide that you need to try and cheer him. How are you going to do this?

 INTERACTIVE PLAY

Sadly, despite what you tried, your dad does not cheer up! But you cannot spend any more time trying to cheer him up. There is no food left. You decide its time to leave. You take most of your brothers and start the journey to Egypt.

5. On the way you are attacked by desert pirates/bandits, the bandits say, ‘give us all your money or we will take one of you as a slave’.. You are so scared, you don’t know what to do. Should you just give them one of your brothers? You’ll probably need this money to buy food in Egypt. But can you bear to lose another brother?

 HUMAN CHECKERS

You decide to give them all your money instead of leaving a brother behind. You can’t bear the thought of losing another brother. You carry on walking to Egypt.

Sikkum:

Years 2-4 – At the beginning we watched a play with Yosef and his brothers. What did the brothers do to Yosef in that play? Yes, that’s right they left him in a pit, which brother do you think was most responsible for this decision? Yes, that’s right Yehuda.

We then all went on a journey as Yehuda, you all had opportunities to make different decisions in Yehuda’s life. Luckily you all led him to the right place and noone got lost! In the play at the end, Yehuda was in the same position as he was in the play at the beginning. What happened in the play at the end? Yes, that’s right, Yehuda was told that he had to leave one of his brothers behind before he would get any food. And what did he decide? Yes, that’s right, this time he decided he would not leave his brother behind. He changed so much! He was placed in the same position as before and this time, after all he learnt on his journey, he made the right decision.

This is the same in our lives, sometimes we make a bad decision and do something wrong or hurt someones feelings, we feel bad, apologise and promise not to do it again. But the real test comes when we are in the same postion again, do we act the way we did before, do the wrong thing or hurt someones feelings, or do we change? Do we look at the choices in front of us and choose the right behaviour?

Years 5-6 – At the beginning we watched a play with Yosef and his brothers. What did the brothers do to Yosef in that play? Yes, that’s right they left him in a pit, which brother do you think was most responsible for this decision? Yes, that’s right Yehuda.

We then all went on a journey as Yehuda, you all had opportunities to make different decisions in Yehuda’s life. Luckily you all led him to the right place and noone got lost! In the play at the end, Yehuda was in the same position as he was in the play at the beginning. What happened in the play at the end? Yes, that’s right, Yehuda was told that he had to leave one of his brothers behind before he would get any food. And what did he decide? Yes, that’s right, this time he decided he would not leave his brother behind. He changed so much! He was placed in the same position as before and this time, after all he learnt on his journey, he made the right decision.

Has anyone been in a position where they made the wrong decision?

Has anyone been a position where they have hurt someones feelings?

How do we begin to fix these things?

We do Teshuva, but we sometimes think that this just means saying sorry and feeling bad for what we have done. But we are missing the final step.

Does anyone know what the final step is?

Present the Rambam source.

 משנה תורה: הלכות תשובה פרק ב

א  איזו היא תשובה גמורה--זה שבא לידו דבר שעבר בו, ואפשר בידו לעשות, ופירש ולא עשה מפני התשובה, לא מיראה ולא מכשלון כוח. 

What is complete Teshuva? When a person has the opportunity to commit the sin again, and is physically able to sin again, but doesn’t sin- because of his Teshuva, not because of fear or weakness.

This is exactly what happened to Yehuda – what was the first situation when he sinned? Yes, that’s right, when he left Yosef in the pit.

And what was the second situation when he didn’t sin? Yes, that’s right, when Yosef asked him to leave Shimon behind.

As we can see Yehuda is a great example of how everyone has an opportunity to change their behaviour and change who they are.

Give them a personal example – When I was in year 5 I was playing handball with 3 of my friends, another kid in our year came up to us and asked if he could play with us... we all looked at eachother, my 3 friends looked at me and shrugged, they left the decision up to me... I thought about it, we were playing 4 square and there were 4 of us, so adding another person would mean that one of us would have to be out some of the time, this didn’t really seem that fun to me so I told the kid that we already had 4 people and we didn’t want to add another person. So the kid walked away looking pretty sad.

I felt really bad about what happened when I got home, i couldn’t stop thinking about what the kid might have done for the rest of lunch, did he find someone else to play with or did he just sit on the bench?

I kept thinking about this for about 2 weeks, until, my friend and I were playing penalty shoot outs, one of us was the goalie and the other was the striker. The same boy came up to ask and asked if he could play too, I looked at my friend and he shrugged, once again the decision had been left up to me, this time however, even though it meant that one of us would have to be out for some of the time, I smiled and said that of course he could play with us. The kid smiled and joined in, i couldn’t believe how much better I felt this time...