“What’s a SHOFAR again…?”

Written by: Cleveland

Age Group: Taf (1-3 grades)

“What’s a SHOFAR again…?”

Story: The fireman

Many years ago, every town had a tower in which sat a guard that alarmed all of the citizens when a fire broke out. When people heard the trumpet they immediately ran to the river and filled up buckets

of water to extinguish the fire.

Once upon a time a foreign young man visited one of those towns. Suddenly he had heard a trumpet. The young man did not understand what has going on around him. The town’s citizens explained to

him: when a fire brakes out, the guard blows the trumpet. This way everybody knows

 there is a fire and they run to extinguish it.

The young man liked that idea very much and decided to import it to his hometown. What did he do? He set  one of his town’s roof on fire. The fire spread quickly from one roof to the other. He stood and blew the trumpet loudly in order to try and stop the fire. But the fire did not go off and all the houses were burned to the ground.

The town people got very mad at him and told him: don’t you understand that the trumpet does not     extinguish fire. It is only a signal, a sing that awakens the people so that thay will get up and put off the fire.

Explanation: This story is a parable for blowing the shofar. We need to understand that hearing the shofar is insagnificant. The shofar is only a sing that we are to make up, we are to go over our dids in order to correct the bad ones.

Snake quiz

Goal: knowing basic concepts about the shofar      

board divided to numbers. The group splits in two-three small teams. Each team gets its own pawn. The Madrich/a will get the questions written on cards. Each team will choose a representative (this will be a competition so it is better to notify the kids about it, so they could choose the fastest chanich as their representative), his job is to run and deliver the questions to his team each time. The three representatives will get the first question at the same time and run to their team. Together the team will try to find out what is the answer, and when they come to conclusion, the runner will run as fast as he can, and whisper the answer to the madrich/a. If the answer is correct the madrich/a will give him the next question and will move the pawn one spot ahead.

The first team that will reach to the end of the snake will be the        

WINNER.

QUESTIONS (Recommended: add your-own)

1. Its job is to remind us to do "Tshuva” – “Shofar”

2. When do we begin blowing the “Shofar” – “Rosh Chodesh Elul”

3. The three kinds of the shofar blowing – “tekia”, “shvarim” , terua”

4. Name another special day when we blow the shofar – “Yom Kipur”.

5. How many blows do we hear in one day of “Rosh Hashana” – 100

6.  What is the written text in the “Torah” from where we learn about the “Shofar” – “Akedat Izchak”

7. In “Chodesh Elul”, in which day we will not blow the Shofar – Rosh Hashana eve.

8. What material is The Shofar made of – Ram’s horn.