Conference Countdown

Excited about the Torah Home Education Conference?  Tell the whole world!  Grab the code and post this countdown clock on your Jewish homeschooling blog:

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My Conference Presentation from 2012

Baruch Hashem, I had the opportunity to attend the Torah Home Education Conference last year both as a participant and as a speaker.  The title of my presentation was, "Homeschooling the Middle Years: Bar/Bat Mitzvah and Beyond."

Have you ever wondered about Jewish homeschooling with the 10 and up crowd?  Please enjoy this video presentation given by yours truly, owner and blogger of Sustainable Jewish Schooling.  The question and answer period is a little hard to follow because the microphone did not pick up the questions.  But I repeated each one for the video before answering it.  Enjoy!

 

The views and opinions expressed in these videos are for educational purposes only and are solely those of the presenter; they do no necessarily represent the views of Sustainable Jewish Schooling or the Torah Home Education Conference.
 

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Videos From Last Year's Torah Home Ed Conference

The Fifth Annual Torah Home Education Conference is fast-approaching.  In order to give you an idea of what is in store for you from our talented presenters, I have been given the opportunity to share some of the video presentations from last year's conference.  This clip features Mrs. Susan Lapin - veteran home educator, Jewish speaker, and columnist.  Mrs. Lapin was our opening presenter and set the stage for a wonderful day of learning, friendship, and chizuk amongst the participants.

This is the first of several videos that will iy'H be posted over the next several days.  Enjoy!*

The views and opinions expressed in these videos are for educational purposes only and are solely those of the presenter; they do no necessarily represent the views of Sustainable Jewish Schooling or the Torah Home Education Conference.

Tour the Matzah Bakery

Crown Heights Matzo Makers Take Handmade to the Extreme for Passover

March 21, 2013 6:55am | By Sonja Sharp, DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

Link to original article

CROWN HEIGHTS — There's handmade — and then there's Pinny.

Faster than a Magic Bullet Blender and stronger than KitchenAid, the muscular Israeli baker spends his months between November and March mixing thousands of pounds of matzo that will grace Passover tables from Melbourne to Mombasa with nothing but his hands.

There is virtually no difference between the small unmarked Crown Heights Shmurah Matzah Bakery on Albany Avenue where Pinny works, and the small unmarked bakeries in western Russia — where matzo is made today the way it was 100 years ago — except for the occasional earbud worn by bakers and the endlessly ringing telephone.

"When you walk into this place, you don't feel like you're in 2013," said Chana Tenenbaum, whose family has owned the bakery since it opened more than 50 years ago. "The way it's baked here is the same way it would have been." 

Matzo is simple stuff — flour, water, fire and a pinch of faith. Jews believe this was the same food the ancient Israelites took with them when they fled bondage in Egypt, and strict rules govern its manufacture to ensure the flatbread hews as closely as possible to its ancestor.

Though the square supermarket matzo most New Yorkers are familiar with is made on ultra-modern machines expertly calibrated to ancient law, many observant families rely on bakeries like the Tenenbaums' for handmade "shmura" matzo, made from wheat that has been guarded for Passover purity from the moment it was harvested until the finished product is sold.  

"There's a few places in Brooklyn that do this — a handful," said Shmaya Haskelewich, who runs the bustling register, where a melange of Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian and English echoes between workers and customers. "It's special. The Rebbe [Chabad-Lubavitch spiritual leader Menachem Mendel Schneerson] baked here."

The long, narrow bakery is the size of a typical railroad apartment. In front, the finished flatbreads are separated for quality (only flawless specimens may be used during the ritual Passover seder), weighed and packaged for pick-up or shipping. Packages of broken matzo are sold at a lower price to be eaten during the rest of the eight-day holiday. 


In a cramped hallway just behind the way station, Pinny waits for the signal that another 18-minute production cycle is about to begin. He steps into a shoulder-wide vestibule whose sole contents are a mirror-shined metal bowl.

A hand appears through a slot in the wall to the left of the bowl, pouring an expertly measured cup of flour. Under the supervision of a rabbi, the baker makes a well in the flour while another hand with a measuring cup of water appears from a slot on the opposite side. The clock starts the moment the water hits the flour.

This is where Pinny's muscles come from — the bowl clangs under the pressure of his hands, moving too fast to see as they churn the two ingredients into a heavy dough. Within seconds, the solid mass is scooped up and transferred to a station in the next room, where another baker forms it into a long cylinder, the ends of which are cut and divided among more than a dozen babushka-clad Bukharian women who roll it into paper-thin rounds.

Using dowels, the matzos are transferred to another station, where two more bakers punch holes  across them to allow steam to escape when they're fired — a process that takes less than a minute in a brick oven so scorching even the bakers don't quite know how hot it is. 

"The whole thing can only take 18 minutes — once it's past 18 minutes, it's chometz [not kosher for Passover]," Haskelewich said. "They do a few rounds in 18 minutes, but once 18 minutes is up, they change everything."

At the end of the cycle, the materials are scrubbed and sanded for any trace of dough. Fresh paper covers the tables. Plastic gloves and aprons are thrown away.

For the last two weeks before the holiday, the whole process goes into overdrive.
"We bake from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.," Tenenbaum said. "We're looking to come into [Passover] and have no matzo left."

 

 

 

Pesach Greetings!

The Maccabeats - Les Misérables - Passover

Pesach Books We Love

Our minhag is to give Jewish books as afikoman presents.  Over the years we have compiled a nice collection and enjoy them year after year.  If you are looking for quality titles, I can highly recommend these books for Pesach reading.  See below the picture for book titles and authors.

The newest one (that I don't yet own) is, If You Give a Frog a Piece of Matzah.  It was written by my friend Rachel Shifra Tal.  She was my first role model of a Jewish homeschooler and is now a wife, mother and author.  Yasher koach to her on her first book!

I make most of my online Jewish purchases at Judaica World.  They have great prices, reliable shipping, and super customer service.  If you don't see the book on their website, call them at 1-888-2-JUDAIC.  Please consider buying from them and supporting a family-owned business.*

• Let My Nation Go by Yosef Deutsch
• Pesach With The Cohen Family by Menucha Fuchs
• The Story of Pesach by Sarah Leon
• Three Special Days by Yaakov Meir Strauss
• Fantastic Foto Hunt Pesach by Judaica Press                                     
• Seder In Herlin by Gershon Kranzler
• If You Give A Frog A Piece of Matzah by Rachel Shifra Tal
• A Touch Of Passover by Ari Sollish
• A Little Girl Named Miriam by Dina Rosenfeld
• The Little Midrash Says Haggada by Rabbi Moshe Weissman
• Ten and A Kid by Sadie Rose Weilerstein
• The Baby in the Basket by C & Z Blaivas
• A Seder Night Miracle by Rabbi Naftali Ehrmann
• Ten Little Rabbis Passover by  David Sokoloff
• On This Night by N. Steiner
• What Do You See On Pesach by Bracha Goetz

*I am not affilliated in any way with Judaica World.  I have not received either payments or goods in exchange for this post.  As with all of the information on this blog, I share my personal opinions and experiences in order to benefit the Jewish Homeschooling Community.

 

Bounce Studios Presents

My son Shalom is very interested in stop-motion animation.  He has spent months perfecting his technique, and even created his own production company - Bounce Studios.  He spent all of today working on filming, editing, and creating the soundtrack.    Homeschooling gives him the time he needs to delve deeply into his interests and bring them to fruition.

Here is the feature presentation, "Bob Builds It Green."  Bob's old roof caves in.  He tries to fix it with no success.  So he makes an eco-friendly decision to build a "green roof."  Let's see how it all turns out...

Study: Homeschool Students Sleep Better

Research supports later start times for high school

http://www.healthcanal.com/life-style-fitness/36803-Study-Homeschool-Students-Sleep-Better.html

DENVER, CO -- In the first study of its kind, researchers have determined that teens who are homeschooled benefit from healthier sleep habits than those who go to most private and public schools. The findings provide additional evidence of teens’ altered biological clocks and support an argument for starting traditional high school later in the morning.

“We have a school system that is set up so that the youngest children, who are awake very early in the morning, start school latest, and our adolescents, who need sleep the most, are being asked to wake up and go to school at a time when their brains should physiologically be asleep,” said Lisa Meltzer, PhD, a sleep psychologist at National Jewish Health in Denver, and lead author of the study.

“Adolescents need nine hours of sleep a night and if they’re only getting seven hours, on average, by the end of the week they are a full ten hours of sleep behind schedule,” said Meltzer, “and that impacts every aspect of functioning.”

Meltzer and her colleagues charted the sleep patterns of 2,612 students, including nearly 500 who are homeschooled. They found that adolescent homeschooled students slept an average of 90 minutes more per night than public and private school students, who were in class an average of 18 minutes before homeschooled children even awoke.

“That cumulative sleep deprivation adds up,” said Meltzer. “The ability to learn, concentrate and pay attention is all diminished when you haven’t had enough sleep. But more than that, a lack of sleep can also impact a teenager’s mood and their ability to drive early in the morning,” she said.

If your teenager needs more sleep, why not just send them to bed earlier? “It’s not that simple,” said Meltzer. Melatonin, the hormone that helps regulate our sleep, shifts by about two hours during puberty. So, even if they wanted to get to sleep earlier, teenagers are battling biological changes in their bodies that are nearly impossible to overcome.

“It’s not that they don’t want to go to bed, but physiologically they simply can’t fall asleep earlier. So, the logical solution is to allow them to sleep later,” said Meltzer.

Fifteen-year-old Caelin Jones couldn’t agree more. Jones, who lives in Denver, says he sets his alarm every morning for six o’clock to get to school on time, though he never quite felt fully awake until several hours later.

“Most days I would get to school and pretty much be the same as all the other kids. We were all just bleary-eyed and wondering why we had to be here at this time,” he said.

Jones’ sleep problems became so consuming that he sought sleep counseling through Dr. Meltzer at National Jewish Health. “It’s made a big difference for me,” said Jones, who has learned habits to help him wind down at night.  

The study concluded that more than half (55%) of teens who were homeschooled got the optimal amount of sleep per week, compared to just 24.5% of those who attend public and private schools. Conversely, 44.5% of public and private school teens got insufficient sleep during the school week, compared to only 16.3% of homeschooled teens.

The differences are stark,” said Meltzer. “Across the country, public and private schools that have changed their high school start times see considerable benefits. Students are tardy less often and graduation rates are actually higher,” she said.

While you may not be able to change teenagers’ biology, you can help them develop healthier sleeping habits. Meltzer offers this advice:

• Get all electronics out of the bedroom. TVs, computers, video games and phones are major distractions for teens and often delay sleep.
• Don’t look at any screens 30-60 minutes before bed time. Though turning off media is as simple as flipping a switch, the human brain does not work the same way. Being stimulated by media just before bed can make the brain too active to sleep.
• Set up family charging stations where mom, dad and the kids plug in their phones at night so they are out of reach. 
• Most importantly, set a consistent routine. Go to bed and get up at the same time every day, even on weekends. This one habit can help regulate your body’s internal clock and improve the quality of sleep you get.

National Jewish Health is known worldwide for treatment of patients with respiratory, cardiac, immune and related disorders, and for groundbreaking medical research. Founded in 1899 as a nonprofit hospital, National Jewish Health remains the only facility in the world dedicated exclusively to these disorders. U.S.News & World Report has ranked National Jewish Health the number one respiratory hospital in the nation for 15 consecutive years.