Ahavat Tzion — A Place We Love

Ask who has ever wanted something for a really long time. Collect answers without hurrying. Then say: our people wanted one thing for two thousand years, and said it out loud at the end of every single Passover meal.

Children wonder and discover; you facilitate more than you lecture.

• Can you love a place you have never been?
• What do people do while they are waiting for something?
• What is worth hoping for a long time?

Ahavat Tzion means love of Zion. This year names a middah in every unit, and this is the one that is hardest to see, because you cannot practise it on the person next to you. The way in for a six-year-old is not geography, it is WAITING — they know what it is to want something and not have it yet. “Next year in Jerusalem,” said at the end of every seder for centuries by people who could not go, is the most graspable version of a long hope this curriculum has.

• Ahavat Tzion — love of Zion
• Yerushalayim — Jerusalem
• Tikvah — hope

“Why didn't they just go?”

Mostly because they could not — it was too far, too expensive, or they were not allowed. That is why saying it every year mattered so much.

• Children can name ahavat tzion as loving a place.
• Children can say that Jews hoped for the same thing for a very long time.
• Children can name something they are hoping for.

Keep this on hoping and belonging, not on politics. If a child raises something they have heard at home, take it seriously, say it is a real question, and tell them the older children work on it — then follow up with the education director.

Folktale. The Lost Princess (Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav) — a servant searches for years and never gives up looking.

Changemaker. Theodor Herzl — hoped so stubbornly for something that did not exist that he wrote a whole book describing it, and said that if you will it, it is no dream.

I wonder how you keep hoping for something for a very long time?

“We talked about ahavat tzion — loving a place — and about hoping for something for a long time. Try at home: ask your child what they are hoping for.”