Mitzvot — Commandments
Yitro (A Big Day at Sinai) • Shavuot • In God’s Hands
Read In God’s Hands; make a class ‘mitzvah tree’ of good deeds.
Children wonder and discover; you facilitate more than you lecture.
- What are mitzvot?
- How can we practice mitzvot?
- What impact do mitzvot have on our lives?
Mitzvot are commandments — Jewish ways of doing good in the world. At Sinai (Shavuot) we received the Torah and its mitzvot. In God’s Hands shows how our hands can do God’s work.
- Mitzvah / Mitzvot — commandment(s)
- Torah — teachings
- Sinai — the mountain
- “How many mitzvot are there?”
- Tradition counts 613! We can start with a few — kindness, sharing, welcoming.
- Children understand mitzvot as Jewish ways of doing good.
- Children name mitzvot they can do.
Celebrate every child’s mitzvot equally; small acts count fully.
Folktale. Hillel on One Foot (Talmudic) — ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to another’ — the whole Torah in one sentence.
Changemaker. Maimonides (Rambam) — a wise doctor and teacher who organized all the mitzvot so people could live them.
What would you do to turn one mitzvah into a habit?
“We learned about mitzvot. Try at home: add a leaf to a family ‘mitzvah tree’ each time someone does a good deed.”