Ari Answers Reflection Questions

     When discussing issues of hunger, we often use these biblical sources to cite our tradition’s concern for fighting hunger. However, we no longer live in an agricultural society, and the laws of reaping and tithing no longer apply. How do we make these texts relevant today? What can we do in our modern lives to realize the principles that underlie these laws?

     Today, we give food or money directly or indirectly (through charities) to the poor and needy.

     The Torah recognizes certain categories of people who are particularly vulnerable: the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, the widow, etc. What categories of people today require special assistance and our focused attention? Why?

     The disabled, veterans, and orphans all need special care because they have problems that most people don’t encounter.

     Explain the tension between Deuteronomy chapter 15 verses 4 and 11, found in the same chapter in Deuteronomy.

     One says that there will always be needy so you should always give them things. The other one says that there will never be needy. although this seems misleading, it makes sense. There will always be needy, but if we always give them things, they will never be needy, so there won’t be needy.

     

If we accept an obligation to care for the needy in our society, does that mean that we have to do it without regret for our own financial loss? Do you personally feel that you are able to give without regret or hesitation?

I feel that it is easier to give away things that you aren’t personally attached to. It is also easier to give away things that you don’t need.

Final Sukkah Reflection Ari

I am very proud of making sure that the sukkah was feasible. I am also very proud of making sure that the sukkah will stand. A lot of the ideas that came were good but had to be refined a lot to work.

Edublogs where very challenging because I had to write a lot where there wasn’t much to write about. Edublogs also took a lot of time away from building the sukkah. We had 2 months and 7 classes a week to finish. we ad to borrow tine from other classes but we still only barely finished on time.

One thing that I would change is to not spent time doing pointless things like making a material list 4 times without anything changing. We also multiple times had to spend multiple classes or even weeks researching a topic to figure out if it is possible when we could have figured that out with just the information that we already had.

Reflection of Mid Quarter

I would rate my effort at 3. I worked on whatever the assignment was. I tried to make my groups prototype the best. Sometimes I got a little of track.

I would rate my achievement as a 3. I got all tasks done on time. I made a good prototype, and helped with the group prototype. I tried ti get a lot of things done.

However, as a team, I would rate our achievement as a 1. We spent way to much time blogging, so we had little time to work. We made good use of our prototyping time, but we haven’t started building yet. We split up into many groups for finding supplies, but each group looked for the same stuff, which is very inefficient. We have very little time and we haven’t started building.

 

Reflection on על שלושה דברים

The Torah is all about being kind to each other, that is what it teaches. However, there are ways to be kind other than the ways that the Torah suggests. So I think think that it is more important to be kind to than to follow the Torah. The Torah is just a book if you don’t study it. These three values all seem to be very similar. There aren’t very many differences between them.

 

 

Ari’s First Blog Post

I want to learn how to build a Sukkah from scratch.

I want to have fun in classes.

Last year, I had “hard fun” when Rabbi Stiegman was taking over many of our projects.

Our achievement was affected by Rabbi Stiegman’s cratiqueiness.  This caused problems.