Jewish Calendar | שלח את עמי

A variety of lesson plans and activities available below. You can teach one lesson or teach a learning unit using our recommendations.

There are different lessons in Hebrew and in English, due to different material available (books, videos etc). The Hebrew lessons are available HERE

Home-made miracles of Hanukkah

Former prisoner of Zion Yosef Begun, reflects on the holiday, past and present: in Soviet Prison, on his exile to Siberia years later, and f

Film screening & discussion – Operation Wedding documentary

Leningrad, 1970. A group of young Soviet Jews who were denied exit visas, plots to “hijack” an empty plane and escape the USSR.

1948: The Need For A Jewish State

when Golda Meir arrived to Moscow in Rosh Hashana 1948, a groundbreaking unexpected event occurred...

Slideshow and writing exercise: Jewish holidays behind the Iron Curtain

there was a real danger in celebrating Jewish holidays - many were arrested without actual crime, and sent to the Gulag under the false accu

The death of Stalin in Purim 1953, compared to Haman

What similarities can you draw between the Purim story from of the Book of Esther and Stalin’s Jews persecution, which ended with his death?

Purim Musical Play: THE STORY OF ESTHER

The events of this musical belong to history. It is a very recent history, yet it happened in a world that is gone.

Next Year In... Moscow ? - The Red Haggadah

A special Haggadah was written and distributed in the USSR in which the cry for revolution, not Jerusalem, was was brought to the table.

Sharansky's matzah in Soviet Solitary confinement

The Haggadah's words were felt as KGB agents surrounded them. Later he would "celebrate" Passover in the Gulag.

Sing in Hebrew, “Blue and White are the colors of my land"

A music lesson: sing in Hebrew (beginner), and discuss the lyrics meaning and source.

[Tisha B’Av] Hebrew poetry & song (adv): Won’t you ask after, O Zion, the weal of your captive?

Associated with the tragedy of Tisha B’Av — the long Jewish exile — and its grand Zionist “correction” with the emergence of the State of Is