The CHAT-RH Student Haggadah Project
Available online @
http://www.chatrh.org/haggadah/
CHAT-RH Haggadah Project Objectives:
During the first term of this school year, educators of the CHAT-RH Talmud department met and decided to initiate a project to encourage students to help compile a booklet of divrei Torah for the holiday of Pesach. This, like many independent student projects, would offer a number of opportunities to motivate student educational growth, including - promote student autonomy to foster growth from teacher dependency to self direction, help students develop skills and attitudes necessary for academic study, and learn how to gather information from different sources and report it. Because of the nature of the material, it would also promote student use of computer internet sources in the study of Jewish holidays and traditions.
The project was presented to students as an optional assignment, though there was some grade incentive attached to submitted work that would be accepted for inclusion in the booklet (along the lines of “ki mitziun - grade - tetze Torah”). Besides the educational goals, we also felt that if successful, this project could additionally create a sense of bonding of mission between the school, (specifically the Judaic Studies classes of the school which are integral to the school’s mission,) and the parent body which would “shep nachas” from the work of their children and our students. It could also serve as a positive vehicle for school publicity etc.
Specific Issues:
Because this project was planned and coordinated by a number of our educators in the Talmud department, there was basic uniformity regarding how the project would proceed. The actual sections of the Haggadah, were pre-divided among classes and grades in order to ensure as much as possible that there would be submissions for the “entire” Haggadah. Students submitted their initial draft writing to their own teacher who reviewed the material for suitability. We found that student submissions fell into basically two different categories: the traditional dvar torah that used earlier primary and secondary sources, and the student who formulated his/her own feelings about the Haggadah. The latter were often not as deep, but were perhaps more original in thinking. Students were required to submit their sources.
The use of Hebrew in this project was one of our major staff discussions on this project, as CHAT has prided itself on ensuring that the vast majority of our Judaic studies courses are taught in Ivrit. And while this is systemic to the entire school, the Talmud department has always ensured that this remains an important part of our classroom study of Gemara. Yet, there were two practical reasons that swayed the thinking to use the English language. One, we wanted to produce a booklet for parents and the school’s wider family. A very large segment of this target audience would not find a Hebrew compendium for Pesach useful at all. Also, Hebrew typing presents a whole number of new challenges for students, both from the practicality that most students do not have the skills to type Hebrew, and also many students do not have Hebrew language capabilities on their home computers.
After the draft material was returned to the student and changes made, the corrected material was then resubmitted to the teacher. The pieces were then subjected to a proofreading and editing process, first by one of our teachers and then by our campus Principal who spent quite a bit of time reviewing and editing individual student pieces.
The web files were set up on a Windows 2000 Pro platform using FrontPage XP (2002). A number of files were adapted and reformatted from Word files and are probably therefore incorporating some Word Unicode fonts. The compatibility of Hebrew remains a problem for the Mac platform and older browsers (specifically Netscape) and older PC platforms. I had toyed with the idea of converting all the files to Adobe Acrobat (pdf) files which would embed the Hebrew fonts into the articles, but it would make the site too cumbersome and slow to access easily.
At any rate, by Rosh Chodesh Nisan (- what a convenient marker -) we had collected and organized about 35 pieces of work, of varying degrees of sophistication. We printed them as a booklet and distributed it to the entire student body before the school Passover break.
Ko’ach Hachiddush:
In truth, this type of project is not something new. But it is our students and staff, who put a lot of effort into it, and so we are quite proud. But we also added a new twist, a web edition as well. Besides the written document which is an important part of this exercise, I have formulated the documents into our own “Online Haggadah.” It is located @ http://www.chatrh.org/haggadah . The advantage of this “web-haggadah” is twofold. First of all, individuals who are far from the source, such as many of you, can now actually see what we have done. Secondly, it serves as a ready and available source for use. We were also able to add certain features to the site which the booklet did not contain, including sound files, animated gifs, and Haggadah Hebrew and English texts. In addition because of the way the web works through linked pages, it makes for a different reading experience. We also put on it such niceties as a link to our school webpage and pictures of staff who worked on the project. (Let’s see if you can find them.) It is also easily updatable and adaptable, and can list the same student file twice under two separate sections if the dvar torah applies to multiple locations in the Haggadah.
We have received very positive feedback from our parents and lay leadership. We hope you will take the opportunity to visit our site and send us your comments through the site email link. We look forward to hearing from you. Enjoy, and best wishes for a happy Passover.
Rabbi Moshe J. Yeres Ph.D.
Head
Talmud/Rabbinics
Edline Site Administrator
Community Hebrew
Academy of Toronto
CHAT -
Richmond Hill
Campus