Friday, June 2, 2017

Loaves and Lambs on Shavuos Night

This year I gave my second-annual presentation "Loaves and Lambs" at Cong. Darchei Tzedek on the first night of Shavuos. This class is a virtual walkthrough of the sacrificial service performed in the Temple on Shavuos. It covers the Mussaf offerings, the Shtei Halechem (two loaves of wheat flour brought on Shavuos), and the offerings which accompany the Shtei Halechem.


To encourage attendance by the younger masmidim the class was scheduled in the earlier part of the night, from 1-2 am. Since I don't have a yom tov-compliant projector just yet, I brought a number of visual aids to make the material more engaging. In addition to refurbishing my Lego Altar model, I printed a large format floorplan of the Temple and some colorful charts (shown below) illustrating the various animals and ingredients used during the service.




I also brought a life-size model of one loaf of the Shtei Halechem. It is made of painted foam and is durable enough to be passed around the crowd for closer examination.

Model of a Shtei Halechem loaf, shown with Lego minifigure for scale

This year I added another yom tov-friendly interactive item: a scoreboard to keep track of how many jobs were assigned throughout the service on Shavuos. At final count the "score" was well over 600!

The presentation really gave everyone a better idea of just what happened on this very busy morning of the year. In closing I felt it appropriate to repeat (for the fiftieth time) the familiar phrase:

הרחמן הוא יחזיר לנו עבודת בית המקדש למקומה במהירה בימינו

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