This picture I took today at NewCaje; shows Rabbi Michael Shire, Dean of the Shoolman Graduate School of Jewish Education at Boston Hebrew College, telling the story of the Babylonian Exile, in a soft voice, using small items--blue yarn to represent rivers, lines drawn in the sand to represent the temple, small non-gendered identical wooden figures to represent people. A chain enters the story when he says: "The people were in exile, they could not return home." He's among those adapting Holy Play, an approach to spiritual development created by Christian educators, to Jewish settings.There are then open-ended, non-dogmatic questions are asked of the children as the story is very slowly and softly told using resources from a non-profit dedicated to creating portable and classroom tools for this work. The questions are:

I wonder which part of this story you like best?
I wonder which part of the story is the most important part?
I wonder where you are in this story?" or "I wonder what part of this story is about you?"
I wonder what part of this story you will take home?

Jerome W. Berryman seems to be the originator of concepts prior to their use in Jewish settings, where now the amazing author Rabbi Sandi Sasso is working on new scripts for Jewish contexts. We learned that there are already synagogues with dedicated Torah Holy Play classrooms. There's a great deal more to the program than the storytelling component--including a special approach to welcoming students and ending class, an arts section for illustrating the story in any way the child chooses, and at least one community, Temple Isaiah Religious School, adds components of snacks, music and song, and Aleph Bet Yoga. For some communities this is the entire religious school program for young children.

Fascinating. A two-day training is available to come to your community. Inquiries.