Shalom LeKulam!

I trust this blog post finds you all safe and well.

I am doing just fine, Baruch H', no complaints. The new baby, Ori Avraham, is growing well thank G-d and if he would only sleep just a little more often, then things would be even better. All of his siblings seem to have accepted Ori quite well and despite our worries about how our daughter, Adi, who is almost 2 years old would manage to handle a younger brother at her age, things are going well.  The truth is that Adi seems to have come to terms with the change much better than we could have hoped and has only bitten him twice so farJ.

 Things continue to go well in the Ulpan here in Tel Aviv, and we have seen a rapid growth in on-line courses. People are less likely to visit Israel at this time of year and so we thought that it may be a good thing to iadvertise to increase awareness of the availability of our on-line courses.  This approach appears to have worked well.  I am teaching 7 students on-line these days and I must say that I enjoy every minute of it.  In recent times I had very litttle time to teach. Most of my time was invested in managing, training new teachers, supervision, etc. If I ever needed to focus even more time on things involved around running and managing the Ulpan, I don’t think that I could ever stop teaching completely.  It is so refreshing and energizing…

I was asked more than once this week about the best way of retaining vocabulary. "What is the best way for me to learn the new words?" everyone asks.  Well friends,  let me let you in to a little secret that the Torah has been telling us about for the past 5000 years.  In the "Shema" we commit ourselves to teach and educate our children to follow the rules of the Torah, keep the faith in HaShaem, etc. This command is given as follows:

"ושננתם לבניך"

VESHINANTAM LEVANECHA

"memorize this to your sons"

The Hebrew language gives us the missing piece. The word:

"ושננתם"

VESHINANTAM

which talks about memorizing.  If you notice this word has the same root as the word:

שיניים

SHINAYIM

teeth

Memorizing is best done by “using your teeth”, eg., speaking, or saying out loud the thing that you wish to memorize. I trust (actually, I know) that this is the best way for any student to retain all the vocabulary he/she is trying to learn.

So, off you go to your list of new words…J (Maybe warn the neighbours first so they know that you haven’t comletely lost it!!!!)

Wishing you all Shabbat Shalom and warm wishes!

Gil Pentzak

Ulpan Aviv- Director