Parshat Ha-Shavua--the weekly Torah portion, is a vibrant part of each week's Friday tefila service. Teachers introduce the weekly Parsha with story telling and skits. This is the students' foundation introduction to the narrative of the Torah. It is with the telling of Parshat Ha-Shavua each week that students come to know the "family stories" of the Jewish people. When students encounter Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel and Leah, Joseph and his brothers, Moses and Aaron, and G-d, they learn all about who they are and what they do as described in the Torah. They also learn about the values that shape their behavior.

When introducing the students to the weekly Parsha teachers are encouraged to stay close to the actual story line of the Torah. In other words, we don't tell "bible stories" based on midrash--commentaries that embroider the text and recast it in a way that is not consistent with the basic story as it is presented in the Torah. We do this because we know that young children tend to remember the stories and we don't want the "bible stories" to blur the content of the actual story line that is found in the Torah. A famous example of this is the vivid story about Abraham smashing the idols in his father's idol store - which does not appear in the Torah at all, but which everyone expects must be there due to its widespread re-telling! This strategy is consistent with the teachings of the great Torah scholar, Nechama Leibowitz, of blessed memory, who sometimes found to her dismay that even teachers would at times forget what was the simple text of the Torah and what was a midrashic re-telling!

In fourth grade, when students begin their study of the actual text of the Torah, they encounter the text of stories that are familiar. The study of Torah gives them the opportunity to search for personal meaning in the text, and at that point to see what classic and modern commentators have revealed.

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