After making it big in Los Angeles and New York City, Bryan Fogel of the Off-Broadway sensation Jewtopia Live was in Vancouver this week and had our audiences laughing their tucheses off!

Bryan performed to a packed house on Wednesday and Thursday night, and even gave our students a sneak-peak of his stand-up comedy and excerpts from the upcoming Jewtopia movie.

 

The event was a huge success and raised critical funds for King David High School. Thank you so much to our generous donors and supporters!

Please enjoy the below slideshow for a look at all the fun!

 

Vivian Grinfeld, Grade 12 King David Student Council President, was accepted this week into the prestigious House of Commons Page Program!

Through this esteemed program, she will be working directly with Canada's elected leaders on Parliament Hill while studying International Relations at Carleton University. Her job as a Page will include delivering messages during question period, distributing key documents, and speaking with constituents on the phone, in both English and French.

Vivian's appointment to this position came after an arduous selection process, involving multiple interviews in both of the official languages of Canada. With thousands of applicants every year, the House of Commons Page Program is a competitive program among graduating Canadian high school students. Vivian is one of a scant forty Pages chosen every year! 

Starting in late August, Vivian will set out for Canada's capital city on what is sure to be the beginning of a very promising career. 

Kol Hakavod, Vivian!  

As part of their unit on Space Technology, our Science 9 students learned about how space technology is used in the study of erosion on the surface of our planet by participating in the International Space Station (ISS) EarthKAM program. This is a NASA educational outreach program that gives students the opportunity to request images of specific locations on Earth. Our school participated in the EarthKAM mission that took place from the 23rd to the 26th of April.

 

This opportunity all came about because of one teacher, Giselle Lawrence's passion.  "The truth is, I had been following all the tweets of Commander Hadfield in the ISS for several weeks and when one morning, two weeks ago, he mentioned that he was setting the camera for the EarthKAM program, I immediately thought of registering the school in the program. Unfortunately, I don't teach Science or Earth Science (although it is my major and I LOVE IT!!) so when I learned that we were given this opportunity, I ran to Ms. Gardiner to ask her if I could borrow her Science 9 students to teach them about erosion and space technology and then connect them to the EarthKAM program to run the experience.
 
Then, when the pictures were made available I was so amazed by them that I ran to Wendy to show her how beautiful they were. I knew she would appreciate them more than anybody else. And sure she did, not only that, she incorporated them in her class that day.
 
I feel so lucky to have colleagues that are so enthusiastic, supportive and welcoming of ideas.... "

 

Last week, all the pictures requested from King David were made available to us through the EarthKAM website. We decided to start a crosscurricular activity Science-Art and the Grade 9 art class inherited a series of breath-taking pictures from the science department. They have started to paint them using acrylic paint. The students have experimented with mixing and then layering the paint, trying to create a sense of depth and texture.

Here is a picture of the art work in progress; please be sure to come see the finished paintings on Tuesday, May 28 at King David's Year End Celebration.

Neve, Grade 9, uses one of the images as the basis of her painting while Ms. Gardiner looks on.

As for the original pictures, below is a video slideshow of the pictures submitted by KDHS to the ISS EarthKAM program. Enjoy the view from above our one and only beautiful Earth!

 

Video Montage of Images Collected

The photo of Australia requested by Rikki, Grade 9, earned King David a place in the ISS EarthKAM Erosion Challenge! We have been selected as one of the top five entries!

As a reward, the students are invited to a LIVE video conference with a NASA astronaut on May 17, 2013.  It will be during the morning and although school is closed for an Exam Preparation Day, all interested students are invited to come in to participate in this once in a lifetime opportunity!

 

On Shavuot we celebrate the receiving of the Divine instruction from God Himself.

Well, not exactly. Our sages, when calculating the day of revelation figured out that it actually took place one day after Shavuot. Close, but no cigar, as the saying goes. So, if we are not directly celebrating the revelation of God, what is Shavuot celebrating?

A good start to figuring this out would be to look at the word Shavuot itself, which means "weeks." It is referring to us completing the counting of seven weeks that started from the day after we left Egypt.

Notice we are counting up, not counting down. When you count down you are only interested in the end. For example NASA counts down because it is only interested in the rocket's launch. By this time of the year students may have begun counting down toward the last day of school. They are not so interested in the intermediate days but rather in the final result: freedom from class.

But we count up. We are interested in the days. In fact, we are collecting days. Each day is another rung on the ladder toward a goal. A goal that can only be reached by climbing each and every rung.

When the Jews left Egypt they were lowly slaves and they were headed toward a revelation with God. But, the people were not capable to attend and take part in such an event. They first needed to work on themselves, to prepare themselves for such an experience.

This is what Shavuot really celebrates. Our ability to rise above our nature and circumstances to work on ourselves and grow higher and higher until we become the type of people fitting for revelation. We are not celebrating the revelation. We are celebrating that we made ourselves fitting for revelation.

This year at King David we started working on our own version of Shavuot. When we returned from Passover break we, as a school, started a project to count each and every day. Each morning our students' first period teacher would present one idea and activity to help them build and work on themselves. Click here to find the different areas that we worked on to make ourselves ready to celebrate Shavuot and worthy to receive Divine presence.

Chag Sameach