Confirmation

The time has come to start thinking about your Confirmation Ceremony! Each year this event is different, because it's created by the students themselves. The first part of that process is to think about what you want to highlights about your Jewish education. Some of you have been at OT since preschool, others started learning with us in elementary school, some of you started your Jewish education at Gesher, and there are even a couple of you that started out at different congregations and found your way to OT later. All of those experiences are important and helped to create the Jewish adult you are now.

So let's take some time to reflect on that journey. Below is a tool called Answer Garden that will take your thoughts and use them to create a visual reflection of all of your words. So think about the question "What words come to mind when I think about my Jewish education?" and then add your words to the Answer Garden!

Answer Garden Page

Fall Semester

The school year is upon us and we are excited to welcome our 2019-2020 Confirmation Class! All Olam Tikvah members in 10th grade are invited and encouraged to join us for Confirmation. In years past, the class has been made up of both current OTRS students and former Gesher students, and our hope is that tradition will continue. Here’s what our year looks like:

• Our Confirmation year began with a welcome session on Sunday, September 22 from 10:00am-12:00pm, in preparation for our Confirmation students to join Jewish teens from several other NoVA synagogues for The Margo & Yoram Cohen Family Israel Engagement Fellowship (IEF). During this session, led by our rabbis, the goal was to prepare our students to think about Israel in new ways, priming them for the IEF experience.
• The IEF is an eight-part program, brought to us by the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, that teaches teen leaders to explore their connection with Israel in a meaningful way. Fellows will learn about the importance of the State of Israel within Jewish history, and graduate with the knowledge, experience and confidence to develop their own Israel story. Some additional details: 
  • This year the IEF program will be hosted at Olam Tikvah. In order to accommodate the needs of students joining us from other congregations, the program will meet outside our regular OTRS timeframe, from 4:00-6:00pm. 
  • There will be a closing ceremony at the Israeli Embassy that families are invited to attend. 
  • The complete list of dates for IEF are:
    • October 6, 20 and 27
    • November 10, 17 and 24
    • December 8 and 15 
    • Closing Ceremony TBD
• The second semester of the Confirmation Program, which begins on Sunday, January 5, will follow the OTRS calendar and will meet from 10:00am-12:00pm whenever school is in session. This year our 10th graders will focus on three "big ideas" that will each culminate with a visit to a museum in Washington, DC. 
  • The Jewish community has always looked both inward, towards ourselves, and outward, towards the larger world in which we live. Our first unit will explore the sacred texts and values that inspired the Jewish community in the 1950s and 1960s to participate in the Civil Rights Movement, followed by a look at what that involvement entailed. Our students will use that learning to guide their visit to The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
  • Many of our OTRS students visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum when they were in 6th grade but they did not experience the permanent exhibit. After several weeks of thoughtful learning, not only about the Holocaust but also about how the USHMM was created, they will have the opportunity to visit the permanent exhibit together.
  • Their last unit will look at how Judaism is seen through an American Christian lens, especially as it applies to our sacred texts. Following this study, our Confirmation students will visit the Museum of the Bible to see their collection, with a special focus on the exhibit entitled "The Impact of the Bible."
• The Confirmation program will conclude with a special ceremony, which will be created by the students themselves. In addition, a group photo will be taken, to be added to the wall right outside OT’s sanctuary. We'll have more details about the ceremony shortly.