Goals:

• Participants will get to know the “Maccabi”.
• Participants will get to know 4 Jewish activists from Jewish history.
• Participants will choose an active task enabling them to act and influence the world.

The activity order:

1. Opening – Game: what would you do?
2. The story of the Maccabees.
3. Meeting via Instagram with activist figures among the Jewish people.
4. Discussion and processing with flash cards.
5. Summary and writing of a personal note.

A large flash-card is placed on the floor, depicting the background of the Maccabees’ story and the difficulties the Jews dealt with before the Maccabean Revolt.

At the four corners of the room, we will place different solutions to the distress of the Jews (flee, surrender, hellenization, rebel).

The participants must now go to the corner of the room where a course of action of their choice, was placed. Once each participants has chosen its corner of the room, one representative from each group has 15 seconds to convince as many friends from the other corners of the room, to follow his course of action. After the last representative has spoken, another 30 seconds are given to the participants who decided to switch, to join another corner.

We will tell the story of the Maccabees as it would have been presented today, divided into several parts with a picture for each one of them. We will distribute flash-cards with some having part of the story written on them, and some with pictures.  The participants must read the story the way it occurred  and at the same time, put the pictures on the floor in chronological order.

Participants will receive a link to an Instagram page telling the story of Yehuda, a boy from the Diaspora who came to visit Israel. Through the story of Yehuda, we will get to know four activist figures who acted for the sake of the people of Israel and Eretz Israel. (Eliezer Ben Yehuda, Hannah Senesh, Yosef Weitz, Zvi Berger)

The Activity:
Option 1
The Madrich will give out the questions and Instagram link to all participants.
The participants will answer the questions according to the pictures and text that appear in
Yehuda’s posts.
Option 2
The Madrich will create an Escape Room or will hang the questions that appear on the cards
around the room, and the participants will walk around the room and use the Instagram
posts to answer the questions.

On the floor we find the pictures of the four figures from the previous part, and their names.

Guiding questions:

Who is the most significant character to you and why?

Who is the character you want to know more about?

Choose one of the characters and tell what you liked about it and what you would have done differently?

At which moment did identify with Yehuda the most?

After we finish one round with the Participants, we ask everyone: what do all the characters have in common?

We can conclude by saying that all the characters we have learned about, are activist characters. Similar to the Maccabees, each one of them has acted for the sake of the people of Israel and Eretz Israel. Like the Maccabees, all the characters had the opportunity to “escape” from responsibility and not face complex and difficult tasks, but they chose to act for the greater purpose and leave a legacy for future generations.

Each participant receives a note with the question: “How can I have an influence in the world?”. The teacher will instruct the participants to write ways they think they can influence the world, based on their power and abilities. The teacher will instruct the participants to fold the note and keep it in the back of their cell phone or wallet, so they should always remember their task and the power they must fulfill it.