Postcards to Brazil

This year my 5th graders send postcards to peers in Brasil. They write about themselves and one of the holidays.
Read part of the letter I send to the teacher in Brazil:

The postcards we sent contain Jewish holidays images such as apples and honey, a dove (a symbol for freedom), Hamsa (the hand – people believe that it saves you from the 'evil eye') and more. Some of the cards have Hebrew words on them such as שנה טובה  - happy new year.

In our postcards we wrote about one of the 4 first holidays we have.

Rosh Hashana - the Jewish New Year
Yom Kippur – we fast for 24 hours (no water or food) so people will forgive our sins. On Yum Kippur it is not allowed for cars to be on the road so all the kids ride their bicycles, skates etc on the road with no fear. We can walk instead of on the curve on the road and no car is driving by.
Succot – this holiday symbols the hard way our ancestors had to go through on their way to Israel. (They walked by foot from Egypt)  In this holiday we build a Succah (it's like a tent – see the picture below) and we sit in it for 7 days (we eat there, sleep, play and more…) the Succah is built in the garden, yard or in a balcony at home. The kids have a great time making decoration and they enjoy sleeping there together.
Simchat Torah – this holiday is celebrated when the religious people finish reading the whole bible (they read the bible throughout the year in the synagogue – which is like a church only for Jewish people) Once they finish the reading and they have to start all over again (it always happens at the same time of the year) we celebrate the beginning of the reading.

All those 4 holidays are celebrated at the same month one after the other, so we have 2.5 weeks off school, usually at the end of September – middle October.

The kids also wrote about themselves and some of them added pictures and decorated the cards. Most of the boys didn't decorate so nicely but I am sending you all the cards.

Here are some photos to help you better understand what a Succa is:

This is my Succah. This is how it looks like from the outside (I built it in our balcony at home)

This is while building it

 decorating

 play time

 dinner time

Hope you learn a bit about the Jewish holidays and traditions..