For the past few weeks, advanced Hebrew students at The Idea School have been working on Project Pesach Ba (Passover Is Coming). In this project, the students explored the social norms and laws governing the sale of chametz during Pesach in Israel.

To simulate a real world environment, students engaged with this issue through authentic Hebrew materials and a quasi-professional framework. First, students watched the erev Pesach special of Israeli sitcom “Kupa Rashit” (Main Cash Register). The episode takes place in a busy Israeli supermarket, and depicts an argument between a secular customer interested in purchasing chametz and the supermarket’s clerks. Students then formed a fictional consulting firm (“Raayon Consulting”), which was promptly hired by the sitcom supermarket to resolve the argument. For the rest of the project, the students played the role of consultants to the supermarket: gathering facts, learning the law, and coming to an informed opinion. The final deliverable was a three-part consultants’ report.

The project wrapped up with a series of “board meetings” in which the “consultants” (i.e., students) presented their findings to the supermarket’s North American representatives (i.e., Idea School faculty). The presentations were of top quality, so Raayon Consulting is guaranteed to be hired by the client again in the near future! All presentations, both written and verbal, were given in Ivrit. This is yet another example of how The Idea School’s project-based learning approach complements real-world applications.