Each year, the third grade kids at Matan and Yehuda’s school are tasked with creating their own Tevat Noach, or Noah’s Arks. They bring them to school and have a competition to see who has made the most authentic, creative version of the Ark.
When I first saw the notice for this event, I took a DEEP breath. Matan is very artistic, but also insanely driven when it comes to tasks of this sort. Two years ago he spent multiple tens of hours putting together his ark made of popsicle sticks. Two glue guns, many burns, and hours later, the ark was complete. It was quite a process.
So, when Yehuda came home a few weeks ago with his excitement, it was hard for Josh and me to show ours. Oh dear, I thought…here we go again. And – on top of the pressure to come up with a creative idea, he had to top Matan’s idea. What ever were we to do?
And then, Yehuda had a brilliant idea. Could we, he wanted to know, buy a huge loaf of bread and make an ark out of it? It was brilliant..it was simple…and it was doable overnight!
We have a professional baker in the Yishuv, and I commissioned a huge loaf of bread from him. It was far more beautiful than what I needed, and I almost felt badly that we were going to use it for an art project and not for a festive event.
Oh well…Noah was calling.
After less than one hour of work, Josh and Yehuda had finished the ark. It arrived safely at school the next day – and…Yehuda ended up winning second place in the competition!
Josh and I are now dreaming about future projects, and trying to figure out how to make sure that all of them can be made from bread. Just think of chanukiahs made of bread….dreidles from bread….Pesach seder plates from bread….hmmm…I get carried away here, but you get the point : ).
Sometimes the best things in life come from quite simple ideas thought up by an 8 year old boy. Amen to that.