Vayeishev- Timeline and basic arithmetic related activity ideas

"Then Jacob rent his garments and placed sackcloth on his loins; he mourned for his son many days." ~Bereishit 37;34

This week we learn of when Joseph's brothers sold him and implied to Jacob, their father, that he was attacked and killed by a wild animal. Upon seeing Joseph's bloody tunic and surmising his death, we are told that Jacob mourned for "many days". Rashi  here explains that "many days" actually means that he mourned for Joseph the entire time that Joseph was missing to him- which actually calculated to be 22 years.

Activity Connections:
Activity ideas in increasing conceptual difficulty:

• The most basic calculation connection would be to begin with the statement 1) in Bereishit 37;2 (at the start of this week's parsha) that Joseph was 17 years old at the time of the story of his sale and 2) in Bereishit 41;46 (in next week's parsha- Miketz) that Joseph was 30 years old at the time that he first was called to come before Pharoah. Younger students can just calculate the passage of time between Joseph's sale and his appearance before Pharoah. Before learning subtraction, this could be drawn on a time line for students where they can physically count the years. Children who are a little older can count up from 17 to 30 or subtract 30-17.
• The next step would be to look at the calculation that is offered by Rashi regarding the 22 years that pass before Jacob sees Joseph again. Children can take the calculation from the activity above and pull out (from Parshat Miketz) the additional years that passed- 7 plentiful years followed by 2 years of famine before Jacob travels to Egypt. Students would then add the 3 numbers together to confirm that the time that passed was truly 22 years.
• A larger activity, which could be leveled in many ways depending on the age and abilities of students, would be to pull out the information from larger segments of Sefer Bereishit and place the information onto a more comprehensive timeline. Students could either create timelines for individual sections, or a more comprehensive timeline that incorporates multiple people's storylines for students to see the crossover of time between the different stories that we are given throughout Sefer Bereishit. Along with Rashi's interpretations and explanations throughout the sefer, students can use their own calculations for comparison of information and calculating where everything that we learn would actually fall on a grand-scale timeline.

We can use the information given in this week's parsha and next week's parsha to analyze the passage of time that Rashi refers to on Bereishit 37;24. Creating a timeline helps students formulate an understanding of the chronology of events, which provides them a framework for the both the logical progression of events and the greater picture of how multiple events fit together with each other. In addition to the sequential understanding that is gained, students also practice basic addition and subtraction by calculating the time lapses between different events. Students also work on identifying which information needs to be added or subtracted in order to find missing information, which is a critical problem solving skill. Finally, when the completed timeline has been pieced together, students can look to compare and contrast information to gain a deeper insight that they may not have picked up on in their original, single-story understanding of the events.