How to have an Aliyah to the Torah

This particular video on how to have an aliyah is special for two reasons:
1) The hazzan in the film is a good friend and former colleague of mine.
2) The Bar Mitzvah boy is a puppet.  If I had to guess, I might suspect that he is even a distant cousin of one of my purim puppet play characters.

On a more serious note, I prefer the screen text to be more Hebrew for students to use, and less puppet-centered for adults, but it's still one of my new favorite teaching tools.  Thanks Harold!

A golden yad?

My sixth graders had an interesting discussion recently about why the Torah scoll's yad is silver rather than gold. We talked about beautifying a mitzvah and looked at some of the other "fancy" ritual objects around us.  Would we want a gold yad though? Great arguments for an against.  Let's have some discussion here.  Would a gold yad be practical? Would it be preferable to a silver yad? Why or why not?  Think it through in the comments and I'll tell you what my students decided at the end of the week.