A week in the life of our Year 6 Jewish Life Leaders

Being a Jewish Life Leader can be a time consuming yet fun leadership role. We have a variety of responsibilities every day and thought that a good way to encapsulate all we do is by going through a week in our lives as Jewish Life Leaders.

We begin the week on Monday mornings by leading Havdalah, the ritual that marks the end of Shabbat on Saturday evening and the beginning of the new week. We lead the blessings and hold the ritual items of the kiddush cup, the beautiful besamim (spices) holder and the multi-wicked candle.

On Monday lunchtimes we meet with Mr Carpenter and the Informal Jewish Life Educators – Mia, Noah and Lyv – to discuss what next week will look like, to share ideas and plan for upcoming Shabbat celebrations.

On Tuesday and Wednesday mornings we lead and teach tefillah (prayers) in classrooms and sing our favourite prayers including Aleinu and the Shema.

On Thursday morning there is time for more of the morning prayers, we join in with Morah Gaida and Years 3-6 in the Millie Philips Theatre.

At the end of each lunch, we lead students in Birkat HaMazon (blessing over food) using singing, clapping and hand actions.

We arrive early on Friday mornings to help run, set up and prepare for our Shabbat celebrations, setting the table, preparing the challah and finalising which songs, prayers and tunes we should sing. Recently we have been introducing fun instruments like the bongos and the tambourine to be more creative and engaging for the students.

On top of all of this we get to plan for all the chaggim! We just finished helping celebrate Purim, where we were involved in re-enacting the story of Purim in between listening to the Megillah being read. This was a highlight for us as we were able to bring the Purim story to life! As well as this, we loved decorating and making Mishloach Manot bags for our peers. 

The year has only just begun and we have so much more fun to come. We are particularly looking forward to the Pesach video we are currently working on as well as ideas for Yom Ha’Aztmaut, Rosh Hashanah and Hanukkah later on this year!

Shabbat Shalom

By Mikaela Garbuz, Joel Hersh, Mia Selby and Orlando van der Starre 
Year 6 Jewish Life Leaders