High School Shabbat Va’ad
Our HS Shabbat Va’ad
The purpose our וועד שבת/Shabbat Va’ad is to engage our peers from all year levels in planning and running our Kabbalat Shabbat. However, due to COVID restrictions on “mixing”, our Year 11 students have been central in co-ordinating and running Kabbalat Shabbat each week for the High School students. We try to bring something new and engaging for our fellow students each week, focusing on a specific topic or theme to enhance the meaning of Shabbat, we call it Shabbat Chinuch. It’s been really tough to celebrate shabbat as a community, as we are used to doing, due to COVID – singing songs like Hineh Ma Tov and Gesher Tzar Me’od, dancing to our favourite Ruach songs and having face-to-face discussions about important issues in the world. But, we have worked hard to come up with ideas for us all to be engaged and enthusiastic. In Term 3, we focused on creating videos each week through a series called ‘The Shabbatchelorette’. Each contestant of the series was an aspect of Shabbat (the נרות/candles, חלה/challah, יין/wine) and during each video High School would learn about why these aspects are so important for Shabbat. These videos allowed us to connect with High School and we hope that we were able to put smiles on their faces during this time of uncertainty. 
This term, we hope to create weekly pe’ulot engaging ourselves and peers in different values of Shabbat. We will meet in our Tutor Groups sharing ideas and feelings towards Shabbat and our diverse insights. Each week they will focus on a specific lesson which will be linked to a different teaching of Shabbat. Additionally, every week, each Tutor Group will collect a ‘token’ of Shabbat so that in Week 7 they all will be able to plan and run their own Shabbat expanding upon what they have learnt throughout this term.
On Friday of Week 1 this term, the שבת וועד/Shabbat Va’ad along with the Year 11 Shabbat volunteers ran a program with the theme of
צדק, צדק תרדוף/Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof – “Justice, Justice shall you pursue”, a biblical commandment. We connected this theme to the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the righteous Jewish leader and former U.S Supreme Court Justice who fought passionately for women’s rights, the LGBT community, undocumented people, disabled people, the expansion of voting rights and much more. We think it is important for us to learn more about the notorious RBG and the incredible changes she made not only in the U.S, but the entire world.
By Jade Berson, Tara Linker and Jessica Turtledove – Year 11