Adam Carpenter – Head of Jewish Life Primary

After a few years of COVID interruptions, it was with great excitement we welcomed over 400 grandparents and friends to our Rosh Hashanah event today. 

Our celebrations began with a Shabbat and Rosh Hashanah ceremony with all the Primary students and our special guests in the Lehrer Family Building (MPH). This provided grandparents with an opportunity to experience a regular Friday morning at Emanuel School, where Shabbat is celebrated with singing, blessings, ruach, a story from Rabbi Ninio and words of wisdom and blessing from Rabbi Kamins. To mark this special event, we invited grandparents and their grandchildren to recite the Shabbat table blessings and enjoyed a musical performance by the Infants Choir and Perlman String Ensemble. The MPH was not only filled with multiple generations of the Emanuel Community, but also the ruach of our students as Morah Bar-On, accompanied by Josh New on piano, led the singing of Shabbat songs. We farewelled Aaron Glass, who sounded the shofar for us, who graduates from Emanuel School next week, having started at Kornmehl Pre-school. The ceremony concluded with a moving rendition of the High Holy day prayers zochreinu and aveinu malkeinu. 

Following the ceremony, our guests joined students for joint activities and workshops. These workshops allowed students and their guests to learn, share and work together in preparation for Rosh Hashanah and, in many cases, visit their grandchildren’s classrooms.

Activities included: 

Year K: making round Rosh Hashanah challah, creating cards and making a shofar at the Shofar Factory
Year 1: shaping and painting a ceramic plate and bowl for apples and honey 
Year 2: creating Rosh Hashanah bingo game and card 
Year 3: making round Rosh Hashanah challah, creating cards and visiting the shofar factory
Year 4: creating a rimon (pomegranate) canvas to decorate the Rosh Hashanah table
Year 5: experiencing a Sephardi style Rosh Hashanah with symbol foods 
Year 6: reflecting on the book of Jonah and creating a visual representation and interpretation of the text in a paper midrash

We concluded the day with a morning tea nosh and a shmooze, entertained by the talented Senior Jazz Ensemble.

Thank you to the grandparents and friends who joined us today. It was lovely to welcome you back to school!

An event of this size required significant planning and involvement from many. A huge thank you to the Hebrew and Jewish Life staff, the Primary Staff and the Security, Maintenance, Administration and Marketing Teams for their involvement in planning and organising today. Thank you to Ofer Levy, photographer, for taking photos today. Look out for these in next week’s edition of Ma Nishma.

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Shabbat Shalom