Shorashim
Inez Calderon-Havas – Year 7
Shorashim evening 2019
“Shorashim means the roots of where and who we came from. The pure soil that our ancestors grew in signifies the culture of our families. The blossoming tree above is the present members. Each branch leading into the trunk where we are all connected to live with a part of those who are gone. There is great importance in knowing who the people who came before us were and how we came to be here. The culture that is embedded inside the family will always be there. Each generation has made some sort of change that has made my family special. When the flowers fall from the tree it signifies a member of the family dying and joining the roots making up the next generations. The benefit of this knowledge is that you know where you come from, the uniqueness of your family – how it is similar yet different from other families. It helps us find who we are.” This is a portion of my speech presented on the night; a reflection of what I learnt over the time spent on Shorashim. Only when I wrote this did I really understand why we did this and how important it is to learn about our roots.
We began to look at ourselves and our lives in the middle of Term 2. We got to know ourselves and our immediate family. It really put into perspective how connected we are, although we may not recognise it in daily life. Something that really helped me with finding myself was the prayer we wrote for ourselves. It expressed my true self, revealing it and putting it into view how unique I am to everyone else, as they are unique too. I truly learnt that we are each our own person who decides who we are friends with, what we like and what we do.
The time spent doing all the tasks was a lengthy process. All of the different components contributing to the final product. It was a rush at the end to complete the album, the speech and the presentation making it look good as well as completing everything. I faced the challenge of completing everything in time while juggling the work needed to be done for my Bat Mitzvah in the middle of the project time. It was a challenge, but I persevered. What I loved about it though was that we could be really creative with having free choice about how we wanted it to look. It was an outlet from all of the work, showing our personalities. In the end, it worked out and everything was completed on time.
The Shorashim Evening was amazing; the presentations gave me an insight into everyone’s background getting to know them further and learning things I did not know before. Something that really stood out was that in my group, which was half my Tutor Group, there were only two people in the room who were not from South Africa – one of them being me! The night was fantastic and fun. Everyone was proud of their work with gleaming smiles on their faces.
