“Pesach without children is like a cantor without a song, like an actor without any lines, or a storyteller without an audience.” – Joe Bobker

Across the Junior School the sounds of Pesach are in the air as children sing and act their way through the Haggadah. Children are, and should be, the focus of the mitzvot and minhagim of Pesach. Children’s natural inclination to learn experientially lends itself to the imperative to pass down our history in a meaningful and dynamic manner.

Positioning themselves in the shoes of our ancestors, the Year 3 students were thrilled by a visit from Rabbi Yossi and his travelling Matzah Factory. Students delighted in the opportunity to bake their own shmurah matzah, a handmade, ‘guarded’ matzah. Rabbi Yossi set the students to task grinding the wheat kernels into a fine flour before starting the clock in the 18 minute countdown to preparing the dough, rolling and baking this unleavened bread of affliction.

Our students have explored the duality of matzah in representing our simple food as slaves and also its significantly sweeter taste as our freedom-meal, as the Jewish people hastily left Mitzrayim and ventured into the midbar (desert), as bnei chorin (a free people).

Chag Pesach kasher v’sameach!

Louise Lowinger

Coordinator of Jewish Life & Learning K-5