Living Judaism

A good start for me for the Jewish New year of 5784 and the 2023/4 academic year. I already have 8 schools booked in for this half term.

I have just put together the statistics for 2022/23 year for Living Judaism.
I worked with 4010 children during 35 visits. I visited 25 different schools. 10 of these were new to me and 5 of them I visited twice! I wonder what the new academic year will bring?

A lovely testimonial from a teacher at a local secondary school. I was asked to go and talk to a group of students taking GCSE Judaism. The session was an after school one. 'A massive thank you for last night. The students found the whole experience really fascinating (and so did the staff!). I hope that it worked for you too. I am not sure if your ears were burning this morning! Hopefully this is something that we can repeat in years to come.'

Done 1st half term: Acts of worship x3 Workshops x5: seen 932 children.

I had a lovely morning with KS1 at The Prince of Wales School doing a Shabbat workshop as part of their Faith, Food and Farming fortnight.

Great start to the academic year... 7 schools already booked for the first half term!

I have just completed my statistics for the year and I have been into 24 schools, four of them twice. That makes 28 visits doing Living Judaism workshops and Acts of Worship and have worked with over 3,500 children during the academic year.
I am very happy to say that schools are already booking me for the next academic year. I must be doing something right.

I had a lovely morning at St John's First School in Wimborne. I did an Act of Worship with the whole school about Shabbat and then together with my persona doll Benjamin worked with Year 1. He showed them what Jewish boys/men and some women wear when they pray and then we told them about Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur the Day of Atonement.

I have a busy week this week. Today I did a Shabbat workshop in the morning with 55 Y1 and Y2s and in the afternoon did a Passover workshop with the Y2 at Romsey Abbey School. Tomorrow I am a Shabbat workshop with 90 Y2s at Bishop Aldhelm's School, attending the BCP RE Teacher's conference. On Thursday morning I am doing yet another Shabbat workshop with 60 Y2s at St Katherine's school! I am resting on Friday!!

When I visit a school for the first time I send them a feedback form for them to comment about what I have presented. I received this from a local Roman Catholic school that I worked at on Friday morning as an answer to the question: Did the children say anything interesting that I can put on my website about the workshop?
At playtime three of the girls outside my window were role playing Shabbat, they had their jumpers around their heads, they had two sticks as candles, their water bottles for wine and they were singing the song we had practiced in the assembly.