This week our Year 4 students celebrated their Tanach study with the “Eleh HaShemot” (“These are the names”) presentation shared with family and friends. The session enabled our students to discover the origins of their names and, together with their loved ones, to participate in some shared learning around this theme.

The event began with Vice Principal Student Wellbeing and Head of Junior School, David Opat, sharing an exploration of how many European Jewish people came to acquire surnames. He said that it was Emperor Napoleon who decreed that French Jews would be legally required to adopt surnames and that as a consequence many Jews chose names based on family occupations or local scenery. The children were fascinated by this information and David continued to explain how many European Jews shortened or anglicised their names upon arrival in Australia.

Next, the Junior School Learning Area Leader for Jewish Studies, Louise Lowinger, explained the details of the Tanach unit that the students had undertaken. The students shared highlights of their learning. “Eleh HaShemot”, the event’s title, comes from the first two words of the book of Exodus that continues to cite the names of Jacob’s sons who accompanied him to Egypt.  After discussing this, the students presented information about their own names including which family members they were named after and why this made them proud. Then in a shared art activity, the students sat with their family members and explored the personal attributes that they collectively aspire for the students to adopt as they mature.

Director of Jewish Life and Learning, Ilan Bloch, spoke to the students about the three names referenced in the Midrash in Kohelet Rabbah. He explained that it refers to the fact that each person has three names. One that their parents give them at birth, one that people know them by and one that they acquire through their actions. Ilan explained that the last one is the most important and linked this back to reputation and their aspirations to live up to the characteristics and attributes that their family highlighted in the previous activity.

It was a beautiful event which was a microcosm of the approach to Jewish life and learning that we adopt at The King David School. We have a commitment to nurture a strong, positive and meaningful Jewish identity in a way that rings true for individual students and families.

In order to do this Jewish learning should engage the head, heart and hands – our students should develop requisite knowledge, values and the skills, what we might call a Jewish toolkit, to enable them to make informed choices about how to live their lives Jewishly. 

Of course, for this to be most effective, our festivals, peak activities and regular programming must be purposeful, empowering,  joyous and fun. And because we are talking about identity development, this is best achieved when anchored in the family story and one that resonates at an individual level for each of our students.

Our hope is that they continue to see their involvement in Jewish life as a joyful treasure that offers them meaning in a way that rings true for them.

The Eleh HaShemot celebration typified the King David School approach as it was anchored in deep Jewish learning and text study, it offered an opportunity for a meaningful and loving shared experience with family members and was focused on how to individually make choices about who our students wish to be.

The richness of this approach sets our students up for a wonderful relationship with their Judaism and also to develop the value set that will enable them to live up to their vital third names – the ones that they acquire through their actions.   

Shabbat Shalom,
Marc