"We had such fun at the children's service on Shavuot Sunday. Rabbi helped us to understand the meaning of Shavuot through singing, playing instruments, drawing and playing together.
Rabbi helped us to get into the mood, as did Simone (piano) and David
(lead guitar). Rabbi was very jolly, helping us to do the actions to the
songs( he was even dancing and twirling about!) Tambourines, shakers
and much slapping of out thighs and toe tapping helped us to make such
great music as we sang along to the tunes.
Whilst we were doing this, Rabbi cleverly helped
us to learn about the meaning of Shavuot. We learnt that Ruth, who lived a long time ago, really wanted to belong to the Jewish
faith and said to Naomi, "Where you go, I will go; where you live, I will live." She was really keen to belong and the Jewish people at the time told her
that she was very welcome.
We also learnt that we celebrate the Torah being given by God on Mount
Sinai, and that the Ten Commandments were really important for everyone
to follow so that they could be good people, just like we all try to be
now. We even read some of them on the Ark. Of course the letters were
quite high up, and we are only little, but we could make some of them
out.
When Rabbi took the Torah from the Ark we were really happy and even
though it was heavy, we helped to put it back and close the Ark
afterwards, which was a very special feeling.
We had our magnetic aleph bet and a game to help us with our Hebrew too!
After Rabbi had to go upstairs to make sure all the adults were learning
properly about Shavuot, we carried on with Pam, David and Simone,
making paper animals and drawing.
To round everything off we all had cupcakes and milkshakes, as of course
Shavuot also means that we celebrate our ancient land flowing with milk
and honey, very sweet in our mouths, just like Torah."
