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Jewish Life

Jewish education at °Ä²Êͼ¿â is as much about creating meaningful learning experiences and enduring memories through moments of joy, celebration and commemoration, as it is about classroom learning and exploration.

 

At °Ä²Êͼ¿â, we strive to offer a Jewish Studies program that is challenging and rigorous, as well as personally meaningful to our students, addressing present-day concerns.

 

We explore subjects and concepts within the sphere of Jewish ethics and morality, together with Jewish history and tradition. While focusing on both law and lore, we discover and grapple with our values, practices and beliefs as expressed within the primary biblical and rabbinic texts of our religion.

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Chagim (Festivals), Commemorations and Celebrations

We come together to celebrate our holidays and commemorations, both in terms of appreciating our shared traditions, as developed throughout our history, and in finding and making present-day meaning for ourselves.

 

Purim is a time of joy throughout our campus as we engage in creative masquerading, share the Megillah story with a contemporary flair, create and deliver mishloach manot toÌýour senior citizensÌýand distribute food baskets toÌýthe poor and marginalised (matanot le-evyonim).ÌýOur school community engages in a Purim for Plitim (Refugees) project, donatingÌýfood and household items to the Asylum Seeker Centre, as part of understanding our interconnectedness and responsibility to all peoples (areivut).

 

ForÌýPesach, we explore present-day slaveries, in a shared seder and ritual, askingÌýhow we, a people of the liberation, might make for greater freedom for enslaved and oppressed peoples within our world.ÌýOur students visit the residents of the B’nai B’rith Princess Gardens Retirement Village in Rose Bay, singing Pesach songs, playing music, and presenting gift bags and boxes of Matzah.

 

On Yom Ha’Atzmaut, we celebrateÌýthe miraculous history of the Jewish State, while looking at present-day Israel, its challenges and promise, while our Yom Ha-Shoah and Yom Ha-ZikaronÌýcommemorations areÌýa time for solemn reflection and looking ahead as to how we can create a more peaceful and promising future.

 

During Sukkot, we inviteÌýthe homeless into our Sukkah, sharingÌýsongs, personal stories of challenge, hope and triumph, and a festive meal, and creating a community of wholeness and peace (sukkat shalom). In this way, our students gain a new understanding of Sukkot, which signifies the temporary and fragile nature of our presumed security.

 

In experiencing all our holidays and commemorations, we come together as a unified community, celebrating in a manner that recognises the diversity and pluralistic nature of our student body and staff and how we each contribute to a meaningful experience of our Jewish tradition. We seek to make these times of celebration and commemoration student-centered and student-led, empowering our students to be agents in creating a living Judaism that speaks to them.

 

 

 

Seek Me (the divine dimension or beauty of the world) and Live

Amos 5:4
דרשוני וחיו - Dirshuni v’Chyu

Welcome from the Principal

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