UJS is delighted to present to you: A Student’s Guide to Passover!!!

It is filled with education around the Seder, tips and tricks for running your own Seder,

Passover tunes, yummy recipes and many many more chapters for you to delve into over the coming weeks.

This is a guide for all, inclusive of all Jewish students regardless of religious denomination or previous knowledge.

Following on from the student and chaplain-led interfaith partnership project in 2019 that I worked on, I finished that project wanting more. The Parliamentor programme provided me with the next opportunity to further my involvement and further signified the value and importance of interfaith centred projects. 

‘If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?” – the famous Hillel quote from ethics of our father 1:14. As we are living in unprecedented times, where social interactions is all but forbidden, yet the need for social responsibility could not be more important, I couldn’t help but think of this quote.

This week in Shul we will read Vayakhel-Pekudei. Although of course we wont. Some will read it at home. Some will read it with family. And some will watch it on a live stream. But however you are engaging with this week’s parasha, it almost certainly won’t be in a synagogue, anywhere in the world.

This has been a real topsy turvey week. Nothing makes sense. Nobody has seen this before. Not through two world wars, not through major world catastrophes. This really is unprecedented.

In Vayakhel-Pekudei the People of Israel are given the instructions on how to build the Mishkan (tabernacle). They are asked to donate the required materials. They give so generously that Moses has to ask them to stop giving.

As a society, we are more connected than ever before thanks to social media. However, we are also seeing a rise in loneliness, characterised as one of the largest public health issues of our time. We have also seen an increase in loneliness amongst young people.

On the 2^nd of march 2020 at 10pm the polls closed in Israel for the third time since there was a viable Government. Despite this being a third election in a year and expectations of "voter fatigue", we actually saw an increase in voter turnout -the highest since 1999. With the number of parties diminishing to 8 (lowest ever!), less votes are wasted on parties that don't pass the threshold and we get a more accurate representation of Israeli society.

A few weeks ago, we started to talk about International women’s day in the office and the first thing that popped into my head were the words of “Kol Isha” (קול אישה). Literally those words mean “the voice of a woman” in Hebrew – in Judaism, “Kol Isha” is the concept that a man is prohibited from hearing a woman’s voice in song or prayer. Now, I won’t be discussing the actual concept; that is a topic I will let myself grapple with at another time. Rather, it made me think how we are using our voice as women.

READ the UJS President Esther Offenberg's address at the Board of Deputies February meeting.

Click here to watch the video

Running interfaith events can, like all other events, be both challenging and extremely rewarding. Planning interfaith events takes time and effort, especially because it’s important to be aware of, and sensitive to, the religious requirements of those participating. However, it is very satisfying when all the elements of an event come together and the event runs smoothly.