A special celebration, “Mesibas Chumash,” took place at the Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson Yeshiva Ktana, the leading educational institution for boys of the Dnipro Jewish Community. The event was timed to coincide with the approaching holiday of Shavuot and was dedicated to an important milestone in the students’ lives – the completion of the first stage of reading Chumash texts in Hebrew and the beginning of a new level of study of the holy Torah.
The children watched a video featuring an address by the Lubavitcher Rebbe to every Jewish child, calling on them to come to the synagogue on Shavuot and hear the Ten Commandments. They deeply felt the Rebbe’s words about the importance of children coming to the synagogue on Shavuot for the annual acceptance of the Torah. The central theme of the entire celebration was gratitude to the Almighty. The students prepared a special video for Him, in which they spoke about what they feel grateful for, and then performed the psalm of thanksgiving, “Mizmor LeTodah.”
A special place in the program was occupied by a skit that presented the well-known parable of the fish and the water. The children demonstrated that just as a fish cannot exist without water, the Jewish people cannot live without the Torah, for the Torah is the source of a Jew’s spiritual life. During the festive program, the boys recited words of Torah, read the first pesukim from the Book of Vayikra together with Rabbi Shlomo Segal, and also took part in various thematic performances prepared specifically for this important event.
The culmination of the celebration was the presentation to each student of a copy of the first book of the Chumash – the Book of Bereishis. With their first Chumashim in hand, the children danced together with their fathers, who are very proud of how wonderfully their sons are learning, studying Torah and Chassidus in an atmosphere of true Yiddishkeit, surrounded by the love and care of the Dnipro Jewish Community.
“We see how important this day becomes for the children and their parents, for this is not merely receiving a book, but the beginning of a new path – a path of Torah study that will accompany them throughout their lives,” says Rebbetzin Chana Segal, director of the Yeshiva Ktana. “We are sincerely grateful to Morah Leah Dorfman, who invested much effort, heart, and care into the preparation of this wonderful celebration. We are happy to be able to share this joy together with the families of our students, and on the eve of the Day of the Giving of the Torah, to show the results of our work to the entire united and cohesive Dnipro Jewish Community under the leadership of Chief Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki.”
