A warm Hanukkah celebration took place at the children’s educational center “Beit Zindlicht,” a preschool institution of the Dnipro Jewish Community, for the nursery group. The main feature of this event was the lively and conscious interaction of the youngest children with their mothers in an atmosphere of joy, celebration, and shared Jewish experience.
First, a Hanukkah candle lighting took place, conducted for the nursery group by Rabbi David Vaskovsky, whose daughter Esther is a pupil of this group. The rest of the program was structured so that children and adults could act together. Mothers and toddlers participated in joint dances, sang Hanukkah songs, and made symbolic candles together. The children themselves performed small scenes about how they prepared for Hanukkah, what they learned, and what they discovered in anticipation of these bright days. Everything that happened was aimed not at a performance itself, but at a shared experience, the joy of communication, and a feeling of closeness between child and mother.
A special emphasis of the event was placed precisely on emotional contact and the shared “living” of the holiday, where a child experiences Hanukkah light not abstractly, but through their mother’s voice, her movement, smile, and shared action, forming the first, but very strong, associations with Jewish tradition and holidays.
“For us, it is fundamentally important that from the earliest age, a child enters the world of Jewish values not through explanation, but through joy, warmth, and shared experience with parents,” noted the director of “Beit Zindlicht,” Risha Gurevich. “Such meetings help children naturally grow up in an atmosphere of Judaism, holidays, and the Hanukkah light that accompanies them from their first steps and leads them to a conscious entry into the united and cohesive Dnipro Jewish Community under the leadership of its Chief Rabbi, Shmuel Kaminezki.”
