On Friday, the eve of Shabbat, the Jewish kindergarten Beit Tsindlicht traditionally held a children’s playful Kabbalat Shabbat, during which the children recreated all the elements of this most important day for Jewish identity.
“Each time, we select in groups those who will play the roles of father and mother, the mistress of the house, and the other children perform the duties of relatives, so that for a certain time everyone has the opportunity to participate and remember who, what and how does during Kabbalat Shabbat,” says Malka Averbukh, a kindergarten teacher, “it is very important that each step is conscious and that the child understands its meaning from an early age. Therefore, Kabbalat Shabbat is not only a staging of the action at the Shabbat table – it is much more, including all the actions for making challah for Shabbat, fulfilling the commandment of tzedakah, blessings, etc. Children really love Kabbalat Shabbat in kindergarten, because it is the culmination of every week, a very beautiful final chord.”
Much attention is paid in “Beit Tsindlicht” to traditions related to Shabbat, because it is a key concept in the Jewish perception of time, even the list of days of the week is based on Shabbat, which is the only one with its own name, and all the others are counted from it and have names as ordinal numbers.
The event was held with the support of the Jewish Community of Dnipro.
