Shalom from your Shinshiniot

 

Hi everyone! 

If we haven’t met you yet, we’re Dana and Eliya, the new shinshiniot at Yavneh. A shinshin (Shnat Sherutnik) is an Israeli who volunteers and does a year of service before going to the army. We’re volunteering here through the Jewish Agency. We came here for a year, and our mission is to be a bridge between Israel and Yavneh. We teach the kids and make their connection to Israel stronger through different activities and projects. We want to bring Israel to Yavneh and we started to do that throughout the High Holiday period. 

We got to know all of the classes throughout the month of Elul, preparing for Rosh Hashana. For Rosh Hashanah, we did a big buddy project. Each kid got to make an Igeret Bracha for their buddy and before the holiday, they got an Igeret bracha back. Igeret Bracha is a tradition where people write each other cards wishing each other a sweet year. The kids got to put their card in the Israeli mail system, Doar Israel, and they really enjoyed the whole project. Another activity we did for Rosh Hashanah was “Hafsaka Peila”. These are special whole-school activities for everyone to participate in at recess. This is a common activity in Israel several times a year, and we decided to bring it to Yavneh. For this hafsaka peila we created several holiday-themed stations, including bingo, dancing, games and cartisei bracha (New Year’s Wishes) for Yavneh. This was super fun! We will definitely be doing more of those in the future!

Next, came Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur in Israel is an incredibly special day.  We both felt that in order to have the kids understand it, we need to share our experiences from that day. We each wrote something short about Yom Kippur in Israel and we shared it at our whole school t’filah during the Aseret Yamei Teshuva. We also went into some of the classes and did different Yom Kippur activities with the kids.

Lastly, we celebrated Sukkot at Yavneh. We made a game show called, “Race to the Sukkah”, which each class participated in separately. They had to work as a class in order to complete different Sukkot related tasks and finally, get to the sukkah. This was so fun to do with the kids and all the classes did so well!We’ve had a really good time getting to know the Yavneh community, and we can’t wait to see what the rest of the year will bring. We’re going to do a lot more activities with the kids throughout the year.

If you want to see updates on what we’re doing, you are welcome to follow us on Instagram: @shinshin_yavneh