While the English football team were raising the nation’s hopes at the World Cup in Russia, back at Wembley another trophy was being eagerly contested.
Hundreds of children gathered on Tuesday for the biggest inter-Jewish schools event of the year, the Etgar Challenge.
Now in its sixth year, the Jewish general knowledge quiz for year-fives at primary schools attracted its largest participation — 950 children from 28 Jewish schools from London, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Birmingham plus one from Israel.
No one going to Etgar for the first time would be prepared for the aural barrage on arrival at the Great Hall at Wembley — a swell of a thousand animated voices and an amplified keyboardist pounding out the William Tell Overture, the Sabre Dance and a string of Jewish favourites.
Many schools have been building up to the event, where teams are tested on their knowledge of information in the Etgar Handbook, since the start of the school year.
“When they walked up to the stadium, their whole faces lit up and they went ‘Wow!”, said Philippa Isaac, a learning support assistant at Wohl Ilford Primary School.
Rimon in Golders Green, one of the new Jewish free schools, was taking part for the first time. Orah Soller, head of Jewish studies there, said it marked “the culmination of all the general Jewish knowledge they have learned throughout primary. They are excited to see everything they have put in coming to fruition.
“What is so amazing is to see children from the same year from all the schools doing the same thing under the same roof.”
Simon Marks from Stoke Newington did not send a team last year but were back this time. “It’s every Jewish child’s right to come to Etgar. We didn’t want them to miss out,” said head of Jewish studies Yolande Pieters.
The school was one of a number to include non-Jewish pupils as well.
Around the hall, a hundred tables were decked with green and white balloons and loaded with healthy snacks of grapes and carrots as children grappled with two half-hour rounds each consisting of 50 multiple-choice questions. “We made the questions much harder this year,” said Etgar co-founder Jo Rosenfelder.
As well as knowledge, creativity was also put to the test in a number of other challenges: to design a poster for an interactive learning centre about the site of the burning bush; to write a book review of the Tanach; and to produce a rap to be sung by the Levites in the Temple.
(The winning Levite rap, from a Sinai team, opened: “They washed hand by hand/ And got no land/ They used to sing, play instruments too,/ They bless, they bless, gave no less/ None participants, Golden Calf — no !”.
Milly Ozon, 10, and her class from North Cheshire Jewish Primary, had left Manchester at six in the morning to reach the event in time. “It’s so worth it,” she said.
“Even if you don’t win, it’s still fun,” Milly said.
But there was one school that had come from much further afield — for the second successive year, the bilingual King Solomon near Herzliya. Its executive head Rabbi Jacob “Cobi” Ebrahimoff, former head of the Independent Jewish Day School in Hendon — who has just been appointed rabbi of the United Synagogue’s youth division, Tribe — spends half of his week in Israel.
“As a Jewish school, we want children to have access to these values and principles [represented in the Etgar programme],” he explained. King Solomon was a general, rather than religoius, school. “Sadly, In Israel, if you are not in the dati [religious] sector, there’s very little else in Kodesh education available.”
Apart from teachers, dozens of teenagers from Jewish secondary schools and youth movements worked as volunteers, collecting quiz-sheets and plying participants with pastries.
Among visitors was Rachel Fink, new head of JFS. “It’s a fantastic way to engage young people in Jewish studies in a different way outside the classroom,” she enthused.
One of the judges for the creative challenges, Rabbi Dov Kaplan, said Etgar was “creating a buzz for children in Jewish education. You can see the smiles on their faces. They are enjoying themselves and they are going to take that back to their schools. When we were young, learning Torah was not fun.”
As the results were being collated, “Levene and Levin” took the stage to lead a sing-song —Rabbi Mark of Belmont Synagogue and Rabbi Eli of South Hampstead Synagogue. “We are going to make this place rock,” said Rabbi Levene.
And they did. Chains of children conga’d around the room as the volume reached a new pitch. Some signed the backs of each other’s team t-shirts to commemorate the occasion.
It may be fun to win at Etgar. But it is taking part that counts.
