A new “shacharit club” at Kantor King Solomon High School is enjoying growing popularity among students.
The Redbridge school, where most pupils come from other faiths, had not held morning Jewish services for some years.
When Melanie Shutz, head of ethos at the Orthodox school, decided to introduce voluntary shacharit once a week last year, “I started by inviting 10 boys and 10 girls to come along”.
Now attendance at the 15-minute service has tripled. “Every single Wednesday, I feel immense pleasure and satisfaction that 65 students come with enthusiasm,” she said.
The boys have their own minyan where they have the opportunity to put on tefillin, supported by Rabbi Aryeh Sufrin, director of the Ilford Chabad Lubavitch Centre, and other rabbis.
The girls’ service combines prayer elements such as the Shema with a facilitated discussion. On days when the Torah is read such as Rosh Chodesh or Chol Hamo’ed Succot, they all come together.
When the school appealed for some pairs of tefillin, she said, “some of our former students set up a crowdfunding campaign and raised £1,700 to buy them”.
It is not only the new prayer initiative. The revamped daily assembly, she explained, “reaches out to our diverse cohort through a tefiliah thought and a moment of reflective silence presented to all students by our form tutors during morning registration”.
It is suitably inspired by a verse from Ecclesiastes, traditionally ascribed to King Solomon himself, “A time to speak and a time to be silent”.
The tefilah thought draws on Jewish sources, whether from classical texts such as Ethics of the Fathers or from more contemporary rabbis such as Lord Sacks or the Lubavitcher Rebbe.”
Each day’s thought is a springboard for a short discussion and often applies to a theme for the week. “We journey through the Jewish year highlighting themes from the festivals as well as special times in the British calendar,” Ms Shutz said. “Recent tefillah thoughts shared ideas on remembrance leading up to November 11. Our diverse cohort is represented as we think about Black history month, festivals in other faiths such as Diwali and reactions to world events.”
Each assembly ends with a minute’s silent reflection “when they have the opportunity to think how to get the best out of their day before going to lessons.”
She has also launched a new group to explore the meaning of prayers in more depth, while lunch and learn clubs, initially offered to sixthformers, have been extended to other year groups.
