Lee Greenblatt – Community/Youth Development
Hi, I am Lee Greenblatt and this is my 3rd year on the Management Committee – madness I know.
I look after the Community/Youth development portfolio for Beit Emanuel. This is a role that I have become very passionate about for a number of reasons, but first and foremost is because I have a 6 year old son Aaron, and a lot of what is being put in place now will benefit him and all the other kids in the future. Tal Slome recently joined our team as a full time employed Youth Worker and this has helped us greatly in putting various programmes together for the Youth.
In the last couple of years we have had a number of successful events – The Gala evening, Bingo, Yom Ha’atzmaut Shabbat and many more.
We will be starting early learning Hebrew classes on 25 April for our kids that are between the ages of 5 – 8 years old, this will be a pre cursor to the Religion School. Jody Segal will be running these fun and interactive classes on a Saturday morning at 9.30 – 10:15. I urge you to bring your kids and help get this off the ground, for R50 a week our kids will be given a great grounding and basic understanding of Hebrew and Judaism. Our Friday nights with Jody are also very successful and the kids love all the crafty activities that Jody and Tal put together. More recently they have made gorgeous Challah covers and decorated their very own Hagaddot. These little items become great keepsakes.
For Pesach, Jody and Netzer put together an amazing Chocolate Seder on Sunday morning for all ages, I am very sad to say that only 4 kids attended. This programme took a lot of time and effort to put together and was brilliant, replacing wine with chocolate milk , bitter herbs with sour sweets etc…..and we even got to bless the chocolate. We were then given delicious Matzah pizza for our main meal. Hopefully next year and occasions moving forward will have better support.
On the Sunday, 19 April we are having a Yom Ha’atzmaut family day from 11 am – 2 pm where there will be loads of fun activities for the kids such as a jumping castle, pony rides, face painting etc. Israeli dancing and a delicious Israeli food picnic is included in the entrance fee. Soft drinks and beer etc will be on sale. Netzer will be assisting us with various activities. This day cannot be a success unless we have your support. Please invite friends and family and come and join us.
The future of Beit Emanuel lies with our youth of today. If anyone would like to assist us with any activities or functions moving forward we are always looking for volunteers.
Thank you and I look forward to seeing you all on the 19th
