‘The hope is in the kids’: Elgin temple prepares for new year by teaching kids how to make challah
Meticulously rolling, twisting and weaving the dough, about 20 young bakers prepared for the Jewish new year by making sweet round challah bread Sunday during Torah school at Congregation Kneseth Israel in Elgin.
Rosh Hashanah, which marks the Jewish new year, begins Monday.
Congregation member Nikki Berger came in early to make the dough, the recipe for which she pulled out of “Jewish Cooking for Dummies,” and then taught kids how to shape and weave it into round challah.
She said she liked doing it because it helped kids as young as two or three build core memories.
“Sometimes, especially for the littler kids, the concepts of the holidays are a little hard to grasp,” she said. “Food they understand.”
Round challah symbolizes continuity and the cycle of life, Berger told the kids. They painted the shaped dough with cinnamon sugar and added sprinkle in hopes of “a sweet new year.”
Rabbi Margaret Frisch Klein, who was teaching some of the children Sunday, said she was going to have her students write a positive list of attributes of what they want the new year to be.
“I think that’s the really important part of this, because it’s about, how do we enter the new year with hope, even in our complicated world,” she said. “The hope is in the kids.”
The temple has more than 100 families and about 250 members. Congregation president Josh Stober said the congregation has been unafilliated from any particular movement for about 15 years.
“We are what you need us to be,” he said. “We have members who were raised orthodox, we have members who were never raised with religion, and we meet everyone where they are with how they practice Judaism.”
He said it’s important to be include children in the holiday season.
“We really want them to start having that understanding, whether it’s at age four of ‘it’s the new year,’ or at 10, 11, or 12, seeing their parents participate in the service,” he said. “It gives every kid an opportunity to see the life cycle of what your life as a kid here is up through being an adult.”