21 May 2018
Northwood & Pinner Liberal Synagogue (NPLS) has teamed up with The National Holocaust Centre and Museum to bring the Centre’s education programme for 9-11 year olds into schools for the first time.
The ‘Journey Exhibition’ is part of an immersive programme at the Centre, which is based in Newark, Nottingham. It was created for those in years 5 and 6 of primary school and follows the story of Leo Stein, a 10 year old German Jewish boy living with his family in Berlin in 1938.
The exhibition has won praise from across the spectrum for the way it introduces difficult concepts to young children, but many primary schools have been unable to take students there due to distance, time and cost factors.
A new one-day version of the programme, titled ‘Journey Outreach’, has therefore been devised and, after a successful pilot in a small number schools around Northwood, will now be rolled out fully in the area and then across the rest of the country.
Paul Kustow – a member of NPLS and an advocate for the Centre – added: “The aim is to bring this important programme to virtually every primary and junior school in the country over time, using trained volunteers and a small number of employed outreach educators to deliver it.”
Paul and five other volunteers have been trained to run the programme and will initially deliver Journey Outreach at 30 schools that already have links to NPLS.
Paul will be contacting all Liberal communities, firstly to see if they host local primary schools in their area for religious studies (RS) lessons in Judaism, as NPLS does. These schools would provide a natural customer base for Journey Outreach. Paul would be happy to meet with people from each of those synagogues to explain how the project came about and how they could become involved.
NPLS is also raising money to fund the project, with £12,280 donated at its last High Holy Days Appeal. A cheque was presented in the synagogue over the weekend.
Phil Lyons, CEO of The National Holocaust Centre and Museum, said: “We are enormously grateful to members of the Northwood & Pinner Liberal Synagogue, not just for their generous donation to the Centre, but for their outstanding commitment to Holocaust education and their leadership and support in bringing our programmes to new and diverse audiences.”
[Photo: Phil Lyons, CEO of The National Holocaust Centre and Museum, receives a cheque from Northwood & Pinner Liberal Synagogue’s Rabbi Lea Mühlstein, Mimi Konigsberg and Paul Kustow (Credit: Victor Shack)]