Bienvenue to Etgar Paris

The nearly 1,000 children who participated in the annual Etgar inter-school Jewish knowledge quiz in London last week were not the only ones.

A few days earlier, the first Etgar Challenge France took place in Paris with over 200 children from seven Jewish schools.

Rochel Levine, the programme’s coordinator, said the inaugural event was “a dream come true. It was an extraordinary day – uplifting and inspiring. The children were glowing with pride and excitement.

“Even those who didn’t win came up to thank me, beaming with a sense of accomplishment. That alone made everything worth it.”

Like their English counterparts, the French students had prepped for several months, studying the Etgar Handbook which is designed to give them foundational knowledge of the Jewish calendar, Jewish history, the State of Israel, mitzvot, brachot and classic texts of Jewish tradition.

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It took five years to bring Etgar to France and discussions are under way to ensure that the challenge runs next year.

Etgar has already successfully exported its programme to Canada, Ireland, Hungary and South Africa. Co-founders Jo Rosenfelder and Adam Taub point out: “Etgar France has demonstrated that the model is scalable, and transportable to bigger communities, even those with very different educational systems. It is wonderful that this experiment to provide an essential Jewish curriculum with an accompanying textbook is proving so successful wherever it is conducted, and with measurable success and highly consequential results.”