Even Iranian missiles couldn’t stop the Chief Rabbi attending his favourite event of the year

The main hall of Wembley Stadium was full to the brim on Tuesday as 950 10-year-olds from Jewish primary schools across the country competed in this year’s Etgar Challenge.

While only one team may have taken home the trophy in the inter-school Jewish knowledge test, “the other 940 students are happy because they’ve learned something”, said one of the judges, JFS Jewish studies teacher Justin Kett.

The energy was high and the enthusiasm contagious: students huddled around their tables, rushing to complete their activities in the allotted time, showing off their knowledge as well as their teamwork. Frum pop blasted from speakers, including a klezmer-ish remix of Eden Golan’s Hurricane, which had students and young volunteers dancing and singing in between tables.

It was nearly impossible to interrupt the students’ focus, but the pupils from Manchester’s King David Jewish Primary, emphasised how excited they were, despite being awake “since 5am”. When asked how confident they were about winning on a scale of 1-10, one student said very solemnly, “Ten.”

Everyone was wearing a brightly coloured kippah, or a glittering chai necklace, imbuing the event with unapologetic Jewish pride and showcasing the diversity of the UK’s Jewish community with Jews of all skin-tones, traditions and levels of observance working together and doing so joyfully.

Sitting by a table near the edge of the hall, a teacher from North Cheshire Jewish Primary took a moment to pray, perhaps for his students to take home the trophy, or maybe for the music to be turned down a notch. A moment of Jewish peace amid the exciting cacophony of the competition.

As well as being tested on their knowledge of the Etgar Handbook, which they had studied through the year, participants took part in creative challenges, submitting designs for a new Israeli shekel banknote and creating a comic strip that depicted an interaction between the biblical figure Noah and his wife.

“If you have a great Jewish education, you are winners, and the Jewish people are winners.”

In the cool-down period between the two rounds of the quiz, teams sang along to some well-known Jewish tunes in both English and Hebrew, led by Rabbis Marc Levene and Luis Herszaft. When he second round began with Rabbi Levene asking “Who’s going to win Etgar?” every student in the room screamed “ME!” as loudly as possible.

All around the venue students signed each other’s Etgar t-shirts, printed specially for the event, lining up in human chains and scribbling furiously on their friends’ backs.

Round two also included a test to see how well the students remembered the lyrics of Israel’s national anthem, Hatikvah, in which they had to stack paper cups with the lyrics printed on them in the correct order

When the round finished, ten minutes of singing and dancing ensued, as Rabbis Levene and Herszaft led anthems of passionate yearning for the Messiah, for Jerusalem and high-BPM (beats per minute) dedications of thanks to God.

Etgar champs: the Independent Jewish Day School from London[Missing Credit]

Seemingly out of nowhere, the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, took the stage to congratulate this year’s participants. The Chief Rabbi related how he had arrived back in the UK early that morning, after being temporarily stranded in Israel following the hostilities between Iran and Israel.

“I thought that this year, I wouldn’t be able to be here. And that is because I have been in Israel, not able to come home.”

“[Etgar] is my favourite event of the entire year”, said the Chief Rabbi, adding that attending the competition is “the first thing [he is] doing” upon arriving back in the UK.

“This is a unique Wembley moment”, said Rabbi Mirvis, “in which every single person is [a] winner.”

Rabbi Mirvis went on to thank the event organisers, the teachers, and congratulated all the students on their efforts, adding that “there is nothing more important for the future of Judaism than great Jewish education.”

“If you have a great Jewish education, you are winners, and the Jewish people are winners.”

Each announcement of the winners was met with raucous cheering from students and teachers alike. Mathilda Marks-Kennedy and Rosh Pinah Schools clinched the awards in the creative categories. The award for Best School, which goes to the school with the highest average, went to North West London Jewish Primary school, and the grand prize, which goes to the school with the highest-scoring single table, went to the Independent Jewish Day School (IJDS). The latter team was led by Hanan Cohen, an exchange teacher hailing from Israel who joined IJDS a year ago.

“It’s an amazing feeling”, Hanan said, describing his students as “lovely”, with “amazing knowledge”, adding that it was a “privilege” to take part in Etgar this year.

To the students who weren’t lucky enough to snatch an award, Hanan says: “Keep learning, it’s our privilege to know the basic knowledge [of Judaism].

“Keep going, keep doing it every year.”