It was a fairly warm but wet Sunday morning, Dec 4th to be exact, when the Sunday Funday group met at 10am in front of the gates of the Musee d'Arts et d'Histoire du Judaism - MAHJ- in the heart of the Marais, Paris, for a special visit to discover the story and symbols of hanukkah.
At first the children were impressed by the room and a bit shy with Katia our guide, but she was warm and welcoming and had surprises and stories for all of us to enjoy.
We started out on the discovery of the temple, the menorah, the oil and finally a hanukiah !
Katia introduced us to her friend the shamash (a finger puppet) his long white body and shiny, sparkly yellow head. Shamash was in fact a candle, a very special candle who showed us around the museum and took us on a journey to Russia.
We looked around the museum to see how many menorahs (a seven branch candelabrum) and how many hanukiot (8 or 9 branch candelabrum) we could find. We even discovered a special room where there were only hanukiot of different sizes, different shapes and with different designs, but nearly all of them had a lion, and they all had 8 branches with a special place where our friend shamash would sit.
Katia had a special box with different objects in them a jar, a cookie shape, a lion and we looked at all the hanukiot in the room and found a hanukiah with a jar as a shamash, a cookie shape and even a lion.
Shamash was eager for Katia to tell us the story of his friend Meir and his magic violin, the journey to Russia was great and we enjoyed the story of Meir and really liked his violin.
When we returned to our room, we all made a special shamash to take home which we will use to light up the candles each night of hannukah.
At the end we packed our shamash in the special envelope, then we got to spin the dreidel (a special top) and even sang and danced to the dreidel song...Nes Gadol Haya Sham - A great miracle happened there !
Chag Sameach !
Above : kids meet Shamash
Below : spinning the dreidel to take a journey with Shamash to Russia
