As a reward for consistently high attendance at Kodesh Extra, students from Years 7 to 9 enjoyed a day at Thorpe Park. Kodesh Extra runs during lunch breaks and the girls can choose from range of classes taught by Ms Gelley, Rabbi Schochet or Rabbi Hartman. Thank you to Miss Simonsson and Miss Rabson for organising Kodesh Extra, and to all the staff who accompanied the girls. It was a fabulous day out in the beautiful sunshine!!

On Monday evening the ORT JUMP graduation ceremony took place in JW3. ORT UK works with a variety of industries to help Year 12 Students JUMP-start their careers through a mentoring programme. Hasmonean students have been fortunate enough to have been involved in JUMP since it began in 2009. This year a staggering 280 mentor and student partnerships across 11 London schools took part in the project.

Students and mentors meet up in a public place five times over the Year 12 academic year and discuss CV writing, how to ‘sell’ themselves and what to expect from the workplace. They are even given the opportunity to have a workplace tour and attend a real meeting. Each student is also required to submit two assignments about their experience and how it has benefitted them.

It was therefore a great honour when Dov Solomon was awarded one of the special Outstanding Achievement Awards. Dov has been mentored by Mark Ross whose firm, PA Consulting is one of the oldest management consultancy firms in the world, established in the UK in 1943 and advised various industries on how they could become more productive in support of the war effort.

Dov explained that Mark helped him create a visual plan for his future career path; something he found extremely helpful. Working closely with his mentor, an expert in his field, enabled him to clearly visualise the steps needs to take in order to progress successfully.

At the ceremony, Mark spoke to the audience as to why Dov deserved the award. He talked about Dov’s honest and clear approach, together with his ability to clearly express opinion, ask informative and intelligent questions and his response to tasks was mature, nuanced and of a high calibre.

After a roll call at the boys’ school, we divided up into 4 groups and set off in our convoy of minibuses at 9.45 am. Two groups set off for the golf and two to the trampoline park and then we would swop over after lunch.

My group was headed for the mini golf, only a quick jaunt up the A41. We arrived there in glorious sunshine only to be told that there was no booking. Once that initial hiccup was overcome, we read the boys the “course rules”, or the “riot act”, including things they needed to know such as “do not follow the balls into the water traps to retrieve them!” and “do not swing the clubs around your head”, we then divided the boys into groups and set off around the “Congo” course. With the sun beating down it really was like being in the “Congo”!

The staff also joined in with their rounds of golf and proceeded around the quieter “Amazon” course, Mrs Barak did extremely well scoring an exceptionally high round, whoops! I thought the idea was to get an extremely low score, perhaps there is not much mini-golf in Israel!

All of the staff assisting the group, Mrs Barak, Mrs Hamilton, Miss Le Brech and Mrs Chaudhary, with Rabbi Amar’s impeccable direction, were in complete agreement about the exemplary way all of the boys behaved in the minibuses, and whilst out and about at the venues, every one of them was a great credit to themselves, their families, the school and K’Lal Isroel. They were a pleasure to be with throughout the day.

Our thanks also to the overall MC Mr Tutty for the organisation of events that the boys thoroughly enjoyed.

Mr J Cohen

This week AJEX have visited both schools to run workshops with the Year 9 History students. We were visited by Paula Kitchen (education officer at AJEX), veterans Leonard Stern (National Serviceman) and Frank Ashleigh (Fighter pilot during World War II) and Jonathan Kober (telling Jack Lewis’ army story). A range of activities helped all of the students to learn about the first-hand experiences of these Jewish Veterans.

The last activity consisted of three presentations by the students. This is an extract from the excellent presentation by Shua, Chananya, Ami and Shaul:

“Frank Ashleigh was born in 1924 and grew up in London. He volunteered for the British Army on his 18th birthday in 1942. He was part of the Glider Pilot Regiment.

Training lasted six weeks. The first exercise of the day before breakfast was a 5 mile run for 1 hour wearing full equipment. He had to wake up at 5:30am every day and had to know how to use every German and British weapon. He also trained in hand-to-hand combat.

Ashleigh worked as a glider pilot in the battle of Arnhem in September 1944. Field Marshal Montgomery planned to capture the bridge over the Rhine from Holland to the Ruhr, the industrial area of Germany to stop German production. His glider plane landed safely and discharged four soldiers, a jeep and two trailers. He volunteered for a reconnaissance mission. He and the three others including one officer went to a place swarming with German soldiers. They hid in a church, went up to the roof and went for four days with no food. There was a window and each day they would go up and down, firing a few shots. The Germans didn’t know they were there. A German then came into the church. The officer stood up and got shot in the stomach. He went down and the Germans found out where they were and ordered them to come down. The three remaining soldiers disabled their weapons and went down. They were taken to a camp until the end of the war. They were taken on an 87-mile march for 17 days to another camp until they were rescued by the Red Army and were sent back to England.”

Thank you to the History Department for organising these very important visits, and to the veterans- it is such a privilege to have them visit us at Hasmonean.