SDRS supports 'Out of the Box 4'

For the fourth year running SDRS has supported Southend's 'Out of the Box' project. Southend Council reported that this year's festival was to be "biggest and best ever".

Their website stated "…Southend-on-Sea have built upon the vision to create a festival that brings together a wide range of cultures represented in our town. It is a chance for all of us to find out about each other's cultures and beliefs".

An element of the 'Out of the Box' celebration was the opening of Southend Mosque on Tuesdays, our synagogue on Wednesdays and Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church on Thursdays, over four weeks in October. With two slots, one at 1.30pm and another at 2.30pm.

'Out of the Box 4' was open to both children and adults via limited ticket allocation (thirty places per hour). Tickets were available from Southend Library. However, due to a lack of informed planning by the Council, the first Wednesday fell on Erev Simchat Torah and the last on a school half term.

With the help of Devorah Levy (SDRS member) and David Rees (SEEIFA Interfaith Community Worker) SDRS participated in the last three weeks and had an excellent mixed turnout in each case. Devorah gave a talk to each group using artefacts from around the synagogue, whilst David was on hand to keep the kids in check during 'look and touch'.

The first hour slot of weeks two and three saw a visit from local schools. Seventy pupils and adults visited from St Helen's RC Primary School of Westcliffe and around sixty visited from Richmond Avenue Primary School of Shoeburyness respectively. We've no idea what happened to the thirty limited places per hour!

In week three we also had a dozen pupils visiting from Shoeburyness High School's special needs base. Unfortunately Southend Library had allocated the school an hour mixed with local older residents so it was very difficult to give both groups an appropriate presentation. Nevertheless, due to the hard work of Devorah and David it was achieved, just.

The remaining slots of the three weeks were taken up with visits from twenty-five local residents and staff at Southend Council. We had a real "mixed bag" of differing ages and walks of life and some visitors were genuinely "out of the box!"

The adult visitors had differing reasons for taking the time to come in, ranging from a passing interest in Judaism, a professional desire to gain a multi-cultural perspective of Southend or just to see what was behind the doors they walk past daily.

A mention to the few who had come along for a sleep in the warmth (I kid you not) and to several who came along to debate God's existence or any other topic and to ask unbelievable and unanswerable questions.

All in all it was a fantastic opportunity for SDRS to be involved in 'Out of the Box' again and to give the public the chance to be welcomed into the synagogue for a look around. The highlight being a lady in week four, who discovered she was Jewish after the visit as her maternal grandmother was Jewish.

SDRS looks forward to participating again next year, although perhaps with more input into the planning stage and ticket allocation as such large numbers of pupils could have benefited from additional time, rather than their allocated sixty minutes.

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