With Chanukah just around the corner we got celebrations underway this week with the unveiling of our 18 foot tall, LEGO Chanukiah. We were hugely fortunate to have the Chief Rabbi visit to officially cut the ribbon and present our students with their own mini versions to build over the Chanukah holidays!
This project has been in the pipeline for over a year and was inspired by our student’s love of LEGO. It finally came into fruition through one of our Teaching Assistants, Danny Cazzato, who in a previous role, worked at LEGO.
Work started on the project back at the start of the year with Danny coming up with a design for the Chankiah and presenting to our students for feedback. Then, at the end of the November the build began with students spending an afternoon at school constructing the nine candles for the top of the Chanukiah. These were sent away to a factory to be glued together and have their lights installed. With the candles complete, construction also began on the base and the main stem, this time by a LEGO ‘master builder’. Once complete, these 5 large pieces, made up of a whopping 80,000 bricks, were transported to Gesher and secured to a wall in the school hall in less than a day!
Tamaryn Yartu, Gesher’s Co-headteacher, said: “It was really important for us that the Chanukiah was made from LEGO because it’s something that our students really love to be creative with, both at school and at home. It was also fantastic to have the Chief Rabbi officially cut the ribbon and wish our students a happy Chanukah. Festival celebrations are something we love doing at Gesher as it brings the whole school together really beautifully.”
This year, Chanukah will begin on the evening of Sunday 18th December and finish on the evening of 26th December so we won’t be at school to light a candle each day, but everyone at Gesher is very much looking forward to being able to do this next year, when Chanukah falls into term time.
