King David Victory Park held a siyum this year to celebrate the completion of a section of Talmud. Participation in the event, run for the first time at the school by Rabbi Ricky Seeff, general director of the South African Board of Jewish Education, is seen as a seudat mitzvah, which mitigates the need for firstborn sons to fast on erev Pesach.

The fast of the firstborn before Pesach, Ta’anit Bechorim, is a long-standing custom connected to the last of the 10 plagues – the slaying of the firstborn – in which firstborn sons fast to show appreciation for being spared from this plague. However, it’s considered a lenient fast, and if a person is able to participate in a seudat mitzvah, they aren’t required to fast.

Other examples of seudat mitzvah would be attending a wedding or a bris. In the case of the siyum, all those at the event and not only the person who completed the section are considered participants, and therefore don’t need to fast.

King David Linksfield pupil Shiri Kaplan has won the Chapman University of California’s annual Holocaust Creative Writing Competition in 2021 for a poem submitted while the school was learning online.

The competition requires participants to respond creatively to Holocaust-survivor testimony on the “1939” website, using art, dance, poetry, song, or an essay.

Chapman University receives entries from more than 50 countries worldwide, and the first prize is a week-long trip to Chapman University for the pupil to attend an internationally-acclaimed Holocaust course.

Grade 7 pupils at King David Victory Park Primary School recently packed 80 bags for mothers and their newborns to be delivered to the Edenvale Hospital.

The outreach project was conducted in collaboration with the Baby Ethan Foundation, a non-profit organisation founded in 2010 which supplies hospitals including Edenvale and Rahima Moosa Mother and Child with baby bags and essentials. All items were provided by the Baby Ethan Foundation.