High Holidays Show Wows Kids

Miami Herald

Rabbi Shmuly Gutnick is a one-man, traveling Judaic show.

He juggles, he MCs and he knows how to work a crowd of 50 preschoolers.
“They want to stay all day,” said Gutnick, 31.

Gutnick, more commonly known as Rabbi Shmuly G., visits temples and schools throughout South Florida and leads interactive programs that teach children of all ages about Jewish holidays, traditions and values.

He is the co-director of Florida’s Youth Network at Chabad — an orthodox movement in Judaism known for its outreach efforts.

With Rosh Hashanah — the Jewish New Year — and Yom Kippur — the Day of Atonement —around the corner, Gutnick is extra busy this time of a year and has already had more than 100 shows in September alone.

His performances border theatrical and circus-like, but never leave the realm of educational.

“It’s great for the kids. It’s very interactive and hands-on,” said Janet Kopel, an assistant teacher at Samuel Scheck Hillel Community Day School in North Miami Beach. “He explains how everything works in relation to the holidays.”
The most popular shows on the line-up for the High Holiday season: The Shofar Factory and The Honey Bee Workshop.

“Do you want to hear the shofar blown,” he repeatedly yells to a group of second-graders at Hillel Community School until he hears an appropriately boisterous response.

He pulls out a shofar — an animal horn that is blown on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur — and makes the traditional sounds by blowing on the horn, alternating with him mimicking the sounds of a baby crying.
“We’re crying out to God, because we are all God’s children, and we are crying out for blessings for the New Year,” he explained.

Blowing the shofar is just one of the many holiday traditions. Honey is also a Rosh Hashanah staple, as Jews eat this food to prepare and pray for a sweet New Year.

For the honey bee workshop, Gutnick simultaneously plays the roles of rabbi, chef and bee keeper.

He keeps a beehive with close to 40,000 bees in the backyard of his Boca Raton home so he can make his own honey.

“It’s pretty hectic,” he said. “I pretty much become a beekeeper for the month.” He added that his four children, all under the age of 6, love to see their father tend to the hive in a full beekeeper suit.

He brings a couple thousand of his bees with him to his workshops to show and explain to the students how honey is made.

The kids jump up from the floor as Gutnick picks volunteers to reenact bees gathering pollen from flowers. They giggle and point when he puts a beekeeper’s mask, about 10 sizes too big, on 4-year-old Riley Spitz’s head, a student at Rabbi S. Gross Hebrew Academy on Miami Beach.

“Are bees our friends?” he asks the class of preschoolers at the Hebrew Academy.

“Yes,” he emphatically replies, saying that bees are responsible for growing many fruits and vegetables.

Even as Gutnick juggles and eats apples to keep the kids entertained, things get pretty technical while he explains how honey is made and why it is kosher even though insects are not.

Honey, he said, is not actually a byproduct of bees, but comes from the nectar that bees collect.

The kids help churn the honey, and each student leaves with his or her own small container.

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