Noah's speech 07

PICTURE THIS: You are a 10 year old child walking into the house after a day of school and smelling a home made Challah fresh out of the oven. See yourself sitting at a dining room table covered with a table cloth and dishes that were passed down 3 generations. Imagine yourself holding a Kiddush cup that belonged to your great grandfather and watching your mother lighting Shabbat candles with candlesticks belonging to your great-great grandmother. See yourself looking at pictures on your dining room wall with faces of 4 generations of your family. Even your parents as children.


Hello parents, children, judges and friends. My name is Noah Bogdonov and this is my second year in the speech contest. I’m in grade 5 at Vancouver Talmud Torah and I’m here to talk about why Shabbat evening is important to me.
You have just experienced a PART of my Shabbat evenings. Now let me tell you MORE about why Shabbat evening is so special to me.

For as long as I can remember, I have been sitting at Friday night dinners like the one I just described, sometimes with friends, sometimes with family. I have been told stories about people I love, people I live far away from and even people that I have never met in my family.

Friday nights are special to me because we sing the Shabbat prayers and THAT makes me feel closer to G-d. It helps to make Friday night just a little bit different than our every day meals and evenings together. It makes me feel safe and happy no matter what my week was like.
For our meals, we eat delicious food that my family makes. Special treats like honey cake. This recipe has been made by my great-great-great grandmother and has been passed down to me. I am getting hungry just thinking about it, so let me continue.
I enjoy the privilege of getting to stay up later than usual. I love having my family come over, especially when I get to play with my baby cousin. We like to tell jokes and stories about our day, talk about the good and bad parts of our week and talk about the ancestors on the wall. We play games at the end of the meal. We even dance, sometimes sing and play our instruments. All of this helps to bring us closer and closer together. Shabbat evening is also special because it creates a lot of memories that I KNOW I will share with my children some day. I think that if ALL children in the world had a night like Shabbat, maybe there would be more happy people around.


You have just heard why I love Shabbat and I’m sure some of you feel the same. I hope that now you understand why I chose to talk about Shabbat evenings and if you STILL don’t get it, maybe my mom will invite you over for a Shabbat dinner with us soon.