Kids know what they like.
So leaders of Palo Alto’s Reconstructionist Keddem Congregation figured a big kid could best translate the messages of the High Holy Days to littler ones.
At 1:30 p.m. on Yom Kippur, about 50 small bodies — ranging in age from 1 to 12 — ceased their squirming and giggling as 12-year-old Jessamyn Connell-Price stood before them.
Clad in a white cotton dress, red hair grazing her jaw, the seventh-grade bat mitzvah student led the junior congregants and their parents in worship.
Keddem member Jeremy Kermit, who celebrated his bar mitzvah in June, assisted Jessamyn by reading the Torah. Two other children blew shofars at the end of the 45-minute service.
Although Jessamyn, a student at Jane Lathrup Stanford Middle School in Palo Alto, volunteered to conduct the service this year, Elaine Moise, Keddem vice president, hopes to make youth-led worship a tradition.
“We’re a community-led congregation. We thought it might be appropriate for our community of children to be led by children,” Moise said.
The service consisted of a few passages, prayers, explanations, songs and a short skit about Noah and the ark — complete with masks and a cardboard ark which Jessamyn crafted. It “relates to the theme of tzedakah [charity]. You know, for the 10 Days of Awe,” Jessamyn said.
She structured her service by following the pattern of last year’s, which was led by an adult. She worked for a month — about 15 minutes each day — writing and talking with her mother, other congregants and her 8-year-old sister.
“I was the age of most of the kids there not so long ago. My sister is closer, though,” Jessamyn said. Nonetheless, she was enough of a peer to grasp the children’s attention.
“I think it’s better that I should do it. Kids have an easier time listening to kids,” she said.
“When I was younger I thought services were too long. And there was too much stuff I didn’t understand — even in English. The words were too big.”
Although difficult even for adults, the Yom Kippur service can hold meaning for children, Jessamyn said.
“I like the service, especially the songs,” she said. “Kids can understand the meaning of the holiday. They probably won’t get all of it. But it would be pretty good if they could get half.”