WHY 'MORASHA'?
The word ‘morasha’ appears only twice in the entire Torah. The first occasion is in Parshat Va’era. Despairing at the hardship of the Jewish people at the hands of the Egyptian, Moshe asks G-d why he has been sent. In response, G-d promises Moshe as follows:
“And I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and I will give it to you for a morasha; I am the Lord”.
The same word appears towards the end of the book of Devarim: “Torah tziva lanu Moshe: morasha kehillat Ya’akov – Moshe commanded us Torah – a morasha of the congregation of Ya’akov.
What does this word “morasha” mean? It can be translated as “inheritance” or “heritage”, but this does not give the full picture. After all, there are other words for inheritance – yerusha and nachala – why not use either of these words?
The answer lies partly in the difference between active and passive inheritance. Yerusha, certainly, and nachala – to a lesser extent - represent a passive inheritance, to be received and possessed and used as desired. Morasha is an active inheritance – something received on trust for the next generation, and carrying the responsibility to be passed on. The Torah is telling us that two things fit into this category: the land of Israel and Torah itself.
At the beginning of 2007, a group of young(ish!) Kinloss members, not yet all parents, looked around at the number of children running around the shul each week and considered that the time was right to look into setting up a community primary school.
This website highlights our progress since then, with the school officially opening in September 2008. None of it would have been possible without the inspirational leadership of Rabbi Mirvis and the continuing support of Peter Sheldon, Benjamin Perl, Jeremy Newman and many others. They, like us, believe that Torah is our morasha, and that we are duty-bound to pass it on as a living inheritance to our children. We hope that the new Morasha Jewish Primary School, named in reference to this ideal, will grow from strength to strength and prove a credit to the community.