And you will tell the story to your child on that day, saying, “This is because of what Adonai did for me, in rescuing me from Egypt.” - Exodus 13:8
Early in April, I travelled to Central Europe with the nine members of our Confirmation class and chaperone Lynda Goldshein. For me, this is the thirteenth time that I have been privileged to take this trip. When I interviewed at Temple Sholom, I knew how important this trip was to the congregation, as it rated a question in my interview and was one of the two items featured on the Temple website. Each year, I have discovered anew the importance of this trip, not only to the students who take the trip, but to the chaperones, those we visit, and to the congregation as a whole. I encourage you to attend our Shavuot evening service, on Tuesday, May 14th at 7pm. Our new confirmands will lead the service and share what they have learned here at the Temple and from their travels, as they stand to take their place in shalshelet hakabbalah - the chain of Jewish tradition.
The trip is nine days. We leave the first Saturday after Pesach ends and return the next Sunday. We have visited Warsaw and Prague, but more recently Berlin, Krakow and Budapest. The students prepare for the trip by learning about Jewish choices throughout history - going back to Abraham’s father Terach, through the destruction of the Temple, the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, and the shtetl. In Europe, they learn first-hand not only about the terrible destruction of the European Jewish community in the Holocaust, but the two-thousand years of history of European Jewry that came first, and the struggles of the contemporary European Jewish community. Ask any current or former student about the highlights of the trip, and the answers may surprise you. Some will talk about the beauty of Krakow. Others about the service that we hold to say kaddish by the ruined crematoria in Birkenau (Auschwitz II). A few will talk about the Stumbling Stones scattered in the streets of Berlin, each one marking a Jew who was taken from their home and later perished in the Shoah. Many will tell you about our Shabbat evening in Budapest, where we participate in a Hebrew/English/Hungarian service with our sister congregation - Szim Salom, who then treat us to Shabbat dinner, and a spirited song session. They will all talk about the pierogies and the unique experiences they shared with their classmates. (...and most of them will refer to the trip in a college application essay.) The trip, started by Rabbi Goldman, still creates a life-long impact in those who are able to participate. A debt of gratitude is owed to the Temple for nurturing this trip, all those who have donated to the Confirmation Scholarship funds and participated in class fundraisers, and especially to those chaperones who have given of their time, their resources, and themselves to take time away from work and family to travel with teenagers.
The trip is different each year, even when we visit the same locations with the same guides. Each class brings its own character and takes away something different. However, there is also a profound change happening in our Jewish community, and a new responsibility is falling on the shoulders of our Confirmands. Our congregation has once again taken the lead, through our dedicated Yom haShoah committee, in not only commemorating the Holocaust, but working hard to provide an opportunity for all of us to hear directly the voices of survivors. Yet, each year, there are less and less of those voices to hear. We are in a similar situation as our Israelite ancestors in the wilderness - the generation that witnessed the events of the Exodus had passed on; how could we carry on the immediate message of eyewitness accounts?
We are commanded, first in the citation above from the first seder while we are still in Egypt, to retell the story each year, and to tell it from the voice of personal experience. Our Confirmation students, each year, share that they may have learned before about the Holocaust, and may have been deeply moved by the facts, but being present - at the House of the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, at Sachsenhausen, in the ghetto in Krakow, at Auschwitz/Birkenau, at the spot where the Shoe Memorial marks the Arrow Cross murders along the Danube - is an altogether different experience. Beginning with their Confirmation service (Erev Shavuot - 14 May), they begin to retell this story of what happened to them - as first-hand witnesses. In doing so, they join our chain of Jewish tradition in a special way - telling their accounts of their lives - of their own Exodus, of their own Shoah. In this way, we will never forget; in this way, we will pass on our stories and ourselves, from generation to generation.
Rabbi Joel N. Abraham
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