I very recently had the incredible opportunity to participate in the international March of the Living. The Southern Region -- comprised of over 100 students from Boca Raton, West Palm Beach, Sarasota, Dallas, Bolivia, and New Zealand -- spent the first week of the trip in Poland traveling to some of the most horrendous places on Earth. Together we visited concentration camps, death camps, and ghettos, a mere few among thousands of locations where Nazis destroyed and massacred Jewish people during the Holocaust. No matter how many pictures I have seen, movies I have watched, or stories I have heard, there is nothing comparable to actually being at those horrifying sites. The experience was all the more powerful for me because my great grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Standing near the crematoria at Birkenau and listening to the esteemed Rabbi Lau tell his unbelievable tale of survival at the March of the Living ceremony, I could picture the incidents of brutal torture or miraculous escape in my own ancestors' history. 

Although we often hear the phrase, "Our survivors won't be around much longer," it never becomes trite. It gets more true by the year. The March provided me with the ability to not only befriend survivors but also and perhaps more importantly to relive their pasts and view the settings of their stories firsthand. These amazing heroes taught us, before and during our trip, about the strength and courage ingrained in each of us and in our nation. As I stepped through the "Arbeit Macht Frei" gate at Auschwitz on the day of the actual March of the Living, walking arm-in-arm with one of our survivors and looking out at a sea of Jewish teens from numerous countries such as England, Brazil, and even Germany, I felt an overwhelming sense of satisfaction and pride. 

WYHS students were given the opportunity this year to participate in two Jewish-knowledge competitions: Chidon HaTanach, the international Bible contest, and Moot Beit Din, a Jewish mock trial. These competitions have given students a chance to expand their Torah study outside of school and have provided a new way of learning our ancient Jewish texts. 

For Moot Beit Din, a competition organized by Ravsak, thirty schools across the country were presented with a civil court case and were tasked with formulating a halachik ruling based on sources from the Torah, Talmud, and rabbinic commentaries. This year's case entailed studying about lashon hara, the laws about reading private snapchats (mail), and a teacher's role in discipline. Four juniors, Dani Koenigsberg, Simcha Stadlan, Leor Levenson, and Tani Kay, with the assistance and guidance of Rabbi Horowitz, worked for the past few months on devising their halachik approach to the case. A few weeks ago, the WYHS Moot Beit Din team flew to Los Angeles, California to present their ruling as a mock "beit din" in front of a panel of judges. The students also spent a Shabbat with the other teams, meeting new friends and exchanging Torah knowledge. 

Ten students also participated in the Chidon HaTanach, the international Bible competition run by the Jewish Agency for Israel. With Mrs. Kanner, these students studied the books of Shmot, Shmuel, Esther, and parts of Trei Asar. Participants had to learn the texts in preparation for three regional exams on the material throughout the year. Three students, Leor Levenson ('16), Corey Reichenberg ('16), and Lana Rosenthal ('17) qualified for the next round and will be competing in the national competition in New York this Sunday.