Learning and Growing at Cardin

In March I chose to take a different path than most teens for the summer. I chose to travel to Poland and Israel. I have gone to Camp Ramah in Palmer for 8 summers and this was the final summer to be a "camper". From March until June I studied the Holocaust. I read Night, watched Shindler’s List, and read assorted readings about Poland and the Holocaust. The day finally came that I left. My family and I drove to New York and met the group there, and I was then on my way. After a six hour layover in Austria I was finally in Poland. There was no time to waste; we went straight to our first site. It was a cemetery in Warsaw. The first thing we were told when we entered was to not be sad. This wasn’t a sad cemetery like all the other ones that we had ever visited. This cemetery had survived the Holocaust. A lot of stones were still there and there was a wall made of all the stones that had been destroyed. This wall was made to honor the memory of the people whose graves had been destroyed. After that we stayed our first night in Warsaw. We stayed in Warsaw for 2 days, then Lublin for 1, and Krakow for Shabbat. One of the most memorable sites that we visited was the Rema Shul and his grave. As my tour guide, Moshe Gold, told us about this, a light bulb went off in my head. I had learned about Rabbi Moshe Isserles in school the year before. It was ingrained in my head who he was and why he was important. When my tour guide asked my group if anyone knew who he was, I knew. I felt proud that I was among people who had been going to day school their whole lives and I knew something that everyone else’s schools didn’t cover. Through the whole Poland trip this happened to me. I was very knowledgeable about the sites that we went to because of my time at Cardin. I was very grateful for this and I look forward to another great year of learning and growing as a student at Cardin.

Adina Golob
Class of 2012