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Reconstructing time in a capsule
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
A time capsule?
Too superficial, responded Valley students when asked to select items for a hypothetical time capsule that would show future generations what it's like growing up Jewish in the Valley of the Sun. How, they wondered, could one or two material objects reflect the depth of their Jewish experience? Rather, they suggested, words and pictures would better tell the story, capturing memories and articulating reflections on the essential issues of identity and community that define them as Jews. That's what they want to preserve for their children's children 50 years from now.
And so they shared their precious recollections. For 17-year-old Adam Moskowitz, the choice of what to put in the capsule was easy. "I'd put in pictures of the temple where I grew up," he says. "Pictures of my youth group, of my friends at Camp Ramah."
For Moskowitz, a Horizon High School junior and a member of Beth El Congregation along with parents Les and Linda, being Jewish means being connected to community. "My best friends are in USY (United Synagogue Youth)," he says. "It's given me the opportunity to be with Jewish people and develop Jewish relationships - and that's what I'd want for my kids."
His youth group association has also provided a means for defining identity and purpose as a Jew. "Being Jewish is to repair the world," he says, "to make it a better place."
Integral to Moskowitz's involvement has been participation in a variety of social service projects. He was recently elected USY regional social action vice president.
In addition, he is an active member of Club Hunger 365, a high school group that organizes year-round activities to help combat hunger. "We work at food banks or organize food drives," he explains.
This summer he will expand his understanding of community when he travels to Poland and Israel on the USY Pilgrimage. "Everybody needs to think about making the world a better place," says Moskowitz. "In 50 years, it will have to be part of everyone's life."
Moskowitz found his identity within a Jewish peer group; Lindsay Ackerman found hers from without. Now a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, Ackerman, 21, graduated in 1995 from Corona del Sol High School in Tempe. Her high school graduating class of 750 had five Jewish students. "And only three of them really practiced Judaism," she says.
Ackerman and her parents, Ian and Wendy, are members of Temple Emanuel in Tempe. She celebrated her bat mitzvah there and participated in youth group activities until high school. An excellent student and varsity basketball player, she focused her energies on school activities.
She enrolled in Phoenix High School of Jewish Studies, but after her freshman year felt she "just didn't have the time" even for the weekly commitment. Jewish involvement "was not a big part of my life in high school," she says. But being one of only a handful of Jewish students made her very aware of her identity.
Ackerman tells of confronting a school administrator in the seventh grade when the first school dance of the year was scheduled on Rosh Hashana. "She said 'rosh a who?'" Ackerman recalls.
Experiences like that made her "that much stronger" she says. "I learned to face adversity," she says, noting that recalling such experiences for future generations of young people would help them understand and appreciate what it means to be Jewish.
"I felt different, but special, privileged," says Ackerman. She says that she learned that "you have to stand up. I know who I am, and I wouldn't want to trade that."
Her message for generations to come? "What is the purpose of fitting in if you aren't going to be yourself?"
Sarah Palestrant, 18, who recently spent two weeks in Poland and Israel on the March of the Living, also would choose words to describe what being Jewish means to her - words that focus less on difference and more on commonality.
She tells of being in Jerusalem for Yom Ha'atzmaut, celebrating Israel's 50th anniversary, with thousands of young people from all over the world. "A representative from each region came up and spoke, each in a different language," she recalls. "But everyone ended with Am Yisrael Chai (The people of Israel live). I felt surrounded by so many people with the same feelings in their hearts."
Preserving that feeling - and communicating it to others - is what Palestrant wants to pass on to future generations. "I would tell my children, show them my pictures, tell them what I found."
What she found, says Palestrant, a 1998 graduate of Phoenix Country Day School and a member of Beth El Congregation along with parents Aubrey and Faye, is an intense attachment to Jewish past, present and future.
Images from visits to Poland's concentration camps will stay with her. "To see where fingernails were actually scratched into the walls, there is nothing like touching those indentations," she says.
And a deep sense of responsibility to tell the story remains. She sees herself as a survivor, with a need to sustain the memory of those who perished with a renewed appreciation for life. "When I came back, every little thing had beauty. I was so grateful to be alive, to smile, to talk to a friend."
It's the difference between "just living," says Palestrant, who will enter Columbia University in the fall, and "being alive." That's what Palestrant would like to keep for her children with her poetry and creative photographs.
"There are so many people who go through life just living. Seeing things like I saw in Poland, it makes you alive."
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