Month: April 2014 (page 3 of 3)

Marching Into the Past

The bus stops, our heads glued to the windows to see what awaits us at our first destination. We see snowflakes starting to fall from the clear sky. Immediately the concerns heighten. “I don’t have snow boots on!” “I don’t even have socks on!” “My coat is in my suitcase!” “I’m going to freeze!” We step off the bus and the cold air slaps us in the face. We are definitely not prepared for this.

We walk down the path, following our group’s tour guide. I can barely hear him over the sounds of our feet crunching the snow and gravel and the chatter that surrounds me. I stuff my hands in my pockets as far as they will go, searching for warmth. My whole body starts to shake and the feeling in my toes has disappeared completely. Our tour guide stops us and I look up to see his solemn face waiting for our attention. “Welcome to Treblinka.”

Screen Shot 2014-04-11 at 12.14.46 AMNow the air feels cold and empty. No one speaks except for our tour guide and the wind. I am both afraid and curious of what is to come as my feet carry my numb body further and further past the snow-covered station where freight cars supposedly delivered their next victims. These victims were people, like you and me, who had families, friends, jobs, hobbies, emotions, hopes, dreams, and lives. I remember the tour guide telling us how these people were sometimes dropped off and immediately told to run as fast as they could while Nazis released dogs that chased them up to the gas chambers where they were gassed to death.

This is it. I am here. I am in Poland, learning about my people, seeing the horrors they went through, feeling things I have never felt before and never knew I could feel.

From April 3rd-17th, 2013, my senior year of high school, I decided to join hundreds of other Jewish teens on a trip called the March of the Living through my Jewish youth group, B’nai Brith Youth Organization (BBYO). The March is a two-week trip: one week is spent in Poland, visiting the sites of the Holocaust, and the second week is spent in Israel, celebrating our Jewish heritage. I promised myself that I would go on the trip when I learned about it my sophomore year of high school, and there is not a single day where I regret that promise. That trip was the most difficult and most amazing experience I have ever had. It changed me as a person and taught me things I never could have learned from watching a Holocaust movie or looking at photos of a concentration camp. We were there. We walked through the gas chambers of Auschwitz that were still tinted blue from the gas and covered in white scratch marks from victims trying to claw their way out. We saw the memorial at Majdanek that held the mound of ashes of the seventy thousand prisoners who died in the torture camp. We marched, as the Holocaust victims were once forced to, from Auschwitz to Birkenau, but this time proudly waving Israeli flags in the air and saying, “Never forget.”

Screen Shot 2014-04-11 at 12.14.53 AM

Never forget. Those words mean something new to me now. Now, when I say those words, I am brought back to the cold days in Poland. I once again hear the ghostly voices of people singing HaTikvah and the Mourner’s Kaddish after seeing the concentration camps. I once again see the piles of shoes, hair, suitcases, and dignity that were left behind. I once again feel my heart beating faster and faster, warm tears streaming down my frozen face, as I break down from the intensity of what I have seen. We must never let this happen again to anyone. We must work together to end genocide once and for all. It is a shame that we say, “Never forget,” while we allow genocides to take thousands of lives in places like Africa without a single concern.

I have been thinking about the March a lot this past week. Exactly one year ago, I was not in my warm, comfortable college dorm room studying Public Policy and Spanish. No, I was in Poland, cold and heart-broken, stepping into the past of my people. I hope that I have made you think, as well. I hope that maybe those thoughts will inspire you and turn into actions. This world is not perfect, and it never will be. It will always be in need of fixing, of “Tikkun Olam” – repairing the world – and it is up to us to do that fixing, to bring our world closer to perfection one step at a time.

Imperfection, Madness, and Alternative Spring Break

Before you being reading this blog post, please take note of the following: I am a UDAB site leader. This organization means a great deal to me. So if you are sick of hearing about the productive/worldly/influential things that people did over break while you were at home watching Netflix or drinking in Florida, I get it. But you should also probably stop reading. Because this will make you vomit.

My freshman year of college, I randomly decided to apply for an alternative spring break trip. By complete chance, I was accepted to the program. The trip wasn’t perfect. We had to get up at 4:45 am and walk through campus with our snack-heavy duffels from Russell to Trabant. Our bus had a broken DVD player and axel, which busted somewhere in rural Virginia, leaving us stranded for four hours. I forgot a bandana and never had a hot shower. As a group we managed to obtain some very awkward tan lines.

It was without a doubt, the second best week of my life. I came back enlightened, inspired, and invigorated. In mid-May, I learned that I would be among the newest class of UDAB site leaders. I was ecstatic.

photo (2)As it turns out, planning an alternative spring break trip requires a great deal more work than participating in one does. My stress levels were almost entirely determined by what was happening with UDAB. If we had a SAS cupcake fundraiser approaching, I was happy. If we were sitting in Perkins for hours on end conducting interviews, I was drained. If I stopped for a single second to remember that I was leading a new trip to one of the most rural and impoverished areas in the country under the direction of lovable but less-than-organized hippies, I was panicked. Two days before the trip I found myself crying in a public bathroom and running on six hours of sleep in two days.

Once again, my trip wasn’t perfect. We got somewhat lost in the back-roads of West Virginia. I unknowingly forced my participants to sleep in a frigid yurt (see Google for description) on the very first night. As it turns out, ticks are fairly common in heavily wooded areas and snow in late March is a possibility. My expectations were so far from reality, it was actually comical.

But it was, without a doubt, the best week of my life, for reasons that cannot be explained in simple words or iPhone photographs. I learned more from my fellow site leader, from my participants, and from our community partner in seven days than I learn over the course of an entire school year. For seven days, I lived life in the most beautiful way. For seven days, I was a part of something larger than myself.

UDAB is a lot of work. It’s a lot of higher-level thinking, advanced planning, organizational jargon, color-coded spreadsheets, and early-weekend-morning activities. Unlike so many things in life however, it’s worth every ounce of work exerted. I have zero regrets about the hours of sleep lost, the personal dishevelment obtained, the countless emails sent, or the quantity of tears shed. Because in the grand scheme of things, these negative aspects were minimal when compared to the reward. UDAB has brought me far more joy than sadness. It’s made my college experience. It’s shown me the best possible version of myself. It’s changed so many lives for the better, and I hope that this year’s participants had an equally incredible experience.

You can vomit now.

Home Is Where the Heart Is

On the side of a New Jersey Street sits a little house with sky-blue siding. The house is two stories, and has one small apartment on each floor. A steep rock driveway curves around the back of the house to a three car garage. A cute little staircase leads straight up to the front door.

HouseThis blue house was my childhood house, and I got the surprising chance to re-visit that house this past week. Last week I was visiting my family in northern Jersey and we decided to take a walk through the old house because we knew the current owners. The house has been owned by my extended family for years, and almost everyone in our family has lived in it at some point during their lifetime.

When I arrived at the house with my dad and sisters, it looked exactly the same as before. The only thing that had changed was that a small bear figurine sat in the front yard, which was put outside by our superstitious uncle. The figurine made us laugh, and then we continued into the house. It was nostalgic walking up the stairs to the second story apartment and stepping into my old room.

BearI as walked around, I remembered old stories…waking up in the attic on April Fool’s Day to see a foot of snow outside, going to the park across the street, and when our car rolled off the back driveway into our neighbor’s pool. There are so many memories in that house and it made me think of all the places I had lived over the years.

My family has lived in Arizona, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I lived most of my life in the little city of Lancaster which is surrounded by miles of farm land. Whenever I tell people I’m from Lancaster, they always ask if I’m Amish. I don’t mind constantly being asked this, and instead I find the question humorous. Just like my childhood town in New Jersey, Lancaster has a special place in my heart.

Now I call Newark, Delaware my home. This town has grown on me each semester, mostly because of the friendly college students and the quaint little shops on Main Street. Each time class starts again, I can’t wait to come back. I love returning to our campus with the picturesque brick buildings and greens out of a storybook. I feel like I’ve had so many different homes over the years, but the thing that makes each place special is the people that I’ve met in all the different communities.

It took me a long time to realize that spending time with people is the best part of life. I used to care completely about schoolwork, planning ahead, and achieving the next goal. This year I really have taken care to get to know people and I now appreciate every single conversation I have with my friends and family. Without my friends and family, my childhood house would have been nothing more than just a house. It sounds cliché, but home truly is where the heart is. Now I can’t wait to one day buy my own house and create even more memories. Who knows…maybe one day I’ll live in my childhood house again.

A True Break

In the past two days I have been asked countless times what I did over my spring break. And each time, my answer has been the same: nothing. Yes, I did practically nothing over my week off and no, I am not ashamed about it.

 

 

Last year, I had the opportunity to take part in a UD Alternative Breaks program. With UDaB, I traveled to Bayboro, North Carolina to help with disaster relief from Hurricane Irene. It was a fantastic week and not only did I get to serve a needy community, but I also had the privilege of meeting many incredible Blue Hens. I would recommend that experience to anyone, because it is amazing to see what a group of students can accomplish in only one week. This year however, I was looking for something different over spring break: a week to myself to do nothing.

 

 

That is not to say that I stared at the walls in my house in suburban New Jersey all week. I had the distinct pleasure of catching up on all my television shows, shuttling my younger siblings around town (you bet my mother loved that), baking cookies, hiking, running errands, and watching some high school lacrosse games. Yes, there were days that I took three-hour naps, but there were also days when I actually buckled down and did some research for an essay that I have to write. So, it was not a fun-filled tropical vacation or a selfless service trip, but in my humble opinion, it was a fantastic week.

 

 

It certainly is not that I advocate doing nothing in all my free time. But on rare occasions, I think doing nothing is the best thing. As students, and especially as Honors students, we know that life at college is incredibly busy. For me it seems that once I make it through a round of tests, I have to start studying for the next one. With academics, extracurricular activities, and planning for the future, we usually have very little free time on our hands. That is why I found it incredibly exciting to be able to relax and put my mind at ease for a week.

 

 

So while I am all about having new experiences and taking advantage of all that UD has to offer, I also believe that it is important to have some time to ourselves. Service trips and vacations are great ways to spend spring break, but if you need to unwind, spending the week at home is an unbeatable decision. After all that time to myself, I am refreshed and ready to take on the second half of the semester, tests and all!

Who needs to travel when your home has a view like this?

Who needs to travel when your home has a view like this?

 

 ~Rebecca Jaeger

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