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Most March of the Living teens won’t see Israel this year

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Message: If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/17475/full/17475/most-march-of-the-living-teens-won-t-see-israel-this-year/ Most March of the Living teens won’t see Israel this year Friday, March 22, 2002 | by MELISSA RADLER Teenagers from the West Coast will be among the vast majority of March of the Living participants who will not visit Israel in April after the annual pilgrimage to former Nazi death camps last week nixed the Israeli portion of its program. Since the Bay Area sends a contingent on the trip only every other year, local students largely weren't affected by the decision. Any Bay Area teen wishing to make the trip this year, however, was referred to the San Diego Agency for Jewish Education, which was among the overwhelming majority of participating agencies to vote against sending the teens to Israel. Three students from San Jose and one from Sacramento are slated to go on the trip. "It's hard for me to believe we feel safe sending kids to Poland and not to Israel. I still cry when I say it," said Cecile Jordan, the San Diego AJE's executive director. "I didn't want to put the March of the Living trip in jeopardy for the future, and if even one child got hurt, it might put all of the program in jeopardy." The San Diego AJE is the coordinating agency for all West Coast March of the Living participants. While, in years past, as many as 25 students from the Bay Area alone made the trip, Jordan said only 30 teens from the entire Western United States are slated to go this year, and chalks up the tumult in Israel as the reason. Roughly 1,500 students from around the world are scheduled to make the April trip. The decision to cut the Israeli portion of the trip angered many, and one New Jersey federation, MetroWest, vowed to send its students anyway. "For a March of the Living program to emphasize visitation of concentration camps and other devastations against the Jewish people in Europe without participants witnessing the rebirth of the Jewish state is not the message we want to impart," said federation president Steven Klinghoffer in a statement released Tuesday. "Therefore, it is vital that the Israel component be incorporated." Organizers at the New Jersey federation said the Israel portion of the trip would follow the same itinerary as that provided by the march, including Memorial Day and Independence Day celebrations, and that security would be coordinated with the appropriate offices in Israel. Jordan said that March of the Living still planned for participants to partake in a "very meaningful, post-Poland experience," at a yet to be disclosed overseas location. Two East Coast fathers whose children planned to visit Israel with the March of the Living expressed their disappointment with march organizers and pledged to send their kids to Israel regardless of the cancellation. Martin Prager, whose 18-year-old daughter, Alyssa, also plans to visit Israel with the federation, called the cancellation "unfortunate, but we have to be pragmatic that what's going on in Israel represents a potential danger." Added Mark Sarna, "I think it's a disgrace that they're willing to go to Poland and not to Israel." Sarna is a child of Holocaust survivors and chairman of the American Friends of the Ghetto Fighters' Museum. His 17-year-old daughter, Danielle, will fly from Poland to Israel with the federation. The march organizers, he said, "showed cowardice and basically buckled in to pressure and fear, particularly when Israel needs American Jewry so much." Jordan doesn't see things that way. "I'm not abandoning Israel in her hour of need," she said. "I'm just not willing to take other people's children to Israel right now."

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