I’m standing on a narrow street in what was once the Jewish Ghetto in Budapest. One of a team of seven teachers from Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School, I have come to Budapest to work with teachers from Scheiber Sandor Day School with the hopes of enriching their school and thus enriching the Jewish community. My colleagues and I walk back to our hotel having just come from a welcoming dinner with the Scheiber teachers at a lovely Glatt Kosher restaurant in this city known for both its partying and pastries.
Since August our Beth Tfiloh team has planned and discussed what and how to teach these students whom we will meet tomorrow. We are a varied and skilled group – teachers of Judaics, English, History, Foreign Language, Arts and Wellness. We range from traditional to modern orthodox, from conservative to reform to “pick and choose” Jews to Gentiles. Religiously diverse, we all share a love of teaching, of our school, of our students. We have spent the last five months creating lesson plans to teach segments of our subjects to students whom we don’t know whose English speaking skills we have not yet assessed. Yet in spite of all of these unknowns, we share our excitement and enthusiasm with our host teachers who are beginning their own journey with us, who report that their students are both nervous and excited to meet the American teachers. We have carried our handouts and lesson plans, our books and materials through baggage checks and security many thousands of miles to reach this moment.
I have come to Budapest armed with two pages of writing prompts, 100 writing journals and three calendars depicting dogs in their various stages of “cute.” One calendar features Baltimore Orioles team members holding shelter dogs from BARCS, an animal rescue in Baltimore. Who can resist puppies and baseball? Failing all else, I have brought chocolate. My plan is to ask these students to explore their feelings through memoir writing in English, and I am hoping to ease their nervousness by surrounding them with the things that have always put me at ease.
As we walk home from our welcoming dinner, a wall filled with pinpoint lights catches my eye. The points of light populate the wall and then slowly decrease until they disappear. I realize that I am standing before a Holocaust memorial. The words on an adjacent wall tell of the 70,000 Jews in Budapest who were forced into ghettos and killed, ending with an entreaty to the visitor to recite the 23rd psalm, chiseled into the wall in Hungarian, Hebrew and English. Silently, I recite the psalm in English, while my colleagues wait ahead, wondering what has detained me. My nervousness for my first day at Scheiber has fallen away, and I am ready to begin my journey.
