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Students and teachers commemorated Yom HaShoah on Thursday morning with a meaningful and interactive program. The morning began with our participating Names, Not Numbers seniors lining the school halls with burning candles. The program opened with T’hilim, led by Ms. Leah Moskovich, followed by the lighting of six yahrzeit candles, symbolizing the six million lives lost in the Shoah. Each candle was introduced and lit by someone in the Central community who has a personal connection to someone who perished in the Holocaust.

At a time when the world has been turned upside down, people are struggling, and each day brings a new challenge, it is even more important that we remember – that we remember the Shoah, the millions of innocent lives lost, and the hardships, fears, isolation, and monstrous suffering endured by the Jewish people.

While SKA classes were held on Zoom the week after Pesach and faculty and students were all in different places, Yom HaShoah at the Stella K. Abraham High School for Girls was commemorated on Thursday, April 8, in a particularly reverent way.

MTA is proud to announce that Mrs. Tova Fish-Rosenberg, MTA Director of Hebrew Language and Special Programs and Founder of Names, Not Numbers, has been named a winner of the prestigious Wilbur Award by the Religion Communicators Council, for the Names, Not Numbers project and her role as its Producer/Creator. Since 1949, the Wilbur Awards have been presented annually to recognize excellence in the communication of religious issues, values, and themes in public secular media. Through the awards, the Religion Communicators Council (RCC) recognizes the work of individuals, production companies, and agencies as they communicate about religious issues, values, and themes with professionalism, fairness, respect, and honesty.

Throughout the month of March, the Hebrew Academy of Long Beach participated virtually in Long Island History Day as part of the larger National History Day Competition. The students created projects that examined events in history and how they relate to this year’s theme, Communication: The Key to Understanding. For the past five months, under the guidance of their social studies teacher, Ms. Kristen Waterman, the eighth grade students researched various events and people from time periods as far back as the American Industrial Revolution and as recent as the 1980s. Seven of the nine groups from HALB placed within the top six on Long Island, with three projects placing first in their category. All projects that placed will be advancing to New York State History Day, which will take place virtually in April.