Every April teenagers from southern Nevada will take part in the International March of the Living, along with a number of Holocaust survivors and some 10,000  young people from over 60 countries. 

 

   Temple Beth Sholom, in memory of its beloved congregant, Audrey Merkin, founded a scholarship fund to enable young people to learn about their history by spending a week in Poland, seeing Auschwitz and Birkenau with their own eyes and honoring those killed at the Yom Hashoah memorial and then going on to Israel for the commemoration of Yom Hazikaron, a tribute to the fallen soldiers of Israel and the celebration this year as the State of Israel celebrates its Anniversary, Yom Ha’atzmaut.

 

   For the past seven years, the Audrey Merkin Scholarship Fund, along with its new partner, the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas, has enabled some 70 teenagers to share in this experience.  Because her own granddaughter, Kerry, had participated in the March, it was Shirley Chaplin who inspired Temple Beth Sholom to create this meaningful tribute to Audrey.  At this year’s annual fundraising luncheon, so generously underwritten by Fred Glusman and Piero’s Restaurant, the participants viewed a video of Kerry who is  now in Israel studying to become a rabbi, because of this life-changing event. 

 

   Rabbi Felipe Goodman offered the following observations:

“What you see in that video is what you want the result to be.  When you see these children who come back from experiences like this, this is success.  The words that I heard there legitimize what our synagogue does, what we do as Jews.  We are here to keep Judaism alive and without programs like this, it would never happen.