Race for Cardin Athletics, Sunday, May 3, Baltimore Hebrew Congregation Athletic Fields, 1pm.  Come out and cheer for our athletes as they walk/jog/run to support our athletic program.  Sponsorship forms are due to athletic office before end of school day today.

Please join us Sunday, May 3 for our annual meeting where we will hold elections for the 2009-2010 school year.

REFLECTIONS FROM THE HEAD OF SCHOOL

Periodically throughout the year, I have chosen not to learn with a student for this column.  This week, to be honest, I tried to catch up with Avi Miller, ’10, to learn Acherai Mot-Kedoshim.  However, between his classes, my meetings, his baseball games and my daughter’s cardiac procedure, we could not meet to learn.  So, instead of a brief thank you note at the bottom of this column, I’d like to share with you some reflections on the past few weeks.
 
As many of you are aware, my 16-year old daughter, Brooke, was born with a cardiac defect and has had one surgery and multiple cardiac catheterization procedures since she was born to correct the defect.  On top of that, for the past year and a half, she has had chronic pain that has prevented her from attending school regularly and participating in all of the things that teens do (not always a bad thing!).  Three times in the past year she has been hospitalized, once for the chronic pain, once for a migraine and most recently, this past Monday, for another cardiac catheterization procedure.  Ever since the Cardin community members heard about it, they have been very supportive.  There are parents who barely say hello when we meet because they are so anxious to ask about Brooke. At board meetings, I hardly have a chance to enter the room before certain board members ask about Brooke’s health.  Of course, on a daily basis, our wonderful faculty members ask how she is feeling.  And, what is the most special to me; our fabulous students often stop by to check on Brooke’s health.

The two weeks since Pesach break have been extremely stressful, both at school and at home.  The senior class had to cope with a major disappointment concerning its Israel trip, and the students’ justified anger and sadness had to be addressed and validated.  One of our own students, Nate Conn, ’10, was hospitalized for a week after a high fever and dehydration.  Yom HaShoah, Yom HaZikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut put the entire school on a roller coaster of emotions and schedules.  The Jewish Times wrote an article about Cardin with an unfavorable title. Brooke had a tonsillectomy just before Pesach in preparation for her cardiac procedure and was uncomfortable (to say the least) for the entire chag.  By the time she began to feel better, we were already anticipating the catheterization and the anxiety level at home consequently was high. 

As we prepared for Brooke’s hospitalization, I was inundated with phone calls, emails and text messages from Cardin parents, students and faculty members.  Reading emails such as: Hi Barbie, Just want to wish you good luck tomorrow - hope everything goes well with Brooke's surgery. We are thinking of you! If you need help with anything, you know where to find us.  Take care, Nancy & Buz – and - Mrs. Prince, I hope all goes well with your daughter this week and I look forward to seeing you back in school! - reminded my family that we are surrounded by the prayers and thoughts of our extended Cardin family.  Of course, the good wishes continue right up to the writing of this article. Receiving text messages such as: “how is your daughter – we won the baseball game,” allowed me to be both mom and head of school simultaneously.  I was practically threatened by Alissa to keep the faculty up to date, so she joined my children in receiving updates throughout the procedure on Monday.  Ms. Parker then sent email updates to our faculty. 

Why am I relating all of this to you, my Cardin family?  To let you know that saying Mishpachat Cardin is not false.  To let you know that whatever we go through, whether at home or at school, we are never alone – we are each an integral part of a larger community, indeed a family. 

I’d like to thank all of you who asked about Brooke, before, during and after her cardiac procedure.  Your warm wishes, prayers and thoughts mean a lot to the entire Prince family.  Thank God, Brooke is doing well and the prognosis is good.

GOOD & WELFARE
Mazal Tov to Yosiah (Yoshi) Robinson, ‘10!
Yoshi hosted the “Moment in History” science segment during the Greater Baltimore Urban League’s weekly radio broadcast. Yoshi also hosted a video production of the 400th Anniversary of the Gallo Telescope and made a presentation to the Morgan State University graduating journalism majors. 

Mazal Tov to Aaron Gordon, ‘12!
Aaron was selected to by Team Baltimore to play goalie for the Inline Hockey team this summer at the JCC Maccabi Games in Westchester, NY.

JUDAICS.COMMUNICATIONS
The following is an email I recently received from Ester Cen, the coordinator of the Jewish teen group from Izmir, Turkey. The letter speaks for itself and articulates in its own unique way the feeling that their visit was a great success. Once again, thank you to everyone who helped to make this student exchange happen.  

Dear Rabbi Seltzer,

Hello, I hope you had a good Pesach! After we came back to Izmir everything was so crazy, being back to work again, getting ready for Pesach, writing all those reports and explaining what we had experienced in the States.  Crazy days ... I wanted to have a special time to write you back and try to explain what you have done to our hearts. Rabbi, I wish there would be another word other than 'thank you so much' to explain what you have created in me and what you made us live there in the States.  Every time I write about our trip or talk about it, my eyes get wet. This trip was beyond what we had dreamt. Thank you, thank you very much. You know here, in Izmir, we are unfortunately getting to be fewer and fewer people, not only getting fewer, we are losing many Jewish things and I was at a point that 'OK’ I have done the most I can, and I guess it has to be enough. But after our trip, I understood and realized that one can never do enough, NEVER. Deep in our hearts we have something, something that connects us to a much bigger family that we even are not aware of.   My kids and I became aware that we are part of a much bigger family, a family who knows how to care, and a family which feels connected to each other even though they don't know each other. You've changed our lives. Thank you very much and all the families and everyone who hosted us so gently and kindly. Please all of you know, you also have families here in the other part of the world. We would love to host you, too, in Izmir. 

I loved what you had told us about good bye so let's just say “lehitraot.” (I hope the spelling is correct) 

See you later! 

Thank you for being who you are,
Ester Cen 

Special Contemporary Holidays
I love counting the omer because it reminds me that each day is precious, and that each day can be invested with special significance.  Maybe this is why the rabbis decided to put all of our contemporary holidays on the omer counter:  Yom HaShoah, Yom HaZikaron, and Yom Ha’atzmaut.  Each “yom” has a unique purpose, character, and newly created rituals. At Cardin, each of these days was filled with special meaning. On Yom HaShoah, each student received a photograph depicting the “life that was” (a world inhabited by Jewish artists, athletes, scholars, doctors, the rich and the poor, life cycle events, daily living, etc...) before the destruction of the Nazis. The goal was to give the students a sense of what was lost, and to show that this culture continues, though wounded, to enrich the Jewish life of future generations.  The morning included the recitation of the Mourner’s Kaddish, the Eyl Maleh Rachmim, and the sounding of the shofar.  Dr. Moshe Shualy spoke about his parents who are Holocaust survivors.  In addition, he taught us the story of Cain and Abel to remind us that we must remember not only the victims, but also attempt to understand the mindset of the perpetrators so that such an atrocity will never happen again. A week later, the Cardin community gathered again to observe Yom HaZikaron.  Morah Zorah organized a beautiful and moving memorial service and ceremony in honor of those who died defending Israel. Close to 20 students volunteered to participate. Yahrzeit memorials candles were lit, English and Hebrew poetry was recited, prayers were chanted, and several students performed songs. Dr. Prentiss commented on the participants’ level of seriousness and commitment to the program:  “I was so impressed by how all the students (on stage AND in the audience) participated in the program. I was proud of EVERYONE. Its message was a true inspiration. Thank you for all your hard work in putting this together!”

The next morning, we celebrated Yom Ha’Atzmaut with a special presentation by Yoella Diamant-Cohen on her recent educational experience abroad in Israel, a delicious falafel lunch, an Israel Trivia Game prepared by Moreh Kesselman, musical and sporting events. As we continue to count the omer, we look forward to all the days ahead and what they hold in store for us!

Rabbi Stuart Seltzer
Dean of Judaic Studies

CLASSES IN ACTION
Studio Art
In Studio Art, students have completed acrylic paintings. They painted a bear with blocks; this topic was chosen to be reminiscent of a child’s play room.  They are currently working on long-pose pencil drawings, either self portraits, or observational drawings of their choice. This unusual end-of-year project chronology was proposed by the class as an interesting way to tackle traditional classroom projects.
Ms. Diane Wittner 

10th Grade Modern Western Civilization
Students are researching and developing the oral history of their families’ Jewish traditions, history, and ties to their local community into written narratives.   Interviews with one or more grandparents established the foundation for the research and the recorded account of the oral history. 

Students will compete the following:

• A family tree tracking birth and death dates and including birth locations of relatives
• Pictures from their grandparent’s past with detailed stories explaining what was happening in the picture at that time.
• A history of family connections to their local Jewish community.
• A 10-15 page narrative of a family history as told by a grandparent. 

Students must generate a detailed list of interview questions to create a flowing story of history, and organize the narratives to reflect a time capsule of experiences from our past.
Mr. Bob Cantor

Physics- Art Integration
This week, the two 11th grade Physics classes continued with their studies in harmonic motion. They have been looking at waves and simple pendulums. In conjunction with this unit, students completed a pendulum art project that captured the movement of the pendulums in paint, dripped from plastic bottles hanging upside down.  As students used both primary and secondary colors to create their colorful oval shapes dripped onto paper, they began to understand the appeal of creating spontaneous abstract art (not unlike the work of Abstract Expressionists), and the excitement of open experimenting in art and in science.  This project is a natural transition to the math portion of the unit in which students will examine the relationship between the length and the period of the pendulum.
Ms. Diane Wittner and Mr. Dean Whitfield

U.S. History
This week, eleventh graders studied the politics and culture of the 1920s. Students got into the spirit by dressing up in their interpretation of 1920s’ fashion. Students got into the spirit by dressing up in their interpretation of the fashion of the 20s. During class, we watched clips of Babe Ruth, Charlie Chaplain; we read the poems of Langston Hughes; and we listened to the music of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Bessie Smith. All in all, we leaned a lot and had fun while doing so!
Ms. Amy Fink

BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
Moot Beit Din
Take 60 eager and bright Jewish students from around the country and Canada, ask them to spend two months solving a complicated problem in contemporary Jewish law, bring them all together for a wonderful Shabbat weekend where they can all meet and bond with one another, sprinkle liberally with good food and good fun, add a dose of some of the greatest natural scenery in America and throw in a little competition for good measure and you have an idea of this year's Moot Beit Din Competition, held this year on April 23 - 26 in scenic Denver, Colorado.

"It was exhausting but totally worth it," said 10th grader Beth Zaleon, one of Cardin's three dayanim, or judges. She was joined by fellow sophomore Gabe Baraban and veteran "Mooter," Shachar Binyamin, a junior. This was our fifth appearance at the annual event; we were one of 17 schools from throughout North America participating in the competition, the largest number ever. In our first year, there were six schools. Once again, I had the honor of coaching our wonderful students.

The Moot Beit Din, essentially a Moot Court on a Jewish legal issue, enables participants to experience first-hand the workings of the Jewish legal process.  It also helps them better appreciate the scope and seriousness of halacha.  A real-life question of Jewish law was sent to all the teams. This year's question dealt with a bone marrow donor who backed out of a commitment to donate after learning of a potential life threatening risk should he continue.  Each team had a month to prepare a “teshuva”, or, responsum, to the question. This involved, among other things, hours of researching the relevant Jewish sources, including Torah, Mishna and Talmud, classic Codes of Jewish law, as well as contemporary halakhic writings. After analyzing the source materials and deciding how to apply them to the case at hand, each team submitted a formal, written teshuva. The teshuva was reviewed by a panel of distinguished rabbis and lawyers from the Denver area, who offered comments and suggestions.  Keeping the feedback in mind, the teams had another three weeks to prepare an oral argument in support of its written brief.

We arrived in Denver on Thursday and immediately joined the other teams at the hotel in the foothills of the Rockies. After unpacking and brief introductions the participants began to get to know one another. We spent Friday morning engaged in a community service project, while the afternoon found us basking in the jaw dropping beauty of Red Rocks. That culminated in a wonderful Shabbat filled with laughter, ruach, good food and new friendships. Although it was officially a competition, that did not seem to get in the way at all. On Sunday morning, after two practically sleepless nights, each team defended its teshuva.

The atmosphere in the room was electric as each team wove its arguments around the sources relevant to the case. This was serious intellectual work and the judges were visibly impressed at the level of competency and creativity of the students. While we did not win the competition this year, our team did a spectacular job and was cited for "research that obviously went beyond the immediately apparent sources."

Kudos to this year's Moot Beit Din team…and we are already thinking about next year in Philadelphia!
Rabbi Yaakov Chaitovsky

BLEWS – The Black/Jewish Forum of Baltimore
On April 23rd, our 10th graders completed their second and final BLEWS meeting of their inaugural year with the Western High School students. The students participated in a variety of activities that focused on team-building and leadership skills. In addition, the sophomores were developed an understanding of how the legislative process works and how problems are solved through interactive activities presented by Senator Lisa Gladden, an African American, along with her close friend and community activist – Ronnie Rosenbluth owner of TOV pizza. Their final task of the day was to choose a community service project on which they will work throughout their next two years with BLEWS.  The students reported that they had a great time learning as well as making connections with the Western Students. They look forward to continuing this important program as part of their Cardin experience. 
Ms. Jackie Villet 

COLLEGE SCENE
Don’t forget that May 5 is the registration deadline for the SAT subject and reasoning test (to be held in June).

Jameel Freeman, the Associate Director of Admissions at Johns Hopkins University, will hold a college prep workshop on May 5 at 7pm for Cardin families. This meeting is geared towards parents of 10th and 11th graders. At this meeting Jameel and I will introduce you to the intricacies of the college search process. This meeting is also a great opportunity to hear from the JHU representative who reads applications from our area.  This meeting will be held at Cardin in room M1.

Congratulations to all of our seniors who were accepted to outstanding colleges and universities – look for the full list in our ad in The Jewish Times this spring.
Ms. Hallie Schein

COUNSELOR’S CORNER
Jewish Community Services (JCS) now offers a wide range of program choices for children, pre-teens, teens, adults, parents and professionals all focused on prevention education. Programming covers a variety of topics including substance abuse, healthy choices, relationships, parenting, and childhood trauma. If you would like more information and to see a complete listing, please contact Jackie Villet at 410-585-1400 x211 or jvillet@shoshanascardin.org or check out their website at www.jcsbaltimore.org/prevention.  
Ms. Jackie Villet 

JEREMY’S JOURNAL
With the year winding down, the SGA has one more activity planned. Our annual movie night will take place this coming Saturday night, May 2, at 9:15.  The admission price for this event is $3. We hope to see everyone there, and we know that it will be great fun for all. 

Attention 9th, 10th, and 11th graders: 2009-2010 elections for SGA are coming up!  A number of positions need to be filled.  Even if you only have a slight interest in serving on the SGA, I urge you to attend an informational meeting today during lunch. I encourage everyone to get involved in the student government because it is a memorable experience in which you will develop leadership skills and learn to work cooperatively with peers, faculty, and administration, as you enhance student-life at Cardin.
Jeremy Hiken

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