The Daniel Pearl Education Center Inc. committee continues its active outreach to the community to support the principles of humanity and understanding -- as well as harmony through music -- that are the legacies of the late Daniel Pearl.
In February, the DPEC committee sponsored its fourth annual interfaith trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. This year's trip involved approximately 70 teens from Temple B'nai Shalom, Saint Bartholomew's Parochial School and the First Reformed Church of Highland Park, as well as nearly 30 chaperones. The delegation visited the museum and then paid visits to the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Memorial Wall.
The next day, a number of the teens returned to the temple to hear stories of persecution and triumph from Holocaust survivor Judith Sherman and Cuban-born US Congressman Albio Sires. The program was moderated by Temple B'nai Shalom congregant David Litt, a member of the DPEC committee.
Sherman, who lives in Monroe and is the author of Say the Name: A Survivor's Tale in Poetry and Prose, told the teens, "After many years of silence as a survivor, I feel that I do have to bear witness, and so I will. I have no choice but to do so."
She added, "Anti-Semitism and genocide continue, and we adults are not doing such a good job in this world in preventing these things from happening."
Congressman Sires, who emigrated from Cuba as a child and lived with his family in West New York, talked about the enthnic intolerance he faced as a child.
"I was called a 'spic,'" he told the audience. "I was not allowed to play basketball on the court owned by the town."
He added, "You should just take a person for what they are, how they treat you, and do not characterize them. I lived with that lesson all my life."