5/12/26 We Heart Bratislava

 5/12/26- We Heart Bratislava 

As I type these words, The Davis Academy Graduating Class of 2026 is making Davis Academy history as the first ever group of Davis Academy students to spend a night in the capital city of Slovakia: Bratislava. I’m guessing that when we return them to you and they start to share their version of the trip, Bratislava will be a highlight. It’s a charming city, nestled between Hungary and Austria, with a beautiful medieval castle, all right on the banks of the Danube River. In our short time here, we toured the castle, took in the beautiful slopes of the Carpathian Mountains, had a delicious dinner, and took an evening stroll to the city square with a Davis Academy sponsored gelato stop to close out the evening. While it’s a touch chilly, we’ve all got a warm feeling at the moment. 

The rest of this post will be brief because today’s focus was simply on getting from Prague to Bratislava (and onward tomorrow to Budapest). Prior to crossing into Slovakia we stopped at a lovely ropes course nestled into the mountainside outside of Brno. We spent a few hours completing the various ropes elements before enjoying lunch al fresco. The fresh air and physical activity helped break up our ride, and keep our energy in a good place until arriving here in Bratislava. Tomorrow we’ll learn more about the unique history and current status of the Jewish community in Bratislava by meeting with the main rabbi here before we head on to Budapest. For now, we bid you a pleasant evening. If you want to feel like you’re here with us, go get some gelato and check out your nearest medieval castle!

5/11/26-- The Misery of Terezin

 5/11/26-- The Misery of Terezin 

Built in the late 1700s, Terezin was designed to be a small, fortified border town that could help protect citizens of one empire from citizens of another. Knowing this, it comes as no surprise that Terezin isn’t a welcoming place. Surrounded by a massive moat and steep walls, Terezin doesn’t invite you in. And you certainly don’t end up in Terezin by accident. The Jews of Prague and many surrounding cities, villages, and neighboring lands certainly didn’t. As we know, our fellow Jews were sent there. Forcibly removed from their homes, uprooted from their lives, displaced, driven, and herded. And from that awful place, Terezin, they were sent to places far worse. While some returned, none returned whole. And for most, including all but a few hundred of the children, Terezin was a death sentence. 

Why would a person go to Terezin? Why would a person live in Terezin? Why would human beings intentionally create such a dark and dreary, nihilistic and hateful place? These are agitating questions. They’re agitating because they have answers that we’d rather not hear. Principal among those answers is the simple truth that Terezin served a significant purpose in supporting the aims of one of the 20th century’s most toxic ideologies: Nazism. When viewed from the vantage point of Nazi ideology, Terezin makes perfect sense. Stated plainly: Terezin is a place to collect, store, and process Jews. It’s a place exquisitely and elegantly designed to solve a very specific problem. 

Among Terezin’s eerie qualities is the silence. As we traveled from site to site, we passed more than a handful of local residents. But I can’t recall hearing a single voice. Only the sound of chirping birds. No planes, no lawnblowers, no honking horns, no recorded music coming from homes or cafes. Just the sound of rustling leaves and chirping birds. Terezin is so silent that if you really listen closely you can hear the sound of suffering, the sound of shock, of horror, of disbelief. Of human anguish. I wish I could paint a less stark picture, but it’s really not possible. And knowing that the Nazis used Terezin to film propaganda films to try and mislead the world regarding the true barbarity of their regime, it feels particularly inappropriate to breathe even one single additional ounce of humanity into a place so awful. But even still…

Much of our focus at Terezin was on the brave adults, specifically the artists and teachers, who cared for the children of Terezin. These adults did everything that they could to provide a sense of normalcy, hope, and wellbeing to Terezin’s children. Can we all, for a moment, imagine being such a teacher? Walking into a classroom full of terrified orphans, wondering which will be the next to be deported, lose a parent, or fall ill, die, and be taken to the crematorium? When we hear that Jews kept faith even in the darkest hours, it can only be because of people like this. How could these people set aside their own terror, trauma, and grief? Perhaps we can all sit with this question for a moment. 

A beautiful feature of youth is the simultaneous depth and expression of feeling alongside the inability to truly grasp the horrors of a place like Terezin. So, while I know that our 8th graders will never forget Terezin, I also know that they didn’t fully get it. I’m not sure any of us can. Or even if we can, that we should. Some places, some deeds, some failures of humanity should remain eternally inscrutable to decent people. And at the same time, we shouldn’t grant Terezin more power than it deserves. While it was a place where human beings used power against their fellow man in the most deplorable ways imaginable, it’s also a place that oozes with the infected impotence of a sick and perverted ideology. Those walls, that silence, that barbarism--- all that reminds us just how grotesque and ultimately condemnable and feeble an ideology like Nazism is. In moments when we are fearful, maybe our experience of Terezin can be a source of strength. Not even Terezin, ovens ablaze, could rid the world of Jews. Meanwhile, we thrive, living our values, honoring our traditions, and Terezin remains the same miserable fortress it has always been. A sick and miserable fortified town, hiding behind its walls. 

Well… having said that… as promised, the rest of the day took a lighter touch. Some of our life affirming fun was rerouted because of some afternoon rain, but we didn’t hear any complaints. Tomorrow we pack our bags and leave Prague. Our bags are a bit heavier than when we arrived here, due to some modest souvenir shopping and, more symbolically, because of the many experiences, insights, and memories that we will be carrying with us as we journey on.

5/10/26 Multiple Perspectives from Prague

 5/10/26-- Multiple Perspectives from Prague

Somewhere along the path of life each of us, in our journey toward maturity,  learned to view the world through multiple perspectives. And while we may think that we’ve always had the ability to take multiple perspectives, I suspect that most of us would acknowledge that it’s actually an acquired skill, and a necessary one at that. The ability to consider any given event, person, or experience through multiple perspectives is a sign that we’re on the right path, that we’re capable of empathy, compassion, measured consideration, analytical assessment, and maybe even self-transcendence. Perspective taking strengthens our sense of self, our ability to forge meaningful relationships of all kinds, and ultimately, our ability to arrive at correct, nuanced, insightful, and thoughtful understandings of the world around us. While our 8th graders are well on their way toward being able to hold and consider multiple perspectives, they’re not fully there yet. It’s a developmental task that awaits them in their adolescence and well beyond. Today offered all of us a chance to strengthen this skill. Unbeknownst to them, our 8th graders grew today. 

I found myself considering the idea of multiple perspectives during our final activity of the day, a river cruise here in Prague. As we gently cruised under and around the Charles Bridge, watching the sunset over Prague Castle, waving at the friendly diners filling the cafes along the riverside, I was struck by the simplest of observations: boy, the Charles Bridge looks different depending on whether you’re walking across it or sailing underneath it. Multiple perspectives. 

When we gathered for breakfast this morning, a few of our 8th graders were a bit disheartened when they discovered that breakfast in Prague looks very different from Breakfast in Sandy Springs. Confusion quickly gave way to consumption when curiosity and hunger joined forces. Foods that were foreign, different, and unknown, became familiar. It’s a bit of a stretch, but I’d argue that there was some perspective taking being done at breakfast. 

Shortly after arriving in Prague’s Jewish Quarter it became clear to all us why the Jewish Quarter is a destination not only for Jews, but for all who visit Prague. At the same time, our experiences in the Jewish Quarter revealed the fact that yes, after somewhere between 10 and 2 years at The Davis Academy, our 8th graders see the world through a Jewish lens. There’s a different perspective (and a special one at that) that comes with touring the Jewish Quarter not only as an interested tourist, but as a Jew. Standing in front of the Altneushul, the oldest consistently operational synagogue in Europe, we were able to weave together a complicated but also utterly compelling narrative linking that synagogue with the State of Israel and the first modern Hebrew city of Tel Aviv. How? Because of Theodore Herzl, of course. I won’t unpack it all here and now, but there’s a deep and inextricable link that unites these seemingly disparate Jewish entities. Such a perspective is unavailable to someone who isn’t immersed in Jewish knowledge and learning. Part of what makes it difficult to see through multiple perspectives is that to truly do so, we have to know about more than one thing. We have to learn. And to learn, we have to be taught. And we have to value the learning. 

Another example of multiple perspectives that came to us in the Jewish Quarter came as we toured the Pinchas Synagogue. Unlike the Altneushul, this ancient synagogue is no longer an active synagogue. Instead it is a memorial, etched with the names of 80,000 Czech Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust. Available to us as we experienced this solemn memorial were many new and different perspectives. For example, the importance of having a homeland, of Israel. 

While I could continue to mine our time in the Jewish Quarter for even more and perhaps even richer examples of multiple perspectives, I’ll shift to the middle portion of our day. As you might imagine, there was a significant shift in perspective for our 8th graders when a beautiful European square became not only a site of important historical import, but also a place for free time and lunch with friends and eventually as the site of an urban scavenger hunt. A perennial highlight of our 8th grade trips is handing the kids an allowance of local currency, making sure they’re clear on the rules and the safety guidelines, and then letting them enjoy (the appearance of) independence. They came back with smiles, stories, and memories that we hope they’ll cherish. 

So overall, today accomplished one of travel’s greatest outcomes. Whether they realize it or not, today was a day full of growth. We saw Prague through multiple perspectives, and experienced Prague through all of our senses. We had opportunities to experience Prague as Jews, but also as teenagers, as students but also as tourists, as a community but also as individuals and so much more. It was a joy to watch our 8th graders shift perspectives in developmentally appropriate ways. And it was inspiring to see them shift perspective in gratifyingly precocious ways as well, such as during our time in the Jewish Quarter. Tomorrow we’ll very much continue this broadening of horizons, but with a very different tone. As you know, tomorrow we head to Terezin. While the 2nd half of our day will be an inspiring celebration of life, the first half of our day will be one that will change them forever. In the meantime, we’ll let them enjoy their hotel rooms and a night of hopefully good sleep, so that tomorrow we can support them as they encounter the reality of visiting a concentration camp. Our goal in visiting Terezin is not to frighten or traumatize them, but to inspire them to grow ever more human, understanding that this is life’s most noble and urgent pursuit.