H eadlines
Parkland Continued from Page 1
went through because I want them
to feel something,” said Barrack,
who wore a red sweatshirt with
“#DouglasStrong” emblazoned
across the front. “I want them to
be touched by something so they
know what it’s like.”
Spea kers
i ncluded
10th-grader Zoe Freedman,
who introduced Barrack;
10th-grader Sydnee Ostroff,
who shared statistics of gun
violence; and freshman Rep.

Madeleine Dean (D-District
4), who gave an overview of
the gun control legislation she
introduced to Congress on Jan.

30. A group of students also
sang at the event.

Barrack shared her experi-
ence of the shooting and how
students at her school have
since struggled with trauma
and depression.

That day began nor-
mally for her. She was read-
ing The Catcher in the Rye in
her fourth-period class when
gunshots rang out, and she
dropped her book.

The students knew what
to do because of the school’s
active shooter drills. She and
her classmates crowded behind
the teacher’s desk in the corner.

She heard gunshots “like pots
and pans banging against each
other,” screams from students
in other classrooms and shouts
of “Put your hands up!”
Those shouts were from offi-
cers who had arrived at the
scene. But Barrack thought
they were a group of shooters
in the building.

When those officers broke
down her classroom door, she
thought she was about to die.

The officers escorted the stu-
dents out and instructed them
to keep their eyes forward.

Students looked down anyway,
and Barrack glimpsed bodies
and bullets on the ground. The
air was full of smoke.

“That was it for some peo-
ple,” Barrack said. “That was it
for a lot of my friends. I knew
seven of the victims.”
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean talks about gun violence.

She is surrounded at school
by daily reminders of the trag-
edy. Students and teachers
sometimes break out into sobs.

In one of her classes, she sits
next to a student who was shot.

“It was an accomplishment to
even go back to school,” Barrack
said. “A lot of people transferred
schools because the environment
of the school was so different.

Not even just the environment,
the people changed. My friend-
ships changed. I’m not friends
with my best friends anymore,
and I’d rather be friends with
freshmen because they’re not
depressed and they’re not on
antidepressants.” Later in the event, Dean spoke
about her bill, the Undetectable
Firearms Modernization Act,
which would prohibit the pos-
session of a firearm that is
undetectable by airport-level
detection devices.

According to the Gun
Violence Archive, close to
16,000 people were killed and
more than 28,000 were injured
by firearms in 2018.

“What’s awful is we’re no
longer surprised,” Dean said.

“Think about it. This week, we
marked the anniversary of the
Parkland horrific tragedy and
massacre, and then on Friday,
the day after the Parkland anni-
versary, we watched another
horrific mass shooting unfold
at a company in Aurora, Ill.

Six dead, including the shooter,
and at least seven wounded.

Just another day in America.”
Rachel Eisenman,
an 11th-grader and co-president of
KIFTY, said the group of teens
organized the gun control preven-
tion event in about two weeks.

“Me and my friends, we
really did that. We pulled that
off,” Eisenman said. “We were
really proud of ourselves and
all the work we had done.”
In mid-January, Rabbi Stacy
Eskovitz Rigler, director of reli-
gious education, took the syna-
gogue’s confirmation class on
its annual trip to Washington,
D.C., as part of the Religious
Action Center for Reform
Judaism’s L’Taken Seminar.

There the students chose to
lobby their representatives for
gun violence prevention, and
one student, Freedman, shared
her version of events from the
Parkland shooting.

It was a story Freedman
shared again at the event on
Feb. 19, when she introduced
her camp friend, Barrack. On
Feb. 14, 2018, when Freedman
heard about the shooting, she
had texted Barrack, wanting to
see if she was OK.

“Three hours,” Freedman
said. “Three hours I sat, staring
at my phone, waiting, waiting
for that one notification telling
me she was alive.”
At a KIFTY meeting in early
February, Rigler suggested to
the students that they should
organize an event honoring
Parkland. The students got to work
organizing the event, with
guidance from Rigler and
others. Freedman reached
out to Barrack about speak-
ing at the event, while Ostroff
wrote to Dean’s office. Shayna
Saltzburg, KIFTY’s member-
JEWISH EXPONENT
Zoe Freedman introduces her camp friend and Parkland survivor,
Samara Barrack.

ship vice president, set up the
RSVP form. The KIFTY teens
contacted local youth group
advisers, Jewish educational
directors and CeaseFirePA,
which tabled at the event. They
made their own flyers and
press releases.

“I want my teens, who are
post-B’nai Mitzvah, to know
that their responsibilities
and opportunities as Jews
in America begin at age 13,”
Rigler said. “For them, they
were able to truly live out what
it means to be a modern Jewish
teenager. They were able to
speak out for justice, they were
able to give voice to suffer-
ing and they were able to take
action to save a life or save
many lives, and they did that
all in a Jewish context.” l
szighelboim@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0729
What Happens To Your
Exploring the New Field of
Religious Neurotheology
What Happens To Your Brain during
Religious Experiences?
Exploring the New
Andrew B. Newberg,
M.D. Neurotheology
Thursday, March 28 - 7:30 pm
Learn about brain
science, religious
experience and how they
affect our well-being
Andrew B. Newberg,
Thursday, March 28 -
Andrew B. Newberg, M.D. is Director of Research at the Marcus Institute of
Integrative Health at Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital in Philadelphia. He is
the author of many books including his new book entitled, The Rabbi's Brain: Mystics,
Moderns, and the Science of Jewish Thinking.

Learn
science,
Location: Beth Sholom Congregation
8231 Old York Road Elkins Park PA
experience
RSVP: info@spiritualwell-being.org
or 215-887-1342 x109 affect our
FEBRUARY of 28, Research
2019 15 at the
Andrew B. Newberg, M.D. is Director
Integrative Health at Thomas Jefferson University and
the author of many books including his new book entitled,