On March 26, a delegation of 10 Milken Community High School students and two faculty members took a trip to New Community Jewish High School (NCJHS). The purpose of Milken’s visit was to show support for NCJHS as the end of the 30-day period of mourning following a funeral for Adir Vered. Vered, a NCJHS 11th-grader, died in a car accident in February.
The trip was the brainchild of Milken seniors Alexandra Shadrow and Sharon Winter. The Milken delegation hoped to build a connection between the two schools and discuss ways to honor Adir’s memory.
“It’s sad that it had to take a tragedy to make us realize that Milken and New Community should be there for each other, because our schools have so much in common,” Shadrow said.
Milken students took a brief tour of the NCJHS campus before joining the entire NCJHS student body in its tefilah service.
After an introduction by NCJHS Dean of Academic Affairs Marc Linder, the Milken delegation met with a group of NCJHS juniors and seniors. In the discussion that followed, students from both schools brainstormed ways to get the schools more involved with each other in memory of Adir.
Among myriad tentative proposals were plans to raise money for an organization close to Adir and the Vered family through a basketball tournament — Adir loved basketball – that would bring the schools together in friendly competition.
As Winter said, “This loss wasn’t just his family’s loss or New Community’s loss; it was the Jewish community’s loss, and all of us at Milken are part of that.”
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