Day 16: What's the difference between pizza and a Jew?

Young Judaea has a policy of turning insignificant events in the trip into meaningful milestones through preparation sessions, emotive ceremonies, and breakdown discussions. The visit to Yad VaShem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, is a perfect example of this nonsense.
Our master schedule called for a short service the night before, just to set the tone for what was to come, but the bulk of the procedure was entirely up to us. Ori thought it might be nice to ease the kids into the Shoah mindset by shaving their heads and making them wear striped clothing. I suggested depriving them of dinner and etching numbers into their forearms. Yael, the sentimental one, exercised her veto power and set up a dark classroom with candles and heart-rending photographs scattered around the floor, which they had to enter barefoot and in silence. Can we say, pathetic?
Fortunately, American Jews are taught from a young age to cry on command whenever they hear the words Holocaust or Auschwitz or even six million, and after fifteen minutes of listening to “Eli, Eli” on repeat, we had a few kids wiping their eyes on soggy sleeves.