The first of many school activities this week – including the annual Drama Club play and the Ezra Schwartz Memorial Baseball Tournament – was the twelfth grade environmental science class trip to upstate New York on Monday to watch the total solar eclipse. Environmental science is one of three science offerings for twelfth graders at Maimonides, along with Advanced Placement Biology and Advanced Placement Physics, and the students were able to experience science and Hashem's wondrous creation together on a trip chaperoned by teacher Dr. David Fischer and Chiel Educator-in-Residence Jacob Pinnolis, and hosted by Risa and Zev Gewurz. All Maimonides School field trips, academic competitions, and athletic activities are scheduled around regular davening, and it often happens that our student athletes, thespians, or mock-trialians make early mincha or late maariv minyanim before or after competition or practice. The environmental science trip needed to daven maariv at a rest stop in Vermont late on Monday, but traffic separated the group and left our students one short for a minyan. Thankfully, an unnamed Jew who hailed from Brooklyn also needed a minyan for maariv, and he enabled our students to maintain their streak of consecutive tefilah betzibur, davening as a group rather than as individuals. This weekend’s baseball tournament also includes regular minyanim for shacharit, mincha, and maariv as our athletes and guests join together in prayer, above and beyond competing on the diamond. As important as it is for us to teach our students to daven and experience their Judaism in the classroom, we also teach them to practice their Judaism while on the road, even in unusual circumstances. We honor Ezra’s memory not only through baseball, but also through the practice of the Judaism we all share. Maimonides School has davened in eight different states this year as part of official trips and programs, as the Judaism practiced in our homes remains the same Judaism when we travel. You could say this week is a celebration of educating our students in science and in sport, in study and in supplication. This week’s haftarah begins with the kindness of an anonymous Jew who hailed from Baal-Shalisha, who on one day in Nisan thousands of years ago helped out his fellow Jews with some food to eat. Though his name is lost to time, his chesed lives on. Similarly, this week we salute the unnamed Jew from Brooklyn for your assistance in helping us achieve our educational mission here at Maimonides. We may not know your name, but the chesed lives on. | 
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