Parkland School Shooting Survivors Travel To NYC For Chabad Youth Summit

Survivors of the Parkland shooting are seen on a screen in Times Square signing a “Unity Torah” during Chabad’s CTeen festival. Image by Facebook

By Ari Feldman February 26, 2018

Three students who survived the shooting earlier this month at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida traveled to New York City over the weekend to take part in Chabad’s annual youth festival, the New York Post reported.

The students were part of roughly 2,500 teenagers who attended Chabad’s CTeen meeting, held in Brooklyn. The students signed a “Unity Torah” over the weekend at a portion of the summit held in Times Square.

“I’m going to light some candles for my friend Gina, and I’m going to make challah [bread] every week,” said Lauren Berg, 14. Her friend Gina Monalto was one of 17 people killed during the shooting.

Maverick Reynolds, another Stoneman Douglas student, said that being at the summit “helps me see that everybody actually cares and wants to help out.”

“It’s not about going to New York for a weekend; it’s about going to a place with other kids their age who will support and encourage them, and hopefully, provide strength to move forward,” Rabbi Shaya Denburg, director of youth programs at Chabad of Coral Springs, told Chabad.org.

Contact Ari Feldman at feldman@forward.com or on Twitter @aefeldman

Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. He covers Jewish religious organizations, synagogue life, anti-Semitism and the Orthodox world. If you have any tips, you can email him at feldman@forward.com. Follow him on Twitter @aefeldman.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO