Editor’s Note: Herb Stern chairs the Rhode Island Holocaust Memorial Committee, which is working to build a memorial in downtown Providence.

My daughter came home last week from high school with a permission slip to attend a school-wide field trip that was scheduled for Yom Kippur.

I was stunned, and not sure what to do. Wanting immediate answers, I turned to social media and posted the following question on my Facebook account: “What would you do if your child’s school planned a field trip on Yom Kippur?”  Within hours I had 27 comments. Most people suggested that I call the superintendent, the school board or my elected officials.

WASHINGTON (JTA)  – The older generation always thinks of the younger generation as losing its traditional values, wondering, “Why can’t they be just like us?”

But in a time of expanding globalism, open social networking and greater geographical disbursement, a recent poll shows that Jewish consciousness among millennials – young adults in college and graduate school – is rising, not falling. As perhaps part of a global trend toward religion in general, we believe the survey indicates that the next generation of Jews may be increasingly into being Jewish and following Jewish traditions.

The unconditional love that I had for my eldest child Sam was not because of what he did or would be; it was because he was. So profound was my love for him that when he died, I had no experiences from which to draw on – I didn’t know how to cope.

How do I move on and not be the mother I was yesterday? Suddenly I was no longer able to care for him and attend to his every need. Where had Sam gone? Motherhood had lasted a brief few months and then abruptly ended, yet I felt engulfed by my bond with my child – the daily routines, the dreams and fantasies of what I thought he would grow up to be, the joy at being given such a beautiful child to hold and snuggle. All gone!