By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calif.—The San Diego Jewish Academy, now in the process of collecting 1.5 million ceramic butterflies to be cemented into the walls of the campus in honor of each of the children murdered in the Holocaust, has chosen two poems to be incorporated into the memorial.

One will be "The Butterfly," by Pavel Freedman, the well-known poem composed in the Terezin Ghetto by a young man who noticed that ever since being confined there by the Nazis, he hadn't seen another butterfly.  This poem was the inspiration for creating a project in San Diego similar to the nationally-known "Paper Clips Project" successfully undertaken by middle school students in Whitwell, Tenn. 

The other poem, "Give Me Wings," was composed this year by Lynne Goldfarb, who is the daughter of Holocaust survivors and the mother of  SDJA ninth grader, Michelle Goldfarb-Shapiro.

Jan Landau, SDJA director of family and special programs, said Goldfarb wrote the poem after joining the volunteer group of parents that is helping  the school to organize the project.. Her copyrighted poem reads as follows:

                                                         GIVE ME WINGS

G-d give me wings                                                                       G-d give me wings
      so that I may look around                                                            so I may experience
      from the tallest branches                                                              the strength and the courage
      seeing all that surrounds me.                                                        needed to take flight.

G-d give me wings                                                                        G-d give me wings
      so I can lift myself up                                                                     so I can fulfill
      when my days are                                                                         YOUR mitzvoth
      weighing me down.                                                                       in my lifetime.

G-d give me wings                                                                        G-d thank you
      letting me feel miracles                                                                  for teaching me what it means
      when I hold firm to my faith                                                          to have finally
      in YOU and in me.                                                                      been given wings...

  G-d give me wings                                                                           —Lynne Goldfarb,  © 2006
      so I may treasure                                                                       
      the true gifts
      that come with freedom.

In a telephone interview, Goldfarb said that her parents, Joseph and Sylvia Goldfarb, both had been imprisoned by the Nazis, her father at Buchenwald, and her mother at less-known concentration camps at Szarzisko and Chenslohova.  

A professor at Chapman University with a master's degree from UCLA in Jewish history and a doctorate in education from Clairemont Graduate University, Goldfarb said the butterfly project resonates with her both personally and professionally.  She said she hopes that "butterflies as symbols of peace" will spread beyond the SDJA campus across the globe.

As large an undertaking as collecting 1.5 million butterflies is, the poet said she believes the project has the potential to be far bigger: "It can create consciousness and awareness... get people to reflect and ponder, get people to understand."

The project had its first off-campus expression last Sunday at the Israeli Independence Day Festival at the Lawrence Family JCC.  Children and other festival attendees painted ceramic butterflies at the San Diego Jewish Academy's booth.  The single day haul was 250 butterflies. 

To put the immensity of the project into perspective, SDJA will need to collect 6,000 times the number of butterflies that were produced at the all-day festival.

Landau said rather than wait for all the butterflies to arrive at the school before starting,  the project will take shape gradually.  On the blank wall of Building B, near the entrance to the campus in the Carmel Valley neighborhood of San Diego, "we hope to put an outline of a tree with a caterpillar, chrysalis, and a butterfly," she said.  The two poems also will be displayed and the ceramic butterflies will be dispersed from this point all over the campus.

With the cooperation of the New Life Club of Holocaust Survivors, the San Diego Jewish Book Festival and other Jewish organizations in San Diego, Landau hopes that news of the butterfly project will be spread to friends and acquaintances throughout the world.  Already, creation of individually painted, ceramic butterflies is becoming a popular crafts project in schools and in senior citizen residences, she said.

Further information about how you or your organization may come to the aid of the project may be obtained from Landau via her email,  jlandau@sdja.com