Having just spent a Shabbat in Lublin with the hundreds of Canadian students on the March of the Living, I have much to tell, but too much for one tiny column. My last piece dealt with human responsibility as one of the messages of Pesach, and I spoke to the young people in Poland about responsibility.

They needed to know why the Jewish community was investing time, money and energy in having them commemorate Yom Hashoah in Auschwitz and celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut in Jerusalem.

As our survivors age and leave us, we need to nurture witnesses who can act as the memory trust of the Jewish people.

I asked the young people to imagine how distant their grandchildren will feel from the events of 1939 to 1945 and 1948. After an experience as moving as the March of the Living, these young people must act on the responsibility to be witnesses – to both the unimaginable horrors of the death camps and to the realization of a 2,000-year-old dream that was the establishment of the State of Israel.

It’s already the case that young Jews can’t fathom the loss that was the Shoah, nor the level of depravity that produced it. And there is the constant danger that those born into Israeli statehood will take the dream and hope for granted.

But it’s not enough to be merely a source of memory. Testifying to the truth is insufficient. These young people must act on their moral conscience and begin to fashion Jewish life in a creative mode.

The specific lesson learned in Lublin was that of Rabbi Meir Shapira, the founder of Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin, in whose restored building we prayed and studied over Shabbat. Here was a proud and courageous Jew who had a vision that was based on the past but creative in its surpassing the past – a modern, purpose-built yeshiva with ample room, electricity, and running water, and a kitchen that spared the students from essen taig (eating in different homes daily on charity).

Sadly, the yeshiva ended up in Nazi hands, but the lesson of pride and courage is not lost on us. Continuity is not enough. Creativity is what revives us constantly as a people.