Two years ago, Evan Ravski went with the March of the Living Program on a memorial pilgrimage to concentration camps in Poland. He never came back. Instead, a young man who looked like Evan, talked like Evan, and walked like Evan returned. The new Evan Ravski had the courage not only to confront his doubts about God, but also to strengthen his determination to change what he found in Poland.

"When I came home from the trip, I had a lot of trouble dealing with God," Evan remembers. "I stopped going to synagogue for a few months, because I couldn't understand how God could have let the Holocaust happen."

Fortunately for Evan, who is now 19, another memory of Poland took root in his mind. His group toured the Lauder-Morasha School in Warsaw. About 185 students attend this Jewish school, which opened eight years ago. It was the first Jewish school in Poland in more than a quarter-century, and it plays an important role in the remarkable Jewish revival in Poland.

Helise Lieberman, Lauder-Morasha's principal, was the group's guide. She opened the aron kodesh (holy ark) and it was empty. "I didn't believe it," Evan says. "This school, which is leading a renaissance [new beginning] of Jewish life in Poland, didn't have the most fundamental object of Jewish life."

He came home determined to do something about it. "I knew that my old school, Ezra Academy in Woodbridge, Connecticut, had a second sefer Torah," Evan says. "It was damaged slightly and couldn't be used during services." Evan suggested that the school repair the Torah and donate it to the Lauder-Morasha school.

The administration agreed, and the Ezra Academy/Lauder-Morasha Torah Project was born. Students raised money to repair the scroll, and some of the older students made a silk Torah cover. A local Jewish home for the elderly donated a silver crown.

Exactly one year after Evan went to Poland the first time, he returned, this time with the Torah and 36 students from Ezra Academy. It was Evan, however, who received the honor of placing the Torah into the ark. "I began crying," he says. "I needed to see the ark full. The scars from my previous trip to Poland are gone. Now I'm healed."