Our Alumni Association regularly receives requests from Alumni to visit their Alma Mater. This clearly reflects the compelling and strong bond that so mane of our Herzlia Alumni feel for their origins and their school days at HERZLIA.
This month we include this very moving and nostalgic article written by Brandon Srot (1999) on his impressions of HERZLIA today subsequent to his recent visit:
The faces were younger, the layout was different and the corridors were certainly all smaller than I remembered, and yet, I felt a sense of connection to this place that was once so deeply familiar to me was as strong as ever!
I knew that a visit to Cape Town would be incomplete without the opportunity to reconnect with the school from which I matriculated 16 years prior; a space that set so many foundations for my journey ahead and a campus that so profoundly influenced who I’d become in the world.
An interesting thing happened during my visit. I met one of my teachers, Di Das Santos, There was an initial look of confusion on her face as she seemingly scanned her internal hard drive of past students and then, within moments, as if accessing my file, she remembered everything about me – my family name, my siblings, my matric subjects, that I had emigrated etc. And in this moment, I realized just how strong my umbilical cord to HERZLIA remains, for it’s here, where I felt like so much more that just a student in a system, so much more than just another annoying adolescent.
My personal memory of my years at HERZLIA is of connection, community and camaraderie. HERZLIA is about people and relationships, about opportunities and access points, about joy. And amid this matrix of experiences, it’s where I first made contact with my empowerment and my sense of responsibility to be of service to others. As I headed out of the campus, I turned back to admire the view ad as I took a mental snapshot of all that filled my vision, I felt content and nourished, yet again, by the magic that is directly Herzlian for me.
