I walked alongside the playground towards the orange-and-tan, boxy building; the memories rushed back with every step. It had been a while since I last visited this place as an alumnus, and even longer—over three years—since I had been here as a student. Yet now I had returned to Yeshivat Noam and it was hard to not feel nostalgic.

I was at Noam as an alumni volunteer for its open house; the school wanted me to show myself as a proud, accomplished alum who could answer people’s questions about Noam and the transition from middle school to high school.

As I walked in, I wondered what would be different and what would be the same at my “alma mater.” During my last year (class of 2012! I have a tendency to graduate during election years—sadly none of the candidates were interested in campaigning to eighth graders), the school had opened a new middle school building and redone the original Paramus building to fit in early childhood. So as drastic of a change that might be, none of that was a surprise. Still, I wondered if anything at YN 2015 would seem drastically different; I had read that Noam was evolving its curriculum and working with “data-driven” models and new technologies and other buzzwords. Would it feel like a different place from the school I graduated from?

Well, to answer that question: one of the first people I saw when I came in was one of my kindergarten teachers. She was astonished that I recognized her; I was astonished that I got her name right when I can usually never even fully remember a face. There were certainly plenty of other familiar faces there! I saw, among others, Ms. Wasserman, my English teacher; Morah Joyce, my Buds (pre-K) pedagogue; Ms. Chanales, formerly a science/math educator but now an administrator; Rabbi Wasser, a math instructor; and of course, Rabbi Hagler, who was there from the beginning as principal and was still as kind and caring as I had always remembered him. (I didn’t see any teachers who taught me all of those synonyms for teacher, sadly.)

And then the other alumni volunteers—many if not all from my grade—began to arrive. As you may know, my siblings and I chose a high school that no one else from my Noam grade went to, so it’s always a treat to see old friends and reconnect. While it may seem like I’m usually pretty forward-focused on high school and college, I do think back to my days at Noam a lot and miss the people I was with most of all, so to see them again and talk about our lives now was amazing. (Thinking about it now, I also miss the exams at Noam… ignoring that this is a case of comparing elementary school to high school—that is, apples to oranges—Noam’s tests were so much easier than Ramaz’s, and the Terra Nova was a piece of cake compared to the SAT!)

The place itself looked pretty similar to the place I had left—I saw some new banners and signs in the hallways, but overall it still was pretty recognizable as Yeshivat Noam. Although I should mention that I and some other alums were surprised to see an Apple TV set-top box in the library (which is one area of the school that was significantly modified since 2012—I’m happy to say it actually has enough books now to qualify as a library!). Yeshivat Noam is certainly keeping pace with the latest technology.

We spent an hour mingling amongst the parents, introducing ourselves as alumni of Noam and asking them if they had any questions about Noam, the transition to high school, and so on. I went around with my good friend Keren Schwartzman ’12, who’s now at Frisch; we felt it would be easier to go around as a pair to meet the parents. Then we’d usually be asked some questions from the parents or be told that their child was only four and why, oh why, are we bothering them about high school now?!?! Except in much nicer and calmer phrasing, of course. (I mean, sometimes I wish I had started on college applications when I was five, but to each their own!)

It really wasn’t that hard of a volunteer job, and was pretty enjoyable as well. Not to mention that I got to eat some Noam-colored jellybeans, which happen to be the same as the Mets colors.

For all of us, I think, the best part about the evening was being back at the place that used to be our cheerful home. I asked some of my friends what it felt like to be back. “Being back at the Yeshivat Noam Open House as an alumna brought back many fond memories, [like]… Rabbi Hagler coming to my class every week to talk about the parsha when I was in first grade,” Keren told me. Another alum friend, Meir Tolchin ’12, said to me that “I felt like I never left” when I asked him what it felt like to be back. And Ami Malek ’12 said that “going back to Noam felt like returning home… [Noam is] a fantastic school and portraying that message to prospective parents was [a] true pleasure.”

I felt the same way as they did. Being back at Noam, even for just one night, brought back memories of lunchtimes in the gym, of weekly song-filled Erev Shabbat onegs, of being collectively blamed for stealing toilet paper (a.k.a the first-ever Noam color war breakout)—and made me appreciate immensely what the school did for me. It shaped me as a person from Buds to eighth grade, and taught me how to care for others and to strive to achieve whatever I can. Given how much it’s given to me, to be back as a volunteer for an hour with an easy job was really the least I could do…

“It was a privilege to represent Yeshivat Noam after all that I gained both educationally and experientially from the faculty… and the gratitude that I have for receiving a Torah education from them,” Keren said. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Oren Oppenheim, 18, is a senior at Ramaz Upper School in Manhattan and lives in Fair Lawn, NJ. He spends his free time writing and reading, and hopes to become a published novelist and a journalist. You can email him at [email protected] and see his photography at facebook.com/orenphotography.

By Oren Oppenheim