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GREENSBORO — The graduation essays from the eighth-graders at B'Nai Shalom are serious, sentimental, even funny.

One young writer quotes Charlie Brown. Another mentions wading through a knee-deep carpet of cold water in a pitch-black cave.

And yet another talks about yearning to visit Israel — even to the point of leaving hopeful notes for her family under the TV remote.

Read their essays, and you think of the concept dreamed up decades ago by broadcast pioneer and Guilford native Edward R. Murrow. Read them again — or better yet, hear them spoken — and then you understand.

This is who these new teenagers are.

Like Elissa Bober: "Live life happy — this I believe."

Or Daniel McDonough: "One thing I do know for sure is that I will make my time on earth count."

Or Rachel Wieselquist: "From Emma Goldman (a Russian immigrant), I learned that it's about making a change, not just wanting a change."

Or Julia Ossey: "I am going to continue practicing Judaism all my life."

Murrow would be proud.

In 1951 , he introduced his "This I Believe" essay by asking the known and the lesser known to talk about the values that guided their lives. Murrow wanted to show how commonly held beliefs are really "the floor of our civilization."

That brings us to Julia and her 15 eighth-grade friends. They graduated last spring from B'Nai Shalom, Greensboro's only Jewish day school, one of five in North Carolina .

Right before graduation, they polished their "This I Believe" essays. Some found it to be a grueling exercise. They even had to recite it during graduation.

But today, all that work makes sense.

Starting this week and next, Julia and her 15 friends will begin writing a new chapter in their academic lives. They will start ninth grade at Grimsley, Weaver Academy and Guilford Day School.

You remember, ninth grade is a trying time in anyone's life.

But more so than almost every other high school freshman, they'll get quite the wake-up call. They're jumping into a more secular universe where religion — any religion, not just Judaism — becomes a footnote in the classroom.

They'll get consumed by a world of distractions. They'll get tested in a city of two synagogues and 2,500 Jews . They'll see firsthand what worries many in any synagogue: More Jews are becoming less mindful of their faith.

Yet, when they do, Julia and Elissa, Daniel and Rachel — as well as their classmates — will remember their excursion across the Atlantic to what Daniel calls "every Jew's hometown."

As their eighth-grade year started, they began raising money. They planted pansies, tweaked Shakespeare, hung coats at a school fundraiser, coordinated a multi-family yard sale.

Anonymous donors helped. They contributed toward a trip that would cost each student $2,800.

B'Nai Shalom eighth-graders have been making a trip to Israel since 1995. Like the school's tuition, the trip's price tag continues to go up every year. The school tuition this year runs between $1,605 and $11,310 .

Yet, they go. To crawl through an ancient cave. To write a letter to themselves in the middle of the desert. To climb Masada , an ancient Hebrew fortress, to see the Dead Sea at sunrise.

To stand at Mount Herzl National Military Cemetery and think about sacrifice. And to pray before the Western Wall , a 2,000-year-old temple wall, worn smooth by hands and time, and think about hope.

And that's what they wrote. In their essays. What they believe.

"My Jewish identity is going with me to Grimsley," Julia tells me. "It's very strong — and I don't think I'll ever lose it — because if I don't know who I am, I can't learn about others."

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jrowe@news-record.com.