Where He Is (Vayera 5787)

Photo Credit: Dan Porges

When I was in graduate school, a new classmate named Avi — someone I had never met — threw a party, and I went. I judged him in ten minutes. He was loud. He was playing MC Hammer. “U Can’t Touch This.” Over and over. He seemed to me completely full of himself. I figured, well, I don’t have to be friends with everyone.

I left early. And I remember being glad we had not connected.

A few months later we ended up on the same hike in the far north of Israel. There was a steep drop — the kind where you need a hand — and he was the one who reached back and helped me down. We talked the rest of the way.

After that, Avi and I became best friends. For years. I think about that party every time I read this week’s parashah, Vayera.

The Torah narrative tells us Hagar and her son Ishmael have been sent away from Avraham’s house. They are in the desert. The water is gone. Hagar puts the boy under a bush and walks far enough away that she will not have to watch him suffer. 

And then:

כִּי־שָׁמַע אֱלֹהִים אֶל־קוֹל הַנַּעַר בַּאֲשֶׁר הוּא־שָׁם

“For God has heard the voice of the boy — where he is.” (Genesis 21:17)

Focus on who God hears. Not Hagar. The boy. God hears Ishmael.

Rashi (11th-century France) asks: What does “where he is” add? God already knows where the boy is. Rashi answers with a scene he draws from midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 53:14). The ministering angels object to the idea of rescuing Ishmael. They protest saying, in effect, Master of the universe, one day Ishmael’s descendants will be cruel to Avraham’s descendants. And You are going to open a well for him?

God answers with a question of His own. Right now — what is he? Righteous or wicked? The angels concede: at this moment, the boy is innocent. Then, says God, I judge him by what he is now. Rashi explains, “he is judged according to the deeds he is doing now” — and not according to what he may do in the future.

The Talmud states the principle (learning it from this verse: “a person is judged only according to his deeds at that moment” (Rosh Hashanah 16b).

Hold that for a moment. God, who knows the whole future, declines to use it. He judges the boy in front of Him.

Now a mirror teaching from earlier in the same parashah, when Avraham comes to Gerar — a foreign city, not his people. He assumes the worst. He hides that Sarah is his wife, to protect himself. Afterward, when the king, Avimelech, asks him why, Avraham says: “I [assumed] that surely there is no fear of God in this place.” (Genesis 20:11) I assumed. Avraham decided before he knew. And he was wrong. Avimelech turns out to be more decent than Avraham assumed. The Torah does not cover for him. Avraham jumped to a conclusion about a whole city of people he had never met.

So in a single parashah we are handed both. God, who could judge by the future, judges by the present. Avraham, who could have waited and watched, judges by making an assumption. I do not think the Torah leaves much doubt about which path we are meant to follow. 

The rabbis of the Talmud explain the path this way: “One who judges another on the side of merit is judged on the side of merit.” (Shabbat 127b) Kaf zechut is the pan of a balance scale — the side that tips toward the good. In other words, judge people generously, and you will be judged generously. It does not ask us to pretend, and it does not ask us to be naïve. It asks this: when two stories could explain what you have just seen, and you do not know which one is true, lean toward the kinder one until you know, really know, differently.

Here is why this matters in a high school. It is late October. Many of us have already decided — who is smart, who is fake, who is trying too hard, who is not trying at all. And the person who has been decided about feels it.

That is a trap — deciding about someone before you actually know them. I still fall into it. Being judged by a story someone else tells about you is one of the loneliest things that can happen to a person. Some of you may be feeling that right now.

Two weeks ago, on the Monday of Parashat Noach, I asked you about the words you use for people — about speech that strips a person, or a whole people, of dignity. This week I am asking about something that comes earlier: the conclusions we reach before we say anything at all.

So here is my ask this week. Bring to mind one person here that you have already judged harshly. You know who it is. Now drop that assumption and give them a chance to show you who they really are. You can do that with one conversation, or one question you have never asked them. You do not have to like them, you just need to drop your assumption and learn more about them. 

I almost missed one of the great friendships of my life because of MC Hammer. Even Avraham got this wrong. But We can get it right. With this one person, see them ba’asher hu sham — where they are today, not where you judged them in September.

May we be judged as kindly as we judge. And may this be a school where every one of us is seen where we are.

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Each week our whole school gathers for Hakhel — all of our students and all of our faculty and staff, together in one room. We took the name from the mitzvah in Deuteronomy 31, where the people are called together to hear Torah. It is a time for announcements, celebration of community, honoring student accomplishments. I close the gathering with a short dvar Torah. This is what I offered on the Monday of Parashat Vayera.

Ayeka - Hineni (Commemorating October 7)

Photo from Israel National Memorial on third anniversary of October 7

Remarks to JCHS Parent Guardian Assoc for October 7, 2026, on the third annivsary lightly expanded

On the afternoon of this third anniversary, I watched the livestreaming memorial in Tel Aviv — not the government’s ceremony, but the one organized by survivors and bereaved families themselves. Fifty thousand people filled Park Yarkon. 

The program was filled with story after story. An Arab Bedouin Israeli man remembering his brother, a bus driver, who drove back into the fire on Route 232 for the kids fleeing the Nova festival. His brother’s words, before he went: “I know it’s dangerous, but these people have to be brought back.” A widow remembering her husband, another driver, who got up that morning and drove south toward the danger. His words: “If I am needed, I am going.” 

And Eli Sharabi, who came home from sixteen months as a hostage in Gaza to learn that his wife and daughters had been murdered in their safe room at Be’eri, closing the program with a promise to the dead: “I have not forgotten you. Israel has not forgotten you.”

Despair and determination. 

Suffering and resilience. 

The same anniversary, told dozens of different ways.

And then a song. Shuli Rand’s Ayeka. Rand — a Breslov Hasid actor/songwriter, released Ayeka in 2008 as one man’s argument with God. The National Library of Israel places it in the lineage of Israel’s wartime songs, alongside Lu Yehi and Yerushalayim Shel Zahav. Within months of its release, when war came to the south, Israelis reached for it. After October 7 they reached for it again. 

The song's title is the first question God ever asks a human being. Adam has eaten from the tree and is hiding among the trees of the Garden, and God calls out (Genesis 3:9): "Ayeka? (Where are you?)" Rand turns the question around and aims it back at heaven. Here is an excerpt of the song translated in English: 

Master of the universe

If I were to franly admit it

At times I have no strength

To remain in Your world

Whence from Your presence would I hide?

What would I plead for, what excuse would I make, what words would I use?

Voices from the past whisper that I should halt. 

But I keep groping in the dark

Imploring and entreating, where are You?

A person hanging on by a thread. Some days, no strength to stay in the world. Crying out to God: where are You?

Now a different voice. Shoam Moshe Ben-Harush was twenty years old, a staff sergeant in the Nahal commando unit, from the Golan community of Hispin. He did what Israeli soldiers are encouraged to do before a dangerous mission: write a letter, to be opened only if they do not come back. Three months before October 7, as his unit prepared for a mission of that type, Shoam — opened a WhatsApp group with a single member, himself, and wrote a letter.

On October 7 Shoam fought at the Kerem Shalom outpost. When the attack came, he and two friends were the first to recover, charge, and return fire. He was mortally wounded. For three weeks his family never left his bedside. His brother Ori found the letter on his phone and could not bring himself to read it; he still believed Shoam would wake up. Shoam died on October 26, 2023. His family donated his organs, and five people are alive today because of him. They read his letter aloud, together, for the first time on Yom HaZikaron (Israel's Memorial Day), six months after his death. It is now collected in If You’re Reading This, an anthology of last letters from Israel’s fallen post October 7.

Here is what Shoam wrote:

The world is twisted, the world is dysfunctional, the world is scary, the wold is full of things you don't know. The world is strange, the wold is wrong, the world is messed up. 

But even wtih all its flaws the world is beautiful, the world is open for us to discover, the world is open to suggestions -- and that's exactly what's beautiful abou the world, that it's not beautiful. 

I don't wan to live in any other world. I want to live in this world, in this twisted, dysfunctional world. 

Thank you for putting me through trials and tribulations, thank you for giving me strength. Thank you for giving me love, for giving me parents, for giving me friends, for giving me a home, for giving me life. 

Rand asks God: Where are You? Shoam answers the world: I want to live here. Both are telling a truth. Both are invoking a prayer.

There is something perhaps mystical too in the numbers of this anniversary. The seventh of October, year three: 10, 7, 3.

One week before the anniversary, flydubai flight 1073 took off from Dubai for Tel Aviv with more than 170 people aboard — almost all Israelis, about thirty of them children. Two hours into the flight, over Saudi Arabia, the copilot stabbed the captain and tried to put the plane into the ground. Investigators say his intent was to crash it into Ben Gurion Airport with everyone aboard. It fell 14,000 feet in thirty seconds.

The captain, bleeding on the cockpit floor, reached up and unlocked the door. And Israelis came through it. A plumber from the front rows named Yaniv Hayoun was first. Behind him came Tzvika Manes, Assaf Regavim, and others. For twenty or thirty minutes they fought the copilot in that tiny space, pulled him off the controls, and tied him up with headphone cords. One passenger leveled the plane himself, with what he knew from watching an air-crash show on television. Then off-duty pilots who happened to be aboard took the controls and landed at Tabuk, where Saudi doctors treated the wounded. Everyone came home.

They did not wait for permission. They did not wait for rescue. On the eve of this anniversary, that is the Israeli, the Jewish, answer to the reflexive Ayeka. Where are you? Hineni. Here. Coming through the door.

Ayeka is a question each of us gets asked. Not just once. But every day. And our tradition has one answer to it. It is Avraham’s word when God calls his name before the Akedah (Genesis 22:1). It is Moshe’s word at the burning bush (Exodus 3:4). It is a bus driver’s word on Route 232: if I am needed, I am going. It is the word we say when someone we love calls our name in the dark.

"Hineni (I am here)."

Here to remember, and to record. 

Here to grieve what was taken. 

And here — stubbornly, together — to live in this world, and to thrive in it.

Where are you?

Hineni.

What Scars Are You Still Carrying? (Shabbat Shuvah / Parashat Ha’azinu 5787)

We are in the middle of the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah — the Ten Days of Return between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when the whole Jewish calendar leans toward one question: having gone out into the year, how do we find our way back? This week JCHS took our students away for a Shabbaton Early Edition to prepare for this important Shabbat and Yom Kippur, and the timing is the point. Teshuvah needs what a retreat provides: time away, together.

This Shabbat — Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat of Return — we read Ha’azinu, Moshe’s very last lesson. Surprisingly, he opens that lesson talking about the weather: “May my teaching drop like rain, may my words distill like dew” (Deut. 32:2). Nobody has ever watched dew fall — and yet every morning the whole world wakes up covered in it. That is how we all grow: drop by drop, often in moments too small to notice. 

But this close to Yom Kippur, I wanted to talk with our students about what can block all that quiet growth. So I told them about a social psychology experiment. I am indebted to Michelle Matz, JCHS Dean of Students for telling me about this experiment

In 1980, researchers at Dartmouth ran a study (Kleck & Strenta, “Perceptions of the Impact…” J. of Personality and Social Psychology 39:861–873). The study paired one group of students with a group of strangers. Researchers took one group of students and another group of strangers. To the face of each student a makeup artist applied a realistic scar  — a vivid one, running down their cheek. Each student looked in a mirror and saw it. Then, just before sending them off to a conversation with a stranger, the makeup artist offered one last touch-up – secretly wiping the scar completely away.

The students walked into those conversations with nothing on their faces. And afterward, they reported it in detail: the stranger kept staring at my scar. The stranger was uncomfortable with my appearance. The stranger treated me differently because of how I look.

There was no scar. The wound existed in one place only — on the inside of their heads, not the outside. But from the inside, it shaped everything they saw.

Teshuvah of Perception

Here is what I believe Yom Kippur knows about us. Every one of us walked into this year wearing something from last year: a disappointment. An embarrassment we replay in our heads over and over. A friendship that broke. And we are certain — certain — that everyone can see it on our face.

Rav Kook (the first chief rabbi of pre-state Israel) uncovers a deep dimension of Teshuvah. “The primary teshuvah,” he writes, “is for a person to return to [themself], to the root of [their] soul” (Orot HaTeshuvah 15:10) — and only then, he continues, does one return to God, the Soul of all souls. In other words: before anything else, teshuvah means returning to your own true face. 

So the question Yom Kippur asks is not only what did you do? It is also: what are you still carrying?

Think about that makeup artist one more time. The scar was removed before the conversation ever began — the student just didn’t know it. What if Yom Kippur is God playing the makeup artist? The Torah promises that the day itself cleanses us (see Leviticus 16:30). What if the scar we are so certain we are wearing into the new year has already been wiped away — and our only remaining work is to stop “seeing” it in the mirror?

Take Words With You

The prophet whose cry literally gives this Shabbat – the Shabbat of Return – its name tells us where that work begins. Hosea doesn’t just shout “Return!” He says: K’chu imachem devarim — “Take words with you, and return” (Hosea 14:3). So the charge I gave our students had three parts, one for each thing we carry: an honest apology, delivered to a friend. A true sentence, spoken to yourself. And the text of reconciliation you have been putting off sending. Words are how we let go of what we carry — small, quiet, absorbed drop by drop, like dew.

May our learning fall like dew. May we take words with us. And when we stand before the mirror after Yom Kippur, may we be blessed to see what has been true all along — a clean face, ready for a new year.

G’mar chatimah tovah — may we all be sealed for a good year.

Looking Back 25 Years: In Memory & Hope (Rosh Hashanah 5762/2001)

 

September 11, 2001 fell just six days before Rosh Hashanah 5762. Like every rabbi and educator in America that week, I was rewriting sermons and lessons, searching for words that could hold what none of us yet understood. 

At the Ohio congregation I served, we opened every service that Rosh Hashanah the same way: a lit shivah candle stood on a table at the front of the sanctuary, and before any of the davening began, the congregation rose for a moment of silent reflection. When the quiet had settled, this poem was read.

In Memory and Hope

For the Victims of September 11

With hearts that are covered by dust and debris

With cheeks that are stained by tears and blood

We search through the rubble and ashes for Your light, O God.

With eyes that burn with images of destruction

With ears that are filled with stories of the missing

We search for Your comfort, we crave Your warm embrace.

Standing at the edge of a void left by the victims — both missing and dead

Standing at the threshold of a new year whose sweetness has been embittered

We take comfort from the support of standing together.

Taking inspiration from the divine imperative that we repair this broken world

Taking strength from our ability to bring healing and comfort

We dedicate ourselves to nurturing delicate seeds of hope into a blossoming peace

A peace that will, with Your help, fill our hearts, our souls, and our world.

— Howard Jacoby Ruben, Rosh Hashanah 5762 / September 2001

Turning Toward Each Other: Accounting for the Soul in Relationships (Elul 5786 · Erev Rosh Hashanah 5787)

Shalom Bayit: Ensuring everyone's
right to healthy, non-violent relationships

Adapted from this week’s Hakhel at JCHS, our weekly all-school gathering — the last of the year 5786. Inspired by Shalom Bayit's annual semon campaign and resources

This Friday evening Rosh Hashanah arrives and a new year begins. So at our final Hakhel of 5786, I shared one of the ways my own kids, Sarah and Daniel, taught me — back when they were in high school — about getting ready for a new Jewish year.

The Hebrew month we are in is called Elul, spelled aleph, lamed, vav, lamed. For centuries the rabbis have read those four letters as an acronym for a line from Song of Songs (6:3):

אֲנִי לְדוֹדִי וְדוֹדִי לִי

Ani l’dodi v’dodi li — “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.”

Song of Songs is a relationship poem. To some it expresses the relationship between two intimates. For others, it expresses the relationship between the people Israel and God. Why would the tradition name the month of preparing for a new year after a relationship poem? Because it is the tradition’s way of teaching that preparing for a new year is not about your statistical record — our grades, our followers count, or our streak on any app. It is about our relationships.

A Relationship Audit

Elul’s classic practice is called cheshbon hanefesh — literally, an accounting of the soul. How is that practice transformed by knowing we do it during Elul, the month of relationships? The month is time for an accounting of our relationships. A relationship audit.

My kids taught me how to do that with two questions. Question one: bring to mind one relationship that is a source of light in your life — a friend, a sibling, a parent, a teammate, a teacher. Now ask yourself: what makes that relationship feel that way?

When others in the Bay Area Jewish community — people of all ages — were asked that question, here's what they said: support, trust, kindness, real listening, respect, laughter, feeling safe, room to grow.

Notice anything unique about that list? None of those items are about statistics or numbers of friends, or counting anything. The list items are not about luck or chance. Every items on that list represents a relationship muscle — something a person does, on purpose, over and over. Pirkei Avot (6:6) teaches that many of these same qualities are among the ways Torah itself is acquired. The way we treat each other in relationships is a Torah curriculum for life.

Question two, the harder one, just for the inside of your own head: was there a moment this year when your own words or actions didn’t match that list we just discussed? The message fired off in the group chat. The joke that landed as a cut. The person frozen out. We all have examples. But those examples need not be. source for shame. They could be a source of learning, toward improving. That is the homework of this Jewish season.

The Repair That Belongs to Us

Here is what the Mishnah teaches about the days we are about to enter (Yoma 8:9):

עֲבֵרוֹת שֶׁבֵּין אָדָם לַמָּקוֹם, יוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים מְכַפֵּר. עֲבֵרוֹת שֶׁבֵּין אָדָם לַחֲבֵרוֹ, אֵין יוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים מְכַפֵּר עַד שֶׁיְּרַצֶּה אֶת חֲבֵרוֹ

“For transgressions between a person and God, Yom Kippur atones. For transgressions between a person and another person, Yom Kippur does not atone until one has made things right with the other.”

Yom Kippur squares away what is between us and God. But for what is between us and each other, Yom Kippur does not atone until we make it right with the person. God does not accept an apology on someone else’s behalf. That repair belongs to us.

When the Accounting Shows Something Harder

I said one more thing to our students, because it matters and I wanted them to hear it from me. Sometimes an accounting of the soul shows us something harder — a friendship or a relationship, online or in person, that makes us feel afraid, or controlled, or smaller than we are.

That is not what friendship or love looks like. But if it does feel that way, it is not our fault. Rather, every one of us deserves relationships in which we are safe and where we get to be fully ourselves. I asked any student for whom a relationship doesn’t feel that way to bring it to a trusted adult — an advisor, a dean, our counselor. Our doors and our hearts are always open, and not just for the Laffy Taffy jar in my office.

Our wider Jewish community has an organization, Shalom Bayit, devoted to exactly this — helping people in relationships that have become unsafe — because our tradition holds that shalom, peace and wholeness, is supposed to live in every home and every relationship.

One Repair, One Gratitude

So here was the assignment before Friday night, and I offer it to every reader. It has two parts. First, deliver one real apology — doing it in person beats texting. Second, speak one real thank-you to someone on your light list who has never heard it out loud. One repair, one gratitude. That is cheshbon hanefesh in action.

At JCHS, every Hakhel during Elul ends with the sound of the shofar. This was our last Elul blast before the great blasts of Rosh Hashanah itself. As a student sounded the shofar at school, I invited our students to hear the shofar blasts as one question, the Elul question: whom do I need to turn toward?

Ani l’dodi v’dodi li. When the shofar sounds on Rosh Hashanah, may it find every one of us already turned toward each other.

Shanah tovah u’metukah — a good and sweet new year.

When You Come In: Eyes, Ears, and a Heart (Ki Tavo · Elul 5786)

Adapted from this week’s Hakhel at JCHS, where our all students and educators gather to begin each week together

When I first came to JCHS, the iPhone had just been introduced to the world. And it wasn’t until the iPhone 4, in 2010, that the “selfie” became a routine part of daily life. Hold onto that timeline — it will matter in a moment.

Last week I wrote about Parashat Ki Teitzei — “when you go out” — and the blessing Jews carry onto every journey. Here is what I love about the Torah’s timing: the very next parashah is its partner. Ki Tavo — “when you come in.” The Torah pairs the two verbs on purpose. Even the Psalmist blesses them together: Your "are guarded in your going out and your coming in” (Psalm 121:8). At school, the pairing is lived, not just read: our Opening Day Hakhel taught the going out, and this week — the first full week of classes — everyone has come in.

So Ki Tavo poses this week’s question: now that you’re in, how will you be here?

An Engineering Marvel

In 2009, the neuroscientist David Eagleman published a slim book called Sum: forty short, imaginary tales about the afterlife. None of them are true. All of them tell the truth.

In one story, “Narcissus,” we wake after death to discover we were created by a race of Cartographers — map-makers — who placed us on Earth as their mapping devices. They gave us precision camera lenses: our eyes. Exquisite sound sensors: our ears. A profoundly curious computer — our mind — to carry us to every corner of the planet and record it.

But the story ends with the Cartographers in despair, scrolling through our lifetime of data. Instead of mapping the world, we spent our lives pointing the cameras at ourselves. The head engineer is fired for building — in Eagleman’s words — “an engineering marvel that only takes pictures of itself.”

Now remember the timeline. Eagleman wrote that in 2009 — after the iPhone existed, but before the selfie did. He saw us coming. Today every one of us carries that engineering marvel in a pocket, and we know exactly which direction its camera usually points.

What the Senses Are For

Which brings us to what Moshe tells the people in Ki Tavo — forty years into their journey, as they finally prepare to come in to the land:

וְלֹא־נָתַן יְהוָה לָכֶם לֵב לָדַעַת וְעֵינַיִם לִרְאוֹת וְאָזְנַיִם לִשְׁמֹעַ עַד הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה

“Until this day, God had not given you a heart to understand, eyes to see, and ears to hear” (Deuteronomy 29:3).

Until this day — after forty years of miracles. It takes that long, Moshe is saying, to learn what our eyes, ears, and heart are actually for. They were never meant to be instruments that only record ourselves. They were given for a purpose: eyes to see the plight of others. Ears to hear the cries of others. A heart to understand the pain — and the joy — of others. Even the generation that watched the sea split needed forty years to grow eyes that truly see. That feels like a fitting thing to say to students in week one of a four-year journey — and to any of us, any year of ours.

So the charge I gave our students for this first full week was small and concrete, and I offer it to every reader: point the marvel outward. Use your eyes this week to see one person who seems unseen. Use your ears to hear one person who needs listening to. Use your heart to understand one person you don’t yet know.

The Alarm Clock

It is Elul, the month of preparation before the Days of Awe — and at JCHS, every Hakhel during Elul ends the same way: with the sound of the shofar. The Rambam taught that the shofar’s cry is an alarm clock for the soul — Uru yesheinim, “Awake, you sleepers!” (Laws of Teshuvah 3:4). This week I asked our students to receive its sound with the ears Moshe was talking about: let it wake your eyes to see, your ears to hear, your heart to understand.

When you go out and when you come in — may all your steps be guarded, and may your eyes, your ears, and your heart be turned toward each other.

When You Go Out: A Blessing for the Journey (Ki Teitzei 5786, Opening Day of School at JCHS August 2026)

Every week at JCHS begins with Hakhel — a gathering of our entire community, all students and all faculty and staff, in one room, closed with a dvar Torah. We adopted that name from the Torah itself: in Deuteronomy 31, Moshe commands that the entire people assemble — men, women, children, newcomers — to hear Torah together at the start of a new cycle. That is what we do at the start of every week. And especially so at the first Hakhel of a new school year: everyone, from the newest ninth grader to the most seasoned educator teacher, gathered on Opening Day to begin again.

This year’s Opening Day Hakhel was different for me. It was my last one as Head of School. Next August, a new Head will stand on that stage to welcome our students. So I found myself thinking hard about journeys — and that Shabbat’s parashah met me exactly where I was standing. It opens: כִּי־תֵצֵא ki teitzei — “When you go out.”

Here is what amazes me about this parashah of going out: it contains more mitzvot than any other portion in the entire Torah — 74 of them. Not one giant commandment. Seventy-four small ones. Such as returning a lost object. Or showing kindness to a mother bird.

[At Hakhel, I could not resist — we are the JCHS Wolves — calling out that “wolframium” is the old name for the element tungsten, which is why its symbol on the periodic table is W. Tungsten is element number 74 on the periodic table. Seventy-four mitzvot; element 74. The wolves, it turns out, are everywhere.]

The Torah’s message: the journey is not the empty space between important destinations. The journey IS where life happens — one small act of goodness, one brief stumble that you rise from, one step at a time. As you go out, the opportunities multiply.

So it is with a school year. It is long. None of us can take it in one giant leap. We travel it in small steps — and we travel it together.

And this year at JCHS, “going out” is not an abstraction. Our newest students are stepping in. Our seniors are preparing to step out. And I am too. So this year, more than ever, I am not watching the journey from the side — I am on the road with our students, every step, all year long. Growth lives in transitions. That is what Ki Teitzei teaches: blessing comes when we go out.

A Prayer That Lives in Pockets

Jewish tradition has a blessing made for journeys: Tefillat Haderech, the Travelers' Prayer. It is ancient. In the Talmud (Berakhot 29b), Elijah the Prophet offers this advice: before you set out on any journey, pause, seek your Maker’s blessing — and then go.

Here is my favorite part: even when you travel completely alone, the prayer is always in the plural — lead us in peace, guide us in peace. Because, in the Jewish mindset, none of us ever journeys alone. We carry our community with us along the way. Kind of like a school: each of us on our own journey, all of us traveling together.

The prayer asks for four things — four verbs, in careful order:

תּוֹלִיכֵנוּ לְשָׁלוֹם · תַּצְעִידֵנוּ לְשָׁלוֹם · תַּדְרִיכֵנוּ לְשָׁלוֹם · תַּגִּיעֵנוּ לִמְחוֹז חֶפְצֵנוּ

Tolicheinu l’shalom — lead us toward peace. Tatz’ideinu l’shalom — direct our steps toward peace. Tadricheinu l’shalom — guide us toward peace. Tagi’einu limchoz cheftzeinu — bring us to our desired destination.

Four verbs. Four grades. At Hakhel, I blessed each class with one of them — echoes of that tefillah.

Four Verbs, Four Grades

To the Class of 2030, just stepping in: Tolicheinu l’shalom — during your journey through the next four years may your steps be blessed as you take your time, enjoy each step, learn to walk and then to run toward wholeness and peace.

To the Class of 2029: Tatz’ideinu l’shalom — may your steps over the next three years be blessed toward the direction of completeness and peace you seek — from Zion National Park this year to Zion, our national homeland, next year. Knowing that even when we stumble, we come closer to wholeness and peace.

To the Class of 2028: Tadricheinu l’shalom — may you be blessed to choose your steps wisely as you navigate a path this year bringing you ever closer to YOUR derech — the path of your life. It will be an intense year; treasure the journey toward wholeness and peace.

To the Class of 2027: Next August you will have moved along your path beyond JCHS — and so will I. You and I will walk this final JCHS year side by side, and in June we will go out together. So I am doubly grateful for this year to hold you a bit longer. Tagi’einu limchoz cheftzeinu — may you be blessed in the steps of your final year to be brought ever closer to fulfilling the wishes of your hearts.

And to our Professional Community — the educators and staff who guide, encourage, and applaud our students along this journey, and who, in this year of transition, carry the heart of this school forward: l’chaim, u’l’simcha, u’l’shalom — toward the fullness of life, toward joy, and toward wholeness and peace.

Working together to build community, we take the small steps every day — with courage and encouragement — that carry us to our most fulfilling destinations.

And when the moment comes for each of us to go out — ki teitzei — may we go out toward wholeness and peace.