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.

You Are Enough: Graduation (Beha'alotcha 5786)

JCHS Graduation 2026

I want to start, as I often do, with a Laffy Taffy–type riddle.

Q: How many Jewish grandparents does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: None! “Don’t worry about us. We’ll just sit here in the dark eating leftover matzah.”

We’ll come back to that.

The summer before you started 9th grade — in 2022 — the JCHS Professional Community, our educators and staff, had summer reading, just like students. One of the books for ProCom that summer was a memoir by Edie Eger. The Choice.

Edie grew up in Hungary. By sixteen, she had earned a spot on the Olympic gymnastics team. But then the Nazis deported Edie and her family to Auschwitz. She survived. Emaciated and nearly dead, she was liberated in 1945. Edie went on to become one of America’s most celebrated psychotherapists, seeing patients well into her nineties.

Edie died just weeks ago, at 98 years old. Zichronah livracha — may her memory be a blessing. Her death prompted me to recall that book we read just before you started at JCHS and to share an episode from it.

On Edie’s first night in Auschwitz, the infamous Dr. Mengele came to the women’s barracks looking to be entertained. Someone told him there was an accomplished dancer among them. He commanded sixteen-year-old Edie to dance.

Musicians played. Edie danced. But as she danced, she closed her eyes. And in her mind, she was no longer in Auschwitz. Instead, she imagined being at the Budapest Opera House. When the Auschwitz musicians changed to Tchaikovsky, in her mind, Edie was dancing Romeo and Juliet.

“I created a world inside me,” she said later. “I was always thinking about the future — when all this is going to be over.” Edie recalled something her mother told her on the way to Auschwitz: “Everything can be taken from you. But what you put here — in your head — no one can take away.”

That interior treasury — that inner knowledge — sustained her. It was enough: enough to endure, enough to survive, enough to thrive. That is what kept Edie Eger alive.

So why did JCHS faculty read the book? Because we believed, even before we knew you, that this was a vital lesson for you too. What we carry in our heads about ourselves is important. It is the doorway to our future.

Speaking of doorways — in the JCHS tote at your feet is a gift for you, a gift for your doorway. It is an olive wood beit mezuzah, a mezuzah case. Marked on it is the Hebrew letter shin — ש. An image familiar to many of us because it is on lots of Jewish doorposts. It stands for Shaddai — one of the ancient names of God. One traditional interpretation of “Shaddai” is “Almighty.”

But the rabbis of the Talmud in Chagigah 12a weren’t satisfied leaving it there. When they looked at that word, they saw something hidden inside: She-amar l’olamo: dai. “The One who said to the world: this is Enough.” A rabbinic legend explains: When the world was being created, creation kept expanding — oceans poured, mountains multiplied, heavens accumulated upon heavens. And the Creator said: Dai. Enough.Not because creation had failed. Not because it needed more time to become worthy. But because it was — exactly, precisely — enough.

That word dai is also hidden inside the name Shaddai. Seeing it on a mezuzah is an essential reminder of a value that has been part of our tradition for thousands of years: You are enough.

You are! In my years at JCHS, I have rarely seen so many distinct, strong, fully-formed personalities gathered in one grade. You came in with your own convictions, your own voices, your own ways of seeing the world. You never stopped surprising us. What I did not expect was how generously you held all of that. How flexible you could be with each other. How adaptive when the world shifted under your feet. How kind — genuinely, quietly, persistently kind — even when kindness wasn’t the easy choice.

You figured out, without anyone telling you: that a room full of strong personalities doesn’t have to become a competition. It can become a community. And through four years you created that kind of community.

This week’s Torah portion, Beha’alotcha, teaches a similar truth.

In it, Jews in the wilderness are frustrated, crying out. For Moshe the burden is crushing for a leader Torah calls more humble than any person on the face of the earth (Numbers 12:3). An exasperated Moshe turns to God. And, as Ms. Rabinowitz taught beautifully at Siyyum last night, Moshe concedes: I cannot carry this people alone. It is too heavy for me. Moshe admits he cannot do it by himself.

But the answer he gets is not “try harder.” It’s not “Come to think of it, Moshe, you’re right. You are not enough.” Instead, seventy elders are gathered to share the load, so the weight could be carried together.

And that transforms things for Moshe. As others rise to take up the load, he isn’t threatened — he’s grateful. And as they actively participate, Moshe observes, “Would that all the people were prophets” (Numbers 11:29) — would that all of them were this wise, this engaged, this ready to lead.

Sharing the burden doesn’t diminish Moshe. It steadies him. He becomes secure in knowing that with others he is enough. Admitting his limitations was not a confession that he was not enough. Rather, it led to the discovery that being enough never meant standing alone.

That is the dai story of this Class. You were enough — not in spite of your differences, but through them.

This idea of dai is familiar to lots of us already from the Pesach Seder, when we sing Dayenu — each stanza calls out a gift, on its own, that would have been enough.

Beyond the Seder table, when I call that word to mind today, I direct it toward each of you. Each one of you is dai — is enough. Perfectly and completely. Not too much. Not too little. Just right. Enough.

Now look around for a moment.

Look at the people who came to celebrate you today. Every person in this room who loves you does not love a future version of you. They do not love a perfected version of you. They love you this version of you — the one sitting here right now, human and imperfect and whole. For them, you are enough!

We know! We have watched you wrestle with ideas that didn’t yield easily, navigate relationships that got complicated, make sense of a world that asked a great deal of you. And after four years of knowing you, here is what we can say with complete certainty:

You are enough.

Hang this mezuzah on your doorpost. In your dorm room, your first apartment, wherever life takes you next. And on the hard days — when the world makes you feel small, when you wonder whether you measure up — look at the shin. Remember what it means.

Remember Edie Eger, who at sixteen found a whole world inside herself that no one could touch.

Remember the lesson from Moshe that being enough depends on not standing alone.

Remember the thousands-year-old tradition placing that letter on your doorpost to tell you exactly what you need to hear:

Dai. You are enough.

And unlike some Jewish grandparents sitting happily in the dark . . . with their leftover matzah — we are not in the dark about you.

We see you. Clearly. Completely.
And what we see is more than enough.

Precious, bold, and grateful Class of 2026 — we have loved having you at JCHS. We are so proud of who you are, and so excited for all you are becoming.

As your journey takes you away from us, know that all of us in this sanctuary are always here for you.

And we will miss you deeply.

[Rabbi Jacoby Ruben's Charge to 2026 Graduates, JCHS]

This Kind of Community: Compassion, Humility, and Lovingkindness (Naso & B’ha’alotecha 5786)

Tower of Babel, Pyramid, Salesforce Tower, Menorah

Here is my final dvar Torah of the JCHS school year shared this week just before final exams.

This is a season filled with closing rituals — so I have two of my own. The first is sharing my final "Laffy Taffy" jokes of the year:

Q: What do you call a wolf* with bad language? A: A swear-wolf!

Q: Why is challah like the sun? A: It rises in the yeast!

Q: What do you call a wolf with insight? A: An aware-wolf!

That’s one closing ritual. Here’s the other.

Last Shabbat we celebrated Shavuot — we rehearsed standing at Sinai again and receiving the Torah. So the question now, as the school year closes and summer opens, is what do we do with it -- all of this Torah we've received?

This week the calendar gives us a clue from two directions. Here in the Bay Area and everywhere outside of Israel we will read parshat Naso; in Israel they read parshat B’ha’alotecha. Both parshiot place the kohanim — the priests — at the center. The priest’s whole job was to serve, not to rule. To lead in support of a community, not to control a community. In Naso, the kohanim bless the people. In B’ha’alotecha, the kohanim light the menorah. Similar work, two directions: blessing flowing outward, light rising upward.

In that second parsha — B’ha’alotecha — the Torah tells us something striking about Moshe, our greatest leader: that he was exceedingly humble (Numbers 12:3). The Torah’s highest praise for the person who led our people out of Egypt and stood at Sinai is not his power, not his vision, not his eloquence — but his humility.

And that humility isn’t just a personal trait. It’s the shape of the society Judaism is trying to build.

Contrast Jewish architecture with Empire architecture. Our world is filled with Empire architecture — from the Tower of Babel to the Pyramids to Salesforce Tower — broad at the bottom and narrow at the top: the many holding up the few. But Jewish architecture, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks taught, is the opposite. Consider our premier Jewish symbol: the menorah — narrow at the bottom, broad at the top. Leaders serve the people, not the other way around.

About Jewish "architecture," Sacks also wrote: "Judaism became the religion whose heroes were teachers and whose passion was study and the life of the mind. The Mesopotamians built ziggurats. The Egyptians built pyramids. The Greeks built the Parthenon. The Romans built the Coliseum. Jews built schools." That’s the kind of school community we are trying to be.

And the Talmud names three behaviors that mark a community like that. The rabbis ask: what should others see when they look at us? Their answer (Yevamot 79a): “The people Israel are marked by three qualities — rachmanim, baishanim, ve-gomlei chasadim — Jews are marked by acting with compassion, humility, and lovingkindness.”

These are aspirational. None of us embodies them in every moment. What sets us apart as a community is the striving — that we keep reaching for these three: more compassion in how we speak with and about others; more humility in how we see those around us; and more lovingkindness in how we lift those who have stumbled and reach out to those in need.

Show your friends, your families, and the strangers you’ll meet this summer, that you can grow through compassion, humility, and lovingkindness. When you do, you strengthen yourselves, you strengthen our community, and you bring more light into the world.

This is the JCHS kind of community.

Finish strong, and have a great, great summer.

* A wolf is the JCHS mascot.