Who Taught You to Ride a Bike? (Ki Teitzei 5775)

Who taught you how to ride a bike? My dad taught me. But it was two, dear graduate school classmates that taught my kids how to ride a bike. There is plenty that we learn from our parents. Yet, there are so many valuable lessons that we learn from other adults, mentors.  

When I ask students to raise their hands if someone other than one of their parents taught them how to ride a bike, or dribble a basketball, or drive a car, or bake challah, or get over being homesick, or play a musical instrument, or act with kindness -- nearly every student raises their hands. 

Consider all the lessons that each of us learned from someone other than our parents.  In our modern world no parent can do it alone and every person needs the coaching and encouragement of people other than our parents.  

Finding A Path Out of the Forest: Together Pursuing Justice and Peace (Shoftim 5775)

Yesterday was the first day of classes at JCHS. Every student took a slightly different path to arrive. Though we traveled along separate paths getting to school, we join together daily to form a single, unified community. 

The first day of school is the start of a year-long journey that will endure a lifetime. In that spirit it has become my custom to use themes developed in Tefillat Haderech ("traveler's prayer") to acknowledge each class of students. Tefillat Haderech expresses hope for a safe journey. The explicit destination of every journey, in that sense, is not the place but the path, a path that is whole, complete, harmonious, and full of peace.

Identity: Not So Black and White (Summer Reading 2015)

Each summer, as students engage their assigned summer reading, the entire JCHS professional community (educators and staff) also have assigned reading. This summer’s reading was Beverly Daniel Tatum’s Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria: And Other Conversations About Race. Her language can be stark at times, but it is also instructive.

Tatum’s framework of domination and subordination brings to mind a Talmudic legend about a vision that comes to Rav Joseph during a near-death experience. In his vision, he sees the dominant and subordinate in society switch places.  He sees those who are dominant in his world inverted to become subordinate in his vision, and vice versa. In the midst of his inversion vision, one group stays in the same, respected place in both worlds -- righteous scholars. When R. Joseph wakes his