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| Tower of Babel, Pyramid, Salesforce Tower, Menorah |
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.
