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

Pursuing Inclusion: Equal Does Not Mean Same (Korach 5775)

Each summer as students engage their assigned summer reading, my school's professional community (educators and staff) also have assigned reading. 

This summer it's Beverly Daniel Tatum’s “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria: And Other Conversations About Race.”  I selected this book to read as a professional community in order to advance our crucial Inclusion & Anti-Bias initiative.  It is essential that Jewish Community High School of the Bay fulfill its  pluralistic mission by actively pursuing inclusion and teaching that bias is corrosive to our community. Respect for difference and pursuit of inclusion also are at the heart of this week’s Torah portion and echo through rabbinic literature.  

In the Torah portion this week there is a serious leadership rebellion when Korach challenges Moses and Aaron.  Korach claims to be speaking on behalf of the inherent equality among the three of them.  But he fails to acknowledge the unique differences in their skills, abilities, relationships, and attitudes.  As expressed by Rabbi Bradley Artson Shavit, “Korach’s flaw was to confuse equal worth with equal skills. Korach was threatened by diversity.”

On Beyond Zebra: Making Meaning of Torah (Graduation 2015) (Shelach 5775)

My precious students:* Your graduation and this opportunity to offer a blessing and charge for the future that you will invent, arrives in perfect harmony with the Torah portion this week, Shelach. In it we read from the story of Moses blessing and offering a charge to twelve scouts about to enter Canaan, to begin a journey toward a future of their invention.  

We tend to think that in telling its stories Torah is limited to using only the now fixed in time 22 letters that comprise the Hebrew alphabet. This is reinforced by the very first words of Torah, “In the beginning God created et” (Genesis 1:1) What’s et? Et is a definite article in Hebrew spelled by joining the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet (aleph) to the last (tav).

Some read et as a kind of synecdoche for the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In other words, “In the beginning God created the 22 letters and with those letters God created the world.”     

Yet a Torah scroll does not limit itself to 22 fixed, uniform letters. For example, this week in one verse the letter yud is super-sized. (Numbers 14:16) That yud is but one of 16 letters that are sometimes written super large or super small. In every Torah scroll some other letters by design have decorative dots or crowns or are written upside down. The Sages of Talmud refer to nearly 100 variants for letters in the Torah.  

That there are differences is clear. But making meaning out of those differences is up to us. My graduates, just as you have made meaning out of the differences among your unique selves, making meaning out of the Torah is now up to you.

Which brings me to one of my favorite and least well-known Dr. Seuss books, “On Beyond Zebra!”  The book turns 60 this year.  It actually came out before “The Cat in the Hat” or “The Lorax” or “The Places You’ll Go.”

Like Father Like Son (Not Exactly) (Naso 5775)

Sometimes when we look in the mirror we see ourselves looking just like our parents or we catch ourselves acting just like one of them. But at other times not. 

How can both be true?  There is a clue in this week's Torah portion, Naso. The Torah describes in repetitive detail the nature of each tribe's offering for the dedication of the wilderness altar. 

The Torah is repetitive and seemingly redundant in that each tribe's offering included the same things - measure for measure - as the other tribes.  There seems to be a lesson in Torah abandoning its typically efficient language to repeat the list of offering materials twelve times instead of just once. 

One lesson may be that even one's actions that look identical to another person's actions, could be different if one person's motivation animating those actions are different from another person's.  In other words, conduct animated by one motivation is different than the same conduct if animated by another motivation. 

Another lesson may be that things that look the same are often different.  The Jewish tradition recognizes the power of individual motivations to transform actions.  For example, Proverbs 22:6 teaches, "Teach a student according to his

Measuring and Treasuring Time (Emor 5775)

We can do just about anything with time. Consider all the actions or verbs we associate with time: add, bend, count, delay, extend, find, get, have, invest . . . just about anything. 

Alicja Kwade's 'Void of the Moment in Motion'

This is a season for counting days -- counting up all the projects and learning we've accomplished approaching the end of a school year, counting down to the final days of high school for our seniors. It also is a season of counting in Jewish terms -- we traditionally count each day between Passover and Shavuot. We learn that custom from this week's Torah portion, Emor. The portion also reminds us about counting days in the week for Shabbat and counting other moments in time for festivals. 

It is a way of saying that every moment in time should be valued and treasured; no moment should be taken for granted.

To illustrate our relationship with time, I shared a corny story with my students this week.  A woman was on the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall in Jerusalem and wanted to check the time.  But her cell phone battery had died so she asked a stranger for the time.  The stranger replied, "I don't know the time; I don't have a watch or phone." "Then how do you keep track of time," she asked.   "Oh, during the day," he told her, "I ask people on the street for the time."