all day
Remarks to Seniors, Class of 2021
Remarks to Seniors, Class of 2021
High School Graduation, Abraham Joshua Heschel School, May 27, 2021
By: Noam Silverman, High School Head
"לְרֹקַע הָאָרֶץ עַל הַמָּיִם כִּי לְעוֹלָם חַסְדּוֹ"
“Who stamps firm the earth for God’s kindness is forever” (Psalms 136:6)
Ariela: You already thanked everyone, and as a way of beginning, I want to thank YOU, our captain, our leader, our teacher: Thank you for your wise, bold and unyielding leadership over this past year. You steadied us, protected us and inspired us to keep on going. We have all benefited from leaning against your strength. On behalf of our colleagues on the administrative team, the faculty and staff across the entire school, and all of our students and their families: from the collective depths of our hearts: thank you.
Bogrim Yekarim - Beloved Graduates
There is little more mysterious, and joyful, in my experience, than walking onto a fully frozen lake enveloped by the deep silence and stillness of a wintery day. The fear of the unlikely but terrifying crack quickly fades as the incredulousness of walking on water takes over. It always brings me back to Sunday morning pickup hockey games, en plein aire, where fingers and toes would freeze and somehow the joy of the moment and the chase of the puck was all that mattered. On a frozen lake everything seems to quiet and slow down. A moment of bliss.
This year, not one of us here, no one we know, maybe no one on planet earth - experienced a bliss-like, unencumbered, free-from-worry year. We all had it hard. And some had it much harder than others. The resilience displayed by the entire Heschel community, exemplified this afternoon by you - 61 remarkable individuals - is something I think all of us - years into the future - will continue to feel was a significant individual and communal achievement. We survived.
But what did we learn?
Praying was hard for me this year. Racked with worry for our students and colleagues, for my own family, for myself, I really struggled, more than usual, to make my daily tefillah experiences meaningful. But one small prayer, one of the blessings in the very beginning of the morning service, captured my attention even when little else seemed to.
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה הֹ אֱלֹ-ינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם רוֹקַע הָאָֽרֶץ עַל הַמָּֽיִם
Blessed are you God for stamping firm the earth on the waters.
This is a blessing that I had paid little attention to. The blessing assumes some prior knowledge and belief in ancient cosmology. The Ancients and subsequently the Rabbis of the Talmud believed that the world is divided between waters in the heavens and waters below the earth. The rakia, the firmament, essentially the sky, referred to on day number two of the Genesis story, was what they believed to be a vast solid dome enveloping earth that keeps these waters apart and allows all of us the chance of staying dry and afloat. The blessing, in essence, thanks God for creating solid ground on which to stand. And the original tradition was to recite this blessing, not in synagogue during prayer, but upon taking one’s first step out of bed and planting a foot down on solid ground.
This is the first lesson I am taking from this year: Be thankful for what is stable in our lives and what we can dependably rely upon each day. Let us never take that which is stable for granted. But for the Grace of God, we would all be submerged between those upper and lower waters. This year has reminded us that what we experience as “normal,” as “stable,” is in fact a gift. How blessed we are to be here in person together to celebrate you, our incredible graduating seniors, and to pay tribute to the love, dedication, and support that you received from parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, and of course your teachers from our entire school, across all four of our divisions, over the past many years and especially over this past year.
We were able to survive this year by holding onto those things that gave us stability. Some of us found comfort in our new routines (and easier commutes). Others folded themselves into books, Netflix shows, or zoom calls with family and friends. Graduates, you leaned into your friendships, deepening relationships that were already stable and making space in your hearts for new friendships to develop. You found ways to lean into your learning. You volunteered in so many different ways and on such a wide range of issues. And, showing your trademark creativity and tenacity, you found ways to ensure that co-curriculars and athletic teams could still remain meaningful, fun, and vital despite the many constraints. This kept you afloat. This gave you stability in an unstable moment. And your energy, your joy, your leadership grounded all of us: your families, your teachers, and the entire Heschel community. It gave us all stability.
But in appreciating stability, we also must acknowledge the undeniable reality of uncertainty. We actually must experience instability first; only then can we seek stability upon that which is tenuous and shaky. The water must precede the thick ice. Each of us has viscerally felt this vulnerability at different moments and in different ways over the course of this year in our experience with Covid. The stable foundations upon which we all depend were agitated: dependable access to toilet paper and yeast. Public transportation. Convenient and reliable access to food. Stable income. An ability to gather together in person - to pray, to protest, to relax, to learn. Being able to spend time with, let alone embrace loved ones, especially those who were older or managing more sensitive health conditions. All of these things, and many more, were called into question in unprecedented ways.
But this year was destabilizing not only due to Covid. The foundations of our democracy were tested during the January 6th attack at the Capitol building. And prior to that, one year and one day ago, the murder of George Floyd brought our nation to reckon with systemic racial injustice, asking us all to do more, much more, to be more honest with ourselves and active in helping our nation make better progress towards our ideal of liberty and justice for all. And across an ocean and a continent, and close to our hearts, the recent conflict in Israel exposed fault lines between Israeli Jews and Palestinians that will require courageous leadership from politicians and activists, citizens and friends, and reminded us of our mission to support Israel’s promise as a beacon of justice not only in our hearts and prayers, but also in our words and actions.
This year that rakia - the firmament keeping the waters at bay - seemed to crack. Our foundational core as humans, as Americans, and as Jews was shaken.
Embedded in the word rakia is also the way forward in a moment of destabilization. So here is my second gleaning: the stability we seek must be nurtured and invested in constantly. We can’t actually be still. And we can’t simply be grateful. The relationship between the ice and the water is in constant flux. That which is stable can become tenuous. We need to keep moving, to keep working at it. It is the shared work which strengthens our foundations. This is what gives us stability.
This is the work, dear graduates, that you are called to do and what you are ready to embark upon: to create more stable ground for all people. Draw strength from the challenges and losses that you experienced and witnessed this year and the ways in which you and others rose to meet the moment, and work in partnership, across differences, to strengthen and build, to create more spaces for others to lay their feet on stable ground.
Isabel Wilkerson, in her challenging new book Caste, ends with a plea:
...the things that we can actually control [are] more important than the outward traits we had no say in. That we are not what we look like but what-we-do-with what we have, what-we-make-of what we are given, how we treat others and our planet. (Caste, p. 387)
You have so much to offer. The gift of a Heschel education has given you so much. We are so proud of what you have accomplished and who you have become and so excited to watch the ways you will grow and contribute to our community, your new communities, our nation, to Medinat Israel, and to our planet.
On an unbelievably cold day this past February, I ventured out onto a small and frozen lake. I walked right to the middle of the lake. I lay down trusting that the ice would hold. The quiet was a gift. I spent a long time staring into the sky. I thought of all the people in my life that have taught me and believed in me. I also thought about you and about this moment. And here we are. Together. In person. On stable ground.
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה הֹ אֱלֹ-ינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם רוֹקַע הָאָֽרֶץ עַל הַמָּֽיִם
Blessed are you God for stamping firm the earth on the waters.
Each step forward is a gift. Continue to lean on each other, and venture forth into designing the world you deem possible, shaping it, bringing stability, peace, rest, onto the moving waters.
Mazal tov!