The Heschel School

Second Chances

I would like to begin by taking a moment to thank my colleagues--the wonderfully talented faculty and staff of the Middle School, for all of their dedication and support of these amazing students.

I would also like to thank our parents and families. These eighth graders are incredible, and we take only partial credit! Thank you for raising them to be such wonderful people!

I would also like to thank the Board, Ariela, the medical committee, the nurses, and the administration of the school. We would not have gotten through the past three years--the three years when these students were in Middle School--without your leadership, guidance and support. Thank you!

But most of all, I want to thank you, our eighth grade students. It is clear that when you look back on your Middle School years, you will have many positive experiences to share. But I also imagine that the COVID pandemic and its many disruptions will loom large. COVID has been an unavoidable backdrop to your Middle School lives. In fact, you are the only grade that has experienced pandemic-related disruptions or limitations during *all three* of your Middle School years.

While you have emerged strong academically and otherwise, you also missed out on some traditional Middle School experiences as a result of living through the COVID pandemic. For example, you didn’t have a sixth grade trip to Philadelphia, a seventh grade trip to Albany, or an eighth grade trip to DC; you didn’t have very many B Mitzvah celebrations; for many months you didn’t have any after-school sports; and your instrumental music instruction ended halfway through sixth grade. 

However, (and this is a big however), we did get to go to Israel! You were the first eighth grade class since 2019 to make the trip. Thank God, thank God; I feel so grateful that you were able to go, and that I was able to go with you. 

Getting back to the things you missed: you also didn’t have many Hesed activities these past three years. Your first--and last--official Middle School Hesed day was in the fall of sixth grade, on November 14, 2019. And, that was all for Middle School Hesed days….until a few weeks ago on Sunday, May 8, 2022.

That day, we were in Jerusalem. It had been an extraordinarily long and amazing day. We had *packed* so much in already: we had been to the Kotel, toured the Kotel tunnels and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, shopped and eaten lunch at the Machaneh Yehudah shuk, and visited the Tayelet to learn about the Palestinian-Israel conflict. So it seemed only fitting, after this *packed* day, that our late afternoon Hesed activity was at a place called “Pantry *Packers*.” 

At Pantry Packers we are put into small groups for assembly line work, packaging beans and grains for local households in need of food. We are extremely efficient and productive--clearly energized by this opportunity to help others, even after a *packed* day. After so many months with no Hesed programming, this hour of volunteering fills our spirits and makes us feel whole again. It almost makes up for the many missed Middle School Hesed Days. 

This week’s parsha, Beha’alotcha, introduces an unusual concept called Pesach sheni--or a second Passover. In the Torah, those who were unable to offer the Passover sacrifice on the designated date, were given the opportunity to observe the holiday one month later. If you really could not observe Passover at the correct time, Pesach sheni offered a second chance, a make-up date. 

Packing food on the assembly line constituted our own Pesach sheni--our second chance for Hesed days. Although we did not have Middle School Hesed Days at their regularly-appointed time, we were able to find our way back to Hesed when we were given the opportunity. That afternoon in Jerusalem we had a redemptive Pesach sheni. 

When you started sixth grade everything was normal. You adapted to the new expectations, and things were going well up until March--when school life moved to Zoom, first for a few weeks, and then for the remainder of the school year. Even now, it is hard to believe that we went through this! 

Seventh grade is always a challenging year--but *your* seventh grade experience was challenging in entirely different ways. For most of the year, we were only in school on Mondays and Tuesdays, and still on Zoom the rest of the week. In school, you were studying in very small cohorts, seated six feet apart, masked, and learning Hebrew, Tanach, and math on Zoom, so as not to mix with other cohorts. PE and recess were outdoors--whether in the rain, cold, or snow. And science was mostly outdoors at the Hudson River--again in the rain, cold, or snow. 

Toward the spring of seventh grade the faculty began to observe that there were remarkably few social conflicts in your grade. It’s not that we minded this--it is a lot easier and nicer not to have conflicts. But it also struck us as very unusual for seventh grade--and we worried that the pandemic had stalled your social growth in some important way. But looking at you now, it is clear that a new type of social growth was taking place. 

Last year, I was assigned each Tuesday to Tefillah in the 7 Matar A-2 cohort, and to occasional lunch supervision in 7 Tal A-1. It was clear that in your tiny cohorts you were learning to get along with all kinds of classmates. Perhaps, when your entire social life is limited to a small cohort, you naturally take interest in people you may not have befriended before. Getting along with a diversity of personalities is an important and mature skill, one you will carry with you for the rest of your lives. 

But if the cohort experience made you respect and understand each other in small groups, we knew that the Israel trip was going to put you into an intense, challenging, large-group experience. Would this work? We were concerned that it might not, so we planned a fall trip to Philadelphia, as both an educational experience related to your social studies curriculum *and* a practice trip before our trip to Israel. Sadly, the Philly trip fell victim to COVID, and all we could manage was local programming, featuring ice skating in Central Park! 

But it is now clear that our worries about the Israel trip were unfounded. In Israel, you supported and respected each other every step of the way--and worked together seamlessly whether it was loading grain into bags for the needy, paddling a raft down the Jordan River, climbing up a steep desert mountain, or jumping into a freezing cold pool in a desert oasis. With your voices, you came together in song at a desert campfire, deejaying the bus, and at Kabbalat Shabbat services at Kibbutz Ketura and then again in Jerusalem. You were there for each other in the most positive and profound ways.

In retrospect, I think that the 7th grade small cohort social experience helped shaped your amazing class into what you are today: strong and interesting individualists who also form a cohesive, respectful, and powerful *group*. 

Is it possible that the Israel trip was your Pesach sheni--your second chance, your opportunity to make up for lost time, to grow together as a group, and to learn to maintain your own identities in the process? Seeing the strength of your grade as a community on the Israel trip filled me with hope. You see, if your class can emerge from three pandemic years in Middle School not just educated, but strong, together, resilient, adaptable, amazing, and extraordinary, then there is hope for our fractured world.

There are times when I look at the world and I think, we collectively need a second chance--a Pesach sheni for our society, our country, our planet. You, eighth grade, have given me hope for second chances. And I suspect that you, eighth graders, will one day offer the rest of us a Pesach sheni--a second chance to make this world a better place. Mazel tov; come back and visit us soon; we will miss you.

Lori