A Task for Us All

On Motzaei Simchat Torah 5784, we had an apprehensive meeting of our administrators. What should we say to our students and faculty? What could one say? We held two conflicting instincts in tension. The first was to gather together in mourning to honor those who were brutally murdered on October 7. But a more immediate life-affirming instinct prevailed. We gathered our school community on that Monday to create a sense of hope, optimism and determination, to sing together and commit to making our voices heard in support of the State of Israel. It was the right decision at the time, and it informed our entire painful and unifying year together in school. Of course, we could not fathom that one year later, the State of Israel would still be at war on many more fronts in an increasingly crumbling world – and that antisemitism would be raging at levels that we have not seen in our lifetimes. What should we say to our kids now? We will, of course, continue to pray and sing together, and to show support through rallies, volunteering, and letter writing. We will continue to support our chayalim, among them many of our graduates, men and women, who have served in the IDF during this crucial period. But we need to provide direction to our students and to ourselves in managing this realigned reality.

Our American Jewish world is changing and we need to pay careful attention. We must work to cultivate three vital capacities in our students:

Believe in the Jewish People

This year, we have experienced the power of Jewish peoplehood on an entirely new scale. Just a few years back, the divide between Israel and Diaspora Judaism was on the verge of becoming a rift. Now, so many Diaspora Jews support Israel not only financially, as they did decades ago, but also emotionally, psychologically and through active volunteerism. Israelis, too, are showing a new level of interest in and concern for the achievements and challenges of world Jewry. Israeli rabbis and educators are more invested than ever in having their constituents and students understand world Jewry in general and the American Jewish community in particular.

And yet, in a recent conversation, an organizational leader told me that the greatest challenge she foresees for the larger American Jewish community is the generational divide in support for Israel. The younger generation of American Jews is increasingly tilting away from Israel. That shift places a great responsibility on our shoulders and those of our students. Our yeshiva high school students and graduates have an especially crucial role to play in keeping the Jewish people strong.

Believe in Yourselves

Our community now feels a part of Jewish history in a way that seems both new and old, gratifying and devastating. For me and certainly for the students in our school, antisemitism was the stuff of curricula and classrooms. We have not seriously known or experienced it in our lifetimes. In truth, most of us still have rarely experienced it on a personal level. But now we know that it exists in ways we haven’t felt before; the societal barriers are coming loose.

We must respond well, with strength, confidence and self respect, but not with hate. We are uniquely positioned, unique in Jewish history, to be able to respond to antisemitism from a position of remarkable strength, with the State of Israel and the government of the United States of America behind us. We know what the soldiers and civilians of Israel have done and continue to do to keep Am Yisrael strong. We must dedicate ourselves to keeping American Jewry strong.

Over this year, I have watched with deep pride as yeshiva high school graduates, many of them our own, addressed congressional hearings, spoke at news conferences and political conventions, met with their university presidents, strengthened their Jewish communities on campus and sued their universities to keep Jews safe.

We must provide our students with the capacities to wear their Judaism proudly and openly wherever they go. They must know how to talk to people who differ from them and with whom they disagree; not primarily to protest nor to dialogue but simply to explain who we are and what we believe and to do so with confidence and pride.

Believe in Others

Until October 7, we taught antisemitism largely as a historical issue. Personally, I had not thought much about the so-called Jewish Question in America. Wilhelm Marr, who popularized the use of the term “antisemitism,” believed that the Jews were a racial problem and could not possibly integrate into society. Bruno Bauer and Karl Marx questioned whether one could be a loyal citizen of Europe and also committed to the Jewish nation with every fiber of one’s being. But that was the 19th century. By the last quarter of the twentieth century, we began to feel that perhaps all of that was behind us.

Today, the American Jewish community is anxious anew, and with good reason. The number of antisemitic acts has increased tenfold over the last decade and more than doubled in the last year. In this climate, it is easy to lose faith in people and believe that we must go it alone.

This idea of “going it alone” can quickly become a way of life or even a theology. In recent months I have often heard people cite the words of Balaam הן עם לבדד ישכון “behold they are a nation which dwells alone.” Some of us believe that Jew-hatred is a biblical prophecy part of God’s plan for the Jewish people. However as Rabbi Sacks frequently wrote a theology of Jews dwelling alone has the tendency to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we think we have no friends that will likely turn out to be the case.

We must continue to believe in people! As educators, we must provide students with opportunities to build friendships and develop alliances outside of our Jewish communities. For example, our students must develop their capacity to interact in structured settings with students from Black and Hispanic communities, to explain themselves as Jews to teenagers who live very different lives from theirs. In order to develop these capacities, they must believe that it is worth the effort. We must convey to our students that this effort is necessary for the sake of the Jewish people. In turn, we must give our students the skills that they need to accomplish the task.

We know very well that our brothers and sisters in Israel are on the front lines of the battle for the future of the Jewish people. We must state loudly that on these shores, we and our students have our own responsibilities to secure the Jewish future.

As our administrators meet one year later, we do so with a deep understanding that all of us – students, faculty and parents – have a vital role to play in keeping Am Yisrael strong. We must be up for the task.