Head of School Blog

One of my favorite rituals when my children were young was doing Kriyat Sh’ma/Reciting the Sh’ma with them before bedtime. There is a wonderful sense of closure to the day and comfort as a parent in tucking your children into bed knowing they are safe and sound.  

It has always, therefore, been curious to me that on Seder night, there is the custom of omitting or, according to the 16th century Shulhan Arukh/Code of Jewish Law, reciting only a part of the Sh’ma. The very idea of reciting the Sh’ma is based in part on God protecting us. Are we not in need or shouldn’t we recall God’s protection on a night when we recount how God saved us from an evil Egyptian Pharaoh who enslaved us? 

In fact, Exodus 12:42 states:

לֵ֣יל שִׁמֻּרִ֥ים הוּא֙ לַֽיהֹוָ֔ה לְהוֹצִיאָ֖ם מֵאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרָ֑יִם הֽוּא־הַלַּ֤יְלָה הַזֶּה֙ לַֽיהֹוָ֔ה שִׁמֻּרִ֛ים לְכׇל־בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל לְדֹרֹתָֽ.

That was for יהוה a night of vigil/watching/guarding to bring them out of the land of Egypt; that same night is יהוה’s, one of vigil for all the children of Israel throughout the ages.

This verse from Exodus is the source for calling Seder night a Le’il Shimurim/a night of protecting. In Hebrew, a shomer is a security guard, and this night, according to the verse, is a night of guarding, protecting, watching, a vigil. On this night we recognize that God is the extra diligent security guard of the Jewish people.

The famous medieval Torah commentator Rashi says of Le’il Shimurim that it is a night of “anticipation and watching” when God would fulfill God’s promise to take the Israelites out of Egypt. The Midrash, Yalkut Shimoni, based on the plural nature of shimurim/literally watchings suggests that this night is a two-fold redemption: for God and for the Israelite nation. There is a notion that whenever the Jewish people went into exile, God also went into exile.

Another Midrash, Shmot Rabbah, interprets the verse to mean that the night is reserved for future redemption. It gives examples of many times when God redeemed the Jewish people on this night, not just at the first Passover in Egypt. This is why the verse ends with the words “it is a night that is guarded for all Israel for all their generations.”

Historically, however, Seder night was a time of fear and anxiety within Jewish communities, particularly in Europe. In the middle ages, Pesah and the lead up to Seder night was a time of terror where Jews in Christian lands were brutalized and persecuted because of the blood libel that Jews used the blood of Christian children to bake matzah. 

Near the end of the Pesah seder, we find a liturgical section when we open our doors and recite the words “Sh'fokh ha-Matkha/pour out your wrath!" during which Jews cursed their non-Jewish neighbors for having persecuted them for being Jews. I have always viewed these words, and the ritual of opening our door on Seder night, as an act of defiance. How else can we understand why Jews during the middle ages would open their doors and shout at their neighbors despite the terrible persecutions they experienced at this time of year. Our ancestors must have had an overriding sense that despite the terror they felt, Seder night in particular was a Le’il Shimurim.

Today, in the face of unprecedented antisemitism in the United States how might we view Seder night? I want to suggest that on Seder night this year we embrace two conceptions of Le’il Shimurim. We need to be vigilant in combating antisemitism and not be complacent to allow the United States to slip into the type of antisemitic society that existed for Jews over the centuries in other countries. And, at the same time, we should be grateful for God’s protection and the relative safety we still experience as Jews in America. We are safe in our homes.

 Hag kasher v’samei-ah/Wishing you a joyous holiday!

Graduates, you are an extraordinary group, and also a challenge to summarize in a few words. You march to a beat that only your cohort hears. You are a smorgasbord – a group with diverse interests, friendships, and activities.

And yet, you share a deep caring for each other, and a capacity to celebrate your every success, and comfort each other in the face of disappointment. You are a strong-minded and independent-thinking group. You seize life by the reigns. You immersed yourselves in Torah study through the Tikvah Scholars and Drisha summer programs. You are accomplished musicians, outstanding athletes, and burgeoning and great scientists. You are free-thinkers, who share your views in Political Discussion Club.

All of these experiences have prepared you to face an undeniable reality: We live in a difficult moment in history to be Jewish. While we are thankful for the historic ceasefire reached in January and for every hostage who returns home, there is no denying it comes on the heels of 16 months of war and years of rising antisemitism in the US and around the world. I believe these historic challenges have forged a kind of unity among the Jewish people, including here at JDS.

It's a kind of unity that did not exist before the horrific events of October 7th, at least for many decades. We all have experienced a growing self-awareness of our shared religious and historical bonds, an awareness which grows in the face of danger.

The unity we now feel is the notion of Jewish Peoplehood, and that’s what I want to talk about today. What is Jewish Peoplehood? And, as you prepare to leave your families and the school community, what might your connection to Jewish Peoplehood mean for you as you navigate today’s uncertainty in the world and on college campuses that are often hostile to young Jews. Jewish Peoplehood is identity and belonging, Zionism, history and destiny, our purpose and place in the world, and the balance of pluralism, particularism, and universalism. Jewish Peoplehood undergirds everything we do at JDS. It encompasses our enduring belief that the Jewish people can and will thrive in the future. Jewish Peoplehood explains why we feel more connected in this difficult season, joined by our shared history, legacy, and destiny.

In Exodus 19:2, Rashi, one of the most important commentators on the Torah, says about the moment at Sinai, before revelation when the Jewish people came together in unity: “am echad be lev echad,” “one nation with one heart.’ The Talmud teaches us as well “kol yisra’el arevim zeh b’zeh/All Jews are responsible for each other.

Jewish Peoplehood has been expounded on through the years, right up to today.

Mordechi Kaplan came up with the concept of Jewish Peoplehood. Kaplan was one of the most influential Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century, and he believed that belonging to the Jewish people is central to the Jewish experience. He said that while a person may or may not believe in God, or observe Jewish laws, Jews share a civilization spanning millennia – a common history, language, literature, and cultural tradition. One of my teachers, Dr. Neil Gillman, the late philosophy professor who taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary, writes of this in his book, Sacred Fragments. He says that for Kaplan, 

"the primary form of Jewish identification is belonging—that intuitive sense of kinship that binds a Jew to every other Jew in history and in the contemporary world. Whatever Jews believe, and however they behave as Jews, serves to shape and concretize that underlying sense of being bound to a people with a shared history and destiny.”

The late influential leader of Modern Orthodoxy, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, identified two key aspects of Jewish belonging. The first is the Covenant of Fate/brit goral, which unites Jews through their shared history and the common threats they face. The second is the Covenant of Destiny/brit yeud, whereby the Jewish people share a collective vision and mission in the world. When a Jew is hurt in one place in the world, Jews around the world feel that pain.

Today in Israel, despite the suffering from Oct. 7th, the war and the unreleased hostages, there persists a defiant sense of hope. David Bryfman, the CEO of the Jewish Education Project wrote about his recent experience as part of a global delegation of 40 Jewish educators from 15 countries, who joined to discuss the future of Jewish and Israel education after October 7th. He writes of his lived experience with hosen, best translated as resilience, visiting schools in Jerusalem. He says, “Amid the tears and the ongoing heartbreak, there was an overwhelming sense of hope—even optimism—and, most comprehensively of “hosen," Furthermore, at the end of his trip, a group of participants spontaneously broke into song and dance to the song “od lo ahavati dai/I have not loved enough” Their message he says: “We will dance again.”

“We will dance again.” That is a core belief of the idea of Jewish Peoplehood. For Jewish Peoplehood to become central to our lives, we must give it the ongoing attention it warrants beyond moments of adversity.

I am not alone. A recent survey of Jewish Americans by the Jewish Federations of North America has identified a surge in interest in Jewish Life. 40 percent of Jews who were so recently disengaged are seeking out Jewish spaces, culture, traditions and togetherness. In short, Jews across America are acting on their longing for belonging, for Jewish Peoplehood.

Jewish Peoplehood is not limited to America, Israel, or even our own historical moment. It is a story of the ages. And so, I’d like to briefly share with you three stories from history that teach us the full meaning of Jewish Peoplehood.

First, Entebbe. On June 27, 1976, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked an Air France flight with 248 passengers, and landed in the Ugandan city, Entebbe. The hijackers took hostages with the stated objective of compelling the release of Palestinian militants imprisoned in Israel. Ugandan soldiers were deployed to support the hijackers after the flight landed and Uganda welcomed the terrorists. After moving all of the hostages to a defunct section of the airport, the hijackers separated all Israelis and several non-Israeli Jews from the larger group of passengers, subsequently moving them into a separate room. Over the next two days, non-Israeli hostages were released and flown out to Paris.   The 94 remaining passengers, most of whom were Israelis, continued to be held. Representatives within the Israeli government debated whether to concede, or respond by force, as the hijackers threatened to kill the captives if the specified prisoners were not released. Acting on intelligence provided by the Mossad, the Israeli government decided to undertake a military rescue operation.

One night, Israeli transport planes flew 100 commandos over 2,500 miles to Uganda, to stage the rescue. Over 90 minutes, all but three hostages were rescued. There were four fatalities – three hostages and one soldier, Yonatan Netanyahu, the elder brother of Israel’s Prime Minister. The courage and conviction required to undertake and execute such a feat is born of Jews’ commitment to one another – of Jewish Peoplehood.

Three years later, in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, thousands of Persian Jews fled their homeland of Iran, where antisemitic persecution was rising. Among those who left was the Ahdoot family, who fled Tehran and Esfahan for Oklahoma and New York, in search of freedom from persecution. Alexandra Ahdoot is a senior at Duke University. Her grandfather and father both fled to the U.S.

Being lucky enough to live in America and attend Duke, Alexandra wrote, “I am beyond fortunate that I can wear my Judaism loudly and proudly on campus without being subject to antisemitism or hostilities because of my identity.”

Many college students, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, are unaware of what it means to be Mizrahi and of how people with backgrounds like Alexandra’s play into the larger tapestry of Judaism. Many college students who see Israel as a “white, settler, colonial project” ignore Mizrahi heritage and the contributions Middle Eastern Jews have made to Israeli society and Judaism.

A few years ago, Alexandra wrote in the Duke University student newspaper about Mizrahi Heritage Month. She shed light on her background that has such a meaningful place in her life, and characterizes millions of Jewish experiences around the world. She has vowed to educate others to honor the simultaneous diversity and unity of Jews all across the world and to use her heritage to make a positive influence on the broader world and on the Jewish people. Her conviction and cause are Jewish Peoplehood.

Finally, a story from more recent times. Seventy-eight years after the end of World War II, the number of Jewish Holocaust survivors is dwindling rapidly, while Holocaust denial is swelling across social media. First-hand accounts from survivors are a powerful tool to educate both Jews and non-Jews. Anne Frank was not the only young Jewish girl who kept a diary during World War II to express her thoughts and feelings. In 2010, the diary of another young Jewish girl, Rywka Lipszyc, came to light. 

The diary inspired a hugely successful 2017 exhibition at the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow, Poland, titled The Girl in the Diary: Searching for Rywka from the Łódź Ghetto. The diary, originally written in Polish, has been translated and published in English and 18 other languages.

Rywka’s diary was rescued in the spring of 1945, from the ruins of the crematorium in Auschwitz, by Zinaida Berezovskaya, a doctor with the Soviet army. Dr. Berezovskaya carefully annotated a newspaper photograph of the destroyed crematorium to show exactly where she had found the stained, worn notebook. After a time, she abandoned her efforts to have the diary translated, and placed it in a beautiful envelope for safekeeping. 

Teenaged Rywka had begun her diary in October 1943. She had been subsisting in the Jewish ghetto in Łódź for over two years. She wrote in her diary until April 1944, and then the dated entries simply stopped. Throughout the diary, Rywka exhibits a sense of hope, optimism, and confidence in the future.

We do not know exactly what happened to Rywka at the end of the war, as no documentation has been found confirming her death. More than 60 years later, Dr. Berezovskaya’s granddaughter visited Moscow from her home in California. Among her deceased grandmother’s papers, she rediscovered the notebook, still in its special envelope. She brought the packet with her back to San Francisco, resolved to find out what the notebook was and where it belonged. 

In 2010, the executive director of Jewish Family and Children’s Services in San Francisco—and a daughter of Holocaust survivors herself—was presented with the diary and almost immediately, the project to understand and ultimately publish the notebook’s contents began.

Rywka’s light was extinguished cruelly and early, yet her story lives on in all of you, in all of us, in Jewish people all around the world, who take it forward.

To the CESJDS Class of 2025, you are positioned to take Jewish Peoplehood forward. Most of you are soon to go to Israel...and then all of you eventually to college. Both times are periods to build your sense of selves, your identity. Jewish Peoplehood is a foundational part of what you will bring to and will define your college experience. It is something that no one can ever take from you.

At a time of uncertainty and upheaval both in America and around the world, many young people on campus are left searching for a place of belonging, but you have that ingrained upon your souls, you’ve studied it in school, lived it in different ways in your homes, been part of it for your entire lives, you just may not have named or understood exactly what it was.

I hope your identity and belonging to the Jewish people compose your sense of Jewish Peoplehood. Jewish Peoplehood is both within you, and you belong within it. I hope it will act as a positive force in your lives. That it will give you strength in the face of tragedy and calamity. That it strengthens your inner knowledge of history, legacy, destiny and a positive belief in our shared future. I hope that it will strengthen your resilience and be a reservoir of fortitude and meaning as you make your own way in Israel, in college, and for the rest of your lives.

 Am Yisra’el Chai and, Mazal Tov Class of 2025!