From the Head of School

“What’s the closest religion to Judaism?”  I couldn’t believe that a joke I’ve never liked, one which I thought embodied so much of the problems of the American Jewish community, would be told at a Shabbat  table in Jerusalem, by the seven-year-old son of two of our closest friends.  I may have blurted out “I hate that joke!” with a little too much force; I stepped on his punch line and in the end he was only parroting what he had heard from adults around other tables, possibly on other Shabbatot.  But that’s the point – or at least one of them; we, as sophisticated we-understand-the-irony adults may say certain things that have layers of “truth” to them – but our children often pick up the words on the surface, missing any subtleties or larger context. 

The punch line, by the way?  Chabad.  Get the joke?  As Jewish as Jewish can be, yet so different, so troubling as to elicit uncomfortable humor and if truth be told, even derision.  Not in polite, we-are-one community functions of course, but around many a Jewish table (and worse, in many a school).  Worse still, there are plenty of one-liners whose punch lines end with Reform – or Conservative, Orthodox or other denominations.  Not that long ago, we could exchange contemporary denominational references with Chasidim and Mitnagdim (two broadly defined groups of Jews in the eighteenth century, utterly philosophically opposed to each other, to the extent that they famously – infamously – refused to accept each other’s kashrut; their siddurim (prayer books) became different, with varying areas of emphasis and even different hymns and wordings of prayers.)  Today the irony’s on all of us: though there are still doctrinal differences, the world and even the majority of the Jewish world look at the descendents of the Chasidim and Mitnagdim of the 1700s and place them all in the same category.

Sects and divisions amongst Jews?  Go further back, to the time of the Second Temple.  Sociological, theological differences – political differences – but certainly not theoretical differences.  These schisms ended with some Jews literally at the throats of others; the zealots and particularly the Sicarii, were advocates of armed struggle against the Romans and didn’t’ hesitate turning their assassins’ daggers on Jews whom they believed were insufficiently stalwart in their opposition to Roman rule.  Move ahead another eighteen hundred years or so and the Jews of the yishuv (pre-state Palestine) are militarily divided into the Haganah and the Palmach, the Irgun and Lehi (also known as “the Stern Gang”).  Some differences are essentially structural and practical (the Palmach - plugot machatz - was a specialized mobile strike force), but others are about life-and-death decisions.  The Irgun advocated offensive action, while the Haganah was guided by a policy of havlagah (restraint).  Predictably, some saw the Irgun as inadequately militant, which led to the founding of the Lochamei Heirut Israel (“freedom fighters of Israel” – Lehi), which saw the British as the primary enemy and staged commando and sabotage raids on British institutions.

Thankfully, we’ve come a long way.  We no longer turn each other into the Roman or Polish or British authorities.  We do, though, have this pernicious disinclination to see commonalities first and differences second.  We seem to exult in our differences, sometimes depicting cracks as gaping fissures in the Jewish body politic.  And boy, do we bash.  Some of us ___-bash and some others engage in ___-bashing, but in the end they’re all self-inflicted wounds.  There are benefits to having a range of perspectives; and there’s a genuine celebration to be had when we think of the diversity within our community.  Yet acknowledging the fact of these differences can lead – should lead – to a recognition that no one perspective has a monopoly on truth or righteousness.

This may go a little too far, but I’ll chance stretching an analogy because the irony is just too perfect.  Gentlemen’s Agreement was one of the first full-budget, big-star Hollywood depictions of anti-Semitism, in which Gregory Peck’s character pretends to be Jewish to write a firsthand account of post-war anti-Jewish attitudes and behavior.  The film is a powerful statement and in 1947, took a decent-sized risk in coming out against what few acknowledged in polite company.  Toward the end of the movie, Peck’s girlfriend (who was in on the ruse) tells his friend Dave Goldman how sickened she was at a party when she overheard a bigoted joke; when Dave asked her what she did about it, she comes to realize that silence condones – and perpetuates the prejudice.  She’s clearly written as a character with liberal views, yet she can’t conceal her own discomfort when she asks Peck if he’s really not Jewish.  The end of the movie is all about reconciliations and resolve (it is Hollywood of the ’40s after all).  Kathy – the girlfriend – understands that she too needs to speak out when she hears comments and jokes; that stereotypes flourish when even “good people” acquiesce to say nothing.  Phillip Green (no longer Phil Greenberg) finishes “I Was Jewish for Six Months” for the magazine and Dave moved into a previously restricted neighborhood. 

My probably-too-serious takeaway from Elia Kazan’s movie is to resolve, just like Kathy, to speak up when I hear one of “those” jokes.  I’ll show a lot more fortitude though if I do it with contemporaries in the States and not just with seven year-olds in Jerusalem. 

Shabbat Shalom,

Jerry D. Isaak-Shapiro
Head of School

But how are you going to top it next year?  The only cloud in the silver lining of an exceptionally successful Spring Auction is the frustratingly stubborn tendency to immediately worry about how to improve on such a tremendous event.  Heaven forbid we should revel too long (like a whole day!) before we start to get nervous about what comes next.  Old joke as a case in point:  What’s a Jewish telegram?  Start worrying, bad news to follow. 

The truth is that while I anticipated a deluge, only a couple of people actually asked the how-do-we-top-this question — and I was grateful for being wrong.  To their credit, one of the reasons why our lay leaders and professional staff have been so successful is that they haven’t tried to best their previous efforts.  In other words, they succeeded in topping themselves because they weren’t trying to top themselves.  Each event is treated as its own occasion, without the niggling worry of will it raise more funds or will there be more participants. 

We live in an era and in a society that nearly obsessively quantifies success.  Rankings in law school, medical school.  SATs,   GPAs, standings.  In honor of the election season, I’ll add the   phenomenon of “horserace journalism” — which perfectly captures the manic comparison of votes (or dollars) of competing candidates, over and above a comparison of their views or positions.  Counting delegates and PAC contributions may be easier, but they don’t necessarily tell a deeper story than who has more delegates or dollars.

Back to the auction.  I don’t believe it’s much of a stretch at all to suggest that the fact that our auction accomplishes this Zen-like success (keeps improving because it doesn’t try to keep improving) is indicative of the school’s educational philosophy.    Of course we benchmark and we track progress of our students and yes, we grade.  But the most important gift we can provide our students is not to compare them with the “average” student their age or inform them of their ranking.  Standardized tests might offer useful information, but only when they’re put into a larger, much more complex context.  The Seventh Grader needs to be “compared” to the best Seventh Grader she can be, and that’s not solely or even primarily based on her educational profile in Sixth Grade.  And her success is certainly not about how the other Seventh Graders are doing. 

Shabbat Shalom,

Jerry Isaak-Shapiro

Head of School