Exactly Where I Want To Be - L'Sasson 2025/5785

“Exactly Where I Want To Be”

A quick survey could suggest I have been a life-long enthusiast of Jewish education. After all, I attended Jewish day schools through high school graduation and then spent a year studying at a yeshiva in Israel. Laurie and I sent both of our daughters to Jewish preschools and day schools – we know from paying tuition! – and both of my parents, all of my siblings, and all of my siblings’ children are also Jewish day school graduates. More than that: after a 25-year hiatus, I took a pivot in my career eighteen years ago and returned to Jewish day school education as a professional myself.  

But during 12 of those “hiatus” years, I spent most of my Friday mornings in the Washington National Cathedral, where I found the Episcopal hymns so catchy that I often came home on Friday afternoons humming them, until Laurie would say to me, “Redirect, Redirect” and start singing “Shalom Aleichem.” 

As this anecdote suggests, “life-long enthusiast of Jewish education” likely blurs the realities of my journey beyond recognition, with the truth a good bit more complicated. Suffice it to say, the gravitational pull of all that my parents carefully instilled in me – along with my near continuous suffusion in the society and culture of our people – always kept me in the orbit of Jewish life and Jewish education. But should I ever write the travelogue of my journeys – very unlikely – that narrative would need to include assorted detours and side trips.  

I share this to establish a contrast to where I stand now. 

At the pinnacle of my career – with a good number of years still ahead – I find myself exactly where I want to be: amongst you; with opportunities to spend my days with this community’s precious children; serving, not just as the Head of an elementary school – go figure! life does bring surprises! – but as the Head of the Seattle Jewish Community School. This position and context have drawn from me full-blown enthusiasm for Jewish education (heretofore sometimes latent) and not just enthusiasm, but deep, abiding, proud, and grateful faith. 

Modes of education and the paradigms behind them do, of course, evolve. The person before you, who spent nearly all of his “hiatus” from Jewish education teaching US History, could elaborate on all the ways that the educational modes of my childhood and the paradigms behind them still featured the heavy influence not just of Cold War sensibilities and priorities, but also of the vestigial needs of the Industrial Revolution ... but I’ll save that for another time.  

My education also proceeded in a profoundly different context where information and communication are concerned. When I needed an elusive piece of information not contained in the World Book encyclopedia my parents purchased when I was in 2nd grade, I could go over to the rotary phone, plugged into the wall, dial that phone and speak to a “reference librarian” at the local public library. Meanwhile, at school, my teachers tended to regard the newly available and affordable, handheld, four-function (!) calculators as a new-fangled form of cheating.  

Today, my phone has no dial, it generally moves around with me, residing in my pocket – if I take care not to leave it somewhere and forget where that “somewhere” is – and it surely contains more information than all of the libraries in my hometown. It even spews “artificial intelligence,” for heaven’s sake.  

Things change. 

And eternal verities stick around. 

Our world across the ages has been shaped by several extraordinary approaches to thinking and living. One of these comes from our tradition and our intellectual heritage. I do not feel “better” than others because I carry forward the Jewish tradition and heritage rather than other beautiful traditions and heritages, but I do feel grateful and proud she-asani Yisrael/שעשני ישראל (that I was made one of the people of Israel).  

Along with feeling grateful and proud, I feel driven. This emanates from a realization well captured in a different tradition and a different language: 

Where education is concerned: le plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. “The more things change; the more things stay the same.” Or more aptly for this context, “the more things swirl around us -- for the good and for the distressing too -- the more the wisdom of timeless Jewish educational philosophies stands out.”  

At SJCS, we chose “hope” as our theme for this year -- reflected in the student artwork you see here today. We did so with an awareness that hope plays its role in the context of challenge well more than of halcyon days. At this juncture of my personal journey, I find myself exactly where I want to be – amongst you; with opportunities to spend my days with this community’s precious children; serving as the Head of the Seattle Jewish Community School – because finding myself here, I also find myself surrounded by hope, hope generated by the pursuit of mission, in community, with values and approaches deeply rooted in the wisdom of Jewish tradition and intellectual heritage. And hope found in children.

Every day at SJCS, children learn in classrooms that celebrate both questions and mistakes as paths to wisdom, classrooms that hold fast to the intrinsic value of learning, including by resisting the impulses that surround us to displace intrinsic purpose with extrinsic markers. 

Torah LiShma/תורה לשמה (“learning for the sake of learning”). 

Every day, our students encounter multiple interpretations and develop appreciation for differences in perspective. 

Shivim Panim L’Torah/שבעים פנים לתורה (“learning has 70 faces”). 

Every day, we guide these students to steer clear of collapsing civil discourse and instead to engage in disagreement as a sacred enterprise. 

Machloket L’Shem Shamayim/מחלוקת לשם שמים (“disagreement in the name of heaven”).

And every day – with the aim to prepare the children to navigate a difficult world with resilience, purpose, and secure identities – we gird them with the bonds of community, the community that surrounds them and the community of their mission-driven people, transcending time and space. 

Am Yisrael Chai/עם ישראל חי (“the people of Israel endure”). 

Our people endure, and our school thrives. 

Student and staff retention at SJCS remains very strong, holding in the high 90s (percentage-wise) for several years running. Interest in the school has climbed to levels not seen in many years – with back-to-back full kindergartens and with new, higher numbers defining “full.” SJCS opened this year with a 17% increase in enrollment and then experienced a 51% increase in applications over the following months. The school’s lay and professional leadership continue to work carefully and successfully toward long-term goals of financial security and sustainability.

On that foundation, we dare to dream! With a focus always on the children, we are looking forward to adding the dramatic arts to our program next year; to continuing to advance the breadth and depth of our Jewish Studies; to developing  thoughtful, engaging Israel education that honors our mission, vision, and values; and to giving our teachers time over the first semester to develop an innovative all-school project focused on community -- notably Jewish community -- with guidance from a nationally celebrated Jewish educator who is excited to travel all the way across the country to work with us. 

Our present is secure, and our future is bright.

With your continued support, SJCS will continue to serve as a nexus of community, to forge bonds of community, and to establish partnerships within community.  

With your continued support, we will continue to climb Mi Chayil El Chayil/מחייל אל חייל (“from strength to strength”), and we will continue to do right by our children at a time when they need and they deserve the full measures of our devotion.

From the heart and from exactly where I want to be: Todah Rabbah/תודה רבה (Thank you very much).