Powered by Chesed

Like most educators, actually, probably like most people, I dread the day that I return to work after vacation. It’s not that I don’t want to go back to school. As a principal, I truly enjoy what I do. It’s the shift from the routine of vacation to that of work that I find jarring. It is an awkward transition from a (hopefully) more relaxed pace to a more frenetic pace. This week was different. While, of course, there was a portion of me that would have loved to sleep a little later on Monday morning, I was excited to step foot back in the building.

For weeks, the anticipation of our Shushan Purim Chesed Day has been building among the staff. Rabbi Josh Rabin, our Rav Beit Sefer, kept us updated with each contact that he made for the various service projects that would be available for our students. Plans were set for a modified schedule and buses were ordered for the high school projects, while supplies were purchased for the middle school project.

But on Monday morning, it was finally here.

With a group of 9th and 10th graders, I excitedly boarded the bus to AHRC. We were eagerly greeted and we began to visit and play with a group of autistic preschool and elementary school students. The ice and awkwardness quickly melted as the Schechter students followed their new friends from station to station in a physical education activity in the AHRC gym. Everyone was smiling, laughing, and enjoying themselves.

Perhaps the most touching aspect of the experience was the reluctance of our students to leave AHRC. They had seen first hand how they could touch someone else’s life and, perhaps, this is the real purpose of giving matanot l’evyonim (gifts to the poor). Our students connected with people who they could have seen as the “other,” but instead saw them as fellow human beings.

This single event has kept me powered for an entire week.

While we work to plan other opportunities for our students to engage in tikkun olam, we encourage you to reach out to these agencies or others that we worked with and encourage your child to make volunteering part of their lives. As a school, we have a community service/hesed requirement because we strongly believe that tikkun olam needs to be an integral part of our lives as Jews and we lay the groundwork for what we hope will be lifelong habits here at Schechter.

Friday Letter - February 15, 2013

The room was silent. You could hear a pin drop. It didn't matter that there were more than 150 people seated or standing in the gym. The room could not have been quieter empty. Eyes were facing front. No one was shifting in their seat. The entire focus of the room was towards the podium.

These respectful, dignified reactions were beautiful to watch on Tuesday morning. Our students, regardless of how they personally felt about gay marriage, Judaism and homosexuality, or any related issues, made an incredible statement with their behavior. That statement, as they listened to an alumna tell her story of hiding her identity and gradually coming out, was that each individual is deserving of dignity and respect. It continued as their peers stood in front of them to introduce clips of the movie Hineini: Coming Out in a Jewish High School which depicts the story of a student in a Boston Jewish high school grappling with her sexual identity. As the students moved upstairs into workshops that they had selected earlier in the week, the level of dignity and respect that they afforded each other as they discussed topics that could be potentially fraught with emotion was similarly high.

This is a powerful statement.

I recently saw that this past week had been declared National Random Acts of Kindness week by the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation. What occurred here, in my mind, was much more powerful than a random act of kindness. While we encourage our students to engage the world with derekh eretz and look for moments where they can do tikun olam, there is something even more meaningful when our students actively work as a group to create an environment that provides dignity and respect to everyone. It recognizes that as a community, we are responsible for setting the tone in each and every conversation that we have with another person.

Through our actions and our words, we shape the environment around us. This Tuesday’s program, a product of collaboration between the Tzibur Club and its advisor Becky Friedman-Charry, Robin Stanton, and Rabbi Josh Rabin, laid the foundation for creating an environment that is more accepting of our individual differences. When we return from break, students will have the opportunity to again shape their environment by engaging in acts of tikun olam at our school and in the community for our Upper School Chesed Day. Step by step, we are changing our school and our world.