“Unable are the Loved to die/ For Love is Immortality,” Emily Dickinson writes, and on a human level, that feels sound. As long as we remember and share the memories, wisdom and ideas of those who have passed, we still feel their presence in this world. Yet, we also know that on a deeper Torah level, when we pass our Torah heritage from one generation to the next, we ensure our immortality. When we speak of Torah, we include not only knowledge but our deep spiritual inheritance for interacting with this world. That is one of the interpretations of Yosef’s strange phrasing to his brothers about his father, Yaakov, still being alive.
When parents make the momentous decision to send their children to yeshiva day school, this notion of immortality drives that push. Parents, and this is especially true in these uncertain times, have many fears and concerns, both prosaic and transcendental, for their children’s education and its intersection with their developing lives. When fear drives decision-making, though, people tend to seek more control over outside factors or other people, albeit with sometimes unintended consequences. We see that the patriarch Yaakov himself was frequently filled with fears about the future and worries about his children, and some actions taken to control those situations, too, had tragic consequences. As educators, we are constantly cognizant of these deep and sometimes conflicting feelings of parents, and seek to cultivate resilience-building school experiences for children, which support a positive long-term mindset.
Importantly, Jewish educators fall into the category of Torah “dreamers,” similar to Yosef. He is a dreamer, but not in the American scoffing way of associating a dreamer with a slacker, but rather, Yosef is a visionary leader and influencer who actively plans to ensure that his dreams come true. In this challenging year of the ongoing COVID pandemic, piled upon the always stressful and thankless role of Jewish communal service, educators, miraculously, continue to actively seek out professional development to ensure that they influence and support the school mission of a spiritual core with joyous, passionate, self-reflective learning.
Reframing this time as an opportunity to seize to strengthen ourselves is a historically Jewish approach. Each time we face difficulties, we take that suffering and use it to power our forward momentum. We not only don’t want to reflexively fall back on old or poor practices, we want to facilitate favorable circumstances to increase our creativity and commitment to reach every student, even if we have COVID limitations. We can treat each child with care and dignity, and appreciate his or her unique capacities in an environment with clear expectations, while providing space for genuine problem-solving and creativity. None of this is dependent on the physical room, but rather, on the emotional safety net we embrace and the classroom community we foster.
On some level, people are tired of talking about COVID. They fantasize about returning to “normal,” when of course, there is no such thing as going back to the past, only moving forward. Students and staff in schools are facing and coping with losses large and small, and the trauma from these experiences has not yet been fully assimilated. Nonetheless, while that is true, and while we certainly don’t ask Hashem for yesurim, it is awe-inspiring how teachers and schools are supporting both their students and themselves to reframe these current challenges as growth opportunities.
It is not coincidental to recognize the incredible dedication of our teachers, administration and school staff around the holiday of Chanukah. Chanukah, with its similarity in meaning to chinuch, Jewish education, and its story of literal dedication and consecration, is frequently used as a springboard to praise teachers. Similar to the parsha with its painful saga of Yosef and his brothers and parental anxiety, so too the story of Chanukah reflects a time when the trajectory of life did not go in an expected direction, and people made choices that significantly impacted the future.
Every single day, schools and teachers make choices, large and small, that significantly affect children. The additional hours that they keep working, whether it is attending ongoing webinar trainings in SEL (social-emotional learning) reading, writing or language development, technological tools, or the extra attention they may lavish upon students learning remotely with drop-offs or calls, should be appreciated, recognized and acknowledged. The level of commitment, while juggling their own personal traumas, is a testament to their devotion.
We should be sure to actively use our power of speech to support and thank our educators, many of whom function at a difficult-to-sustain level of engagement. One of the many elements that strikes so forcefully in the story of Yosef and his brothers is, of course, this power of speech. Yosef’s carrying of reports to his father leads to a cascade of bitter events. Later, as the story progresses, we notice Yosef becoming Yosef Hatzadik in Egypt and constantly attributing his dream interpretations to Hashem. This power of speech, both toward positive and negative ends, should give us all pause, particularly when it comes to school. Emily Dickinson says, “She dealt her pretty words like Blades-/How glittering they shone-/And every One unbared a Nerve.” How amazing it would be if parents communicated with and about schools and teachers using Dickinson’s positive language, “With a Word that breathes distinctly.”
As the Chanukah flames flicker, let us pay tribute to the glow emanating from our precious teachers and schools, as they strive for personal growth and to create doorways for the glowing and growth of our children.
Chana Luchins is the principal of general studies at Rabbi Pesach Raymon Yeshiva in Edison, NJ.
