I didn’t panic. I knew the speaker and I knew it would end well. But for a second there…

I teach a senior elective at Ramaz called Inspiration. It sounds highfalutin but it manages to be very grounded. Every Monday for 12 weeks, students are introduced to individuals who, for a myriad of diverse reasons, have inspired me at some point in my life. A few days before they speak to the class, I ask the guests to think about how the way they spend their time reflects their values, and to trace how those values came to be. This week’s speaker was a friend who is one of the kindest, most generous and most positive people I know. At one point during the class, she asked the students if they had ever had a laughing fit at a blatantly inappropriate time. Of course the answer was yes. And she went on to describe a laughing fit she had in middle school while watching a graphic Holocaust film during a Yom Hashoah assembly. Where was this story going? She went on to describe the reaction of the principal, a Holocaust survivor himself, who said to her, “You are wonderful. Now, please leave.” She left, composed herself, returned, and the principal’s subsequent interactions with her never reflected her outrageous behavior. It turns out that she traced her values to the school and several pivotal moments with teachers throughout her education. I can’t say for sure what my students took away from this speaker because we do debriefs later in the week but I am confident that it will be more than recounting their own laughing fits at inappropriate times. But who knows if their own stories will end up having been pivotal moments in their lives? My friend’s story was an unexpected moment.

This is my third year teaching this class. It all started with an unexpected moment. The very first class began with a brief survey designed to stimulate students to think about their relationship with inspiration. What comes to mind when you hear the word inspiration? Who has inspired you and how? What has inspired you and how? After the survey, I asked the class what they thought of it, and, after an awkward silence, one student raised her hand and said, “I thought it was pretty juvenile.” This was my first time teaching a high school class in 20 years, and I started wondering why I ever thought teaching high school again was a good idea. “Why?” I asked the student. “Because I already know what I want to do with the rest of my life,” she answered. And then the room came alive. “No, you don’t.” “You think you do.” “What does that have to do with anything?” And we had an animated discussion about the definition and role of inspiration in one’s life. Her comment -—with her permission — became a question on the Final Exam.

This year, I started teaching a seventh grade Halacha class about the mitzvot that appear in Kri’at Shema. There are so many unexpected moments that it’s making me wonder if I really understand the word “unexpected” (It’s like that line from The Princess Bride movie, after the character played by Andre The Giant, of blessed memory, keeps using the word “inconceivable” to describe how relentless their pursuer is: “That word, you keep using it. I do not think it means what you think it means.”). Before reading an excerpt from Rabbi Sacks, zt”l’s, essay on hearing vs. seeing, I asked the students which of those senses they would choose if they could only live with one. Not unexpectedly, they overwhelmingly chose sight, but for a reason I didn’t anticipate: even if they couldn’t hear others, they could still converse through texting. In other words, they valued communication but they are as comfortable, if not more comfortable, communicating through a keyboard.

That wasn’t actually the unexpected moment. That came later. When we listed the 10 mitzvot in Kri’at Shema on the board, the students were asked to find a common thread between them, or between some of them. The discussion that ensued was about how a person’s age impacts their performance of mitzvot. But it went beyond bar and bat mitzvah age, or the age of chinuch. The real analysis was about how a person’s experience with love impacts a person’s love of Hashem. The same group of seventh graders that had difficulty grasping the difference between verbal and textual communication could deeply engage with the concept of love.

A final example of the gift of unexpected moments is one that I didn’t experience, and I can’t even prove that it happened. But it must have. For a little over two years, I have been getting together with an old friend for coffee, every six to eight weeks. Joe (not his real name), a grandfather of four, lost his wife to a fast-moving disease and decided to start doing Daf Yomi to help fill the time in his day. Now, there might not be a typical Daf Yomi learner anymore but if there was, Joe, by his own admission, would be atypical among atypical Daf Yomi learners. You certainly would not pick him out of a Daf Yomi lineup. And every time we meet, Joe tells me how much he loves the daf. And he always adds, “and I’m not religious!” With no formal Jewish education, he listens to a shiur and a preview and a recap and gets so much pleasure from it. He once told me that when he walks down the street and sees a chasidic-looking man, he stops him and asks him to explain something in the daf that he doesn’t understand. One thing he has learned is that not everyone does Daf Yomi. But the part of the story that I am most curious about is what the individual he asks does after they part ways. He must — MUST — immediately call someone and say, “You’ll never guess what just happened to me.” Maybe he thinks he has met Eliyahu HaNavi. At a minimum, he likely continues on his way, wondering if every person he walks past is someone who learns Torah.

Inspiration can come at any moment, and often from an unexpected one.

Rabbi Joshua Lookstein is the associate head of school, Rabbinic Leadership, Jewish Life and Learning at The Ramaz School.