This time of year, the Jewish calendar plays games with us. In the space of only a few days, we mourn the loss of 6 million Jews, and we celebrate the creation of the State of Israel--two of the most significant and emotionally powerful moments in Jewish History. This juxtapositioning of sadness and joy, extreme high and extreme low, is always jarring for me, and yet it's precisely this disquietude that makes the days so meaningful.

This past week, we commemorated Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Next week, we will memorialize fallen Israeli soldiers on Yom Hazikaron, Israel's Memorial Day. The following day, our community will come together to celebrate Yom Haatzmaut, Israel's Independence Day.

How do we reconcile these days right next to each other? By getting at the core of what a Jewish education is really about. 

We have known for a long time that Akiba-Schechter creates strong, academically prepared students. In fact, we recently joined four other Chicago Jewish day schools in launching a pilot program, #DiscoverJewishDaySchools, to heighten awareness of just how academically powerful Jewish day schools are. Before launching this project, we worked for almost a year to gather data, crunch it, run statistics, and find out just how well our students stack up in the "measurable" ways: MAP scores, CPS Selective Enrollment admissions, Terra Novas, ACT scores, National Merit Scholarships, even teacher awards. In all of these areas we excelled, beating out our public and private school competitors. This was not terribly surprising to those of us on the inside, because we know firsthand that Akiba students go to the high schools of their choice, advance in various academic competitions--Geography Bee, Spelling Bee, Chidon Hatanach (National Hebrew Bible Contest) and, most recently, the Chicago Metro History Fair. We know that our students become leaders in their respective high schools and go on to excellent universities.

All of these are important barometers of success. But they're not the essence of it. What is? Teaching the heart and soul of our students. That is the extra ingredient, the "X factor" they receive in a Jewish day school. Yom Hashoah was just the most recent illustration of this.

As many of you know, two out of every three Jews in Europe died in the Holocaust--among them, my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. As such, this day is always very difficult for me. What makes it easier--indeed, what gives me comfort--is being around our children.

On Sunday, the day before Yom Hashoah, many of our children chose to participate in the Hyde Park commemoration. It was a beautiful day, and it would have been much easier to be outside playing for a couple of hours than to sit and listen to sad stories about a time long ago. Yet, Akiba-Schechter students chose to be part of the community instead. 

On Monday, our 5th/6th students watched a movie about the Kindertransport, the story of the 10,000 children allowed into England with the hope that they would be reunited with their parents after the war. After the movie, the children listened to Ruth Ultmann, who was one of those children, tell her story.  She was 11 years old when she left Germany and, like most of the children, she never saw her family again. Our students listened intently to her story and asked thoughtful questions. They showed Mrs. Ultmann the kind of respect she deserved and I was proud of them.  

Our 7th/8th graders visited the Illinois Holocaust Museum and, again, were mature, respectful, and articulate. I was proud to be the Head of Akiba-Schechter as I watched how our students conducted themselves. I am comforted to see them being kind and thoughtful to an older person, and respectful to a difficult topic. Unfortunately, I see many children of similar ages who act very differently.

As we reach into the other end of our emotional toolkit and gather for Yom Ha'atzmaut--a day of joy and celebration--we remind ourselves that it is only through experiencing sadness that our joy can be profound. It's this emotional duality that complicates us, but also gives our lives depth and meaning. This is why our graduates are leaders in the world: not because they're smart or good at taking tests, but because they have moral backbones. Because they are compassionate. Because they know they are part of a larger world and a longer history. And most of all: because they know they will contribute to it for the better.

 

Shabbat Shalom!