In 1996, the two candidates for president of the United States, Bob Dole and Bill Clinton, had different visions of education.
Bob Dole wanted to eliminate the federal department of education. Bill Clinton wanted to expand it. Sound familiar. Fast forward thirty years. The first internal paper I wrote at the UAHC, now URJ, was on why there should be a department of lifelong Jewish learning.
Life is a team sport, and I had one primary criterion when I served as the director of lifelong Jewish learning and I had the honor and the responsibility to build a team of Jewish educators; each one had to be better than I at some key aspect of Jewish education. I owe each one of them. They made me a better Jewish educational leader. They made me a better person. I share this award with them.
The Book of Proverbs teaches when there is no vision, the people run amok. (Pr. 29:18).
It is not good for a person to be alone.
It is also not good to lead alone.
The coordination, the cooperation, and the collaboration with NATE enabled us to translate educational theory into practice, to develop curricular resources for early childhood centers, congregational schools, day schools and camps, for adult learners, for families, for parents, for teachers, for learners with learning differences – CHAI, Mitkadem, Haverim B’Ivrit, Ganeinu, Aleph Isn’t Tough, Ten Minutes of Torah.
Throughout the entire generation, the overarching educational theme was “Torah at the Center”, which was the title of the modest journal we published. The most popular issue of that journal was devoted to “failure”. Every contributor wrote about what they learned from their failures. One lesson on failure was that we are most powerful when we are most vulnerable; and we are most vulnerable when we are most powerful. We teach the most when we learn the most.
During the 20 years I interacted most intensively with NATE, I learned about the preeminence of relationships. I look around this room, and I look into the eyes of teachers, colleagues, students, and my soul smiles, because I am blessed with people who proved their friendship over time.
“Judaism is About Love” by Shai Held is not only the title of the best book I read in the last couple of years, but also a profound truth. I think a teacher needs to love their students. I love many people in this room, and I hope you do, too, because at the end of the day, at the end of a life, it is the people we love who are our legacy, and I was honored to feel love for and be loved by my NATE friends.
NATE helped to turn transactional collegial relationships into transformational friendships. חזק, חזק ונתחזק is a fitting coda for the decades when NATE, URJ, and HUC-JIR were strong and strengthened one another.
May the trees we planted literally and metaphorically continue to grow and give life, shade, and fruit. כן יהי רצון