Two rabbis, a Hasid in Alaska, and Robert Frost
“ The Torah Is A Commentary On The World,
And The World Is A Commentary On The Torah… ”
Nigel Savage, Hazon
The Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program,
Commencement, Brandeis Univesity, Lag b’Omer 5774, Sunday 18 th May 2014
Professor Smith; Hannah, Noah, Lauren, Elisheva; also Levi, Geo, Jason, Yuliya,
Dina – did I leave anyone out? Graduates, faculty, family, friends…
Eli: thank you for those very kind words and for welcoming Liz and me.
I want to say at the start: there are many places committed to academic
excellence, and many that are heimish and have a real sense of family. But there
are very few indeed that exhibit both, and that’s what makes being here today so
unique – that dual sense of excellence and heimishness is palpable. This is such a
wonderful program, and it’s testament to great faculty and great students. I’m
very honored to be here.
Some of you, by the way, may be imagining that this is the first time in 25 years
that I’ve been wearing a gown and mortar board like this. Not so: I put this on
every Sunday night when we watch Downton Abbey.
I was telling my parents about being here today and my mother reminded me of
a time I was back in Manchester, a few years ago. I was in the Forward 50 that
year and I said, Dad, would you like me to come and speak at shul – the shul I
grew up in – and my Dad looked at me very seriously and he said, “but what
would you speak about? And why would anyone come to hear you?” Which is a
reminder that we none of us are prophets in our own home, as an obscure Jewish
figure named Jesus put it, and a very good lesson in humility.
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So with due humility, and with great gratitude to Hazon’s phenomenal staff,
board members and volunteers, the people who do so much to bring Jewish
vision to fruition, and who thus enable me to receive this award today, I’m
indeed happy to accept this award: thank you very much indeed.
This afternoon I want to focus on a question that relates deeply to the Hornstein
Jewish Professional Leadership Program and to your post-Hornstein careers.
You’re graduating from a dual-degree program. Wearing one hat, you’ve learned
about non-profit management. Public policy. Statistics. Evaluation. Logic models.
Theories of change. Organizational Behavior and Leadership. Fundraising.
And wearing the other hat: Jewish Studies. “Philosophy of Jewish Education.”
“Jewish Community in Historical Perspective.” The Kraft Seminar in Israel.
The key question is: what’s the relationship between the two? What can it be,
what could it be, what should it be, as you leave here and head into the rest of
your lives?
The answer I want to suggest begins with my first encounter with the American
Jewish community. I want to say that I’m from Brookline, and took elocution
lessons, but you wouldn’t believe me. I am indeed an English Jew. My first
encounter with American Jewish life was in fact my Junior Year Abroad, at
Georgetown. Rosh Hashanah services. I was 21 years old.
Georgetown, as you may know, is a Jesuit school. That gives it an interesting edge
on campus between religious tradition and the wider community.
I guess it’s similar to the way that Brandeis is Jewish – presumably on Succot,
here on campus, half the people are sitting in sukkahs, and the other half are
saying, “boy, those folks really got screwed in the housing lottery…”
So anyway: I’m at Georgetown and I walk into Gaston Hall, this beautiful 19th
century wood-panelled hall, for Rosh Hashanah services.
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I look up and all four walls are lined with oil paintings - of saints. Catholic
iconography as far as the eye can see.
In the center of the hall there’s a temporary ark, - with a six-foot high crucifix
suspended above it – you know, that obscure Jewish figure again.
And in front of the ark there’s a table from which we’re later going to read the
Torah. It’s draped with a beautiful white cloth, which says in Hebrew and in
English, da lifnei mi atah omeid – know before whom you are standing….
And of course straight in my line-of-sight, right behind this, I’m looking at an
image of Jesus and Mary.
This was not quite like the orthodox shul I’d grown up in in England.
I’d never done Rosh Hashanah services with catholic saints and Jesus and Mary
and a big crucifix. And, as it happens, I’d never heard parts of the services done in
English, I’d never done responsive readings in English, and I’d never been in
services with women and men sitting together.
So I was already well out of my comfort zone when it got to the end of the
services and the rabbi – Rabbi Harold White, who retired only recently and with
whom I had tea just a few weeks ago - said:
And now we’re going to sing adon olam.
But we’re gonna sing it to an old chassidiche tune – a tune I learned from an old
chassid in Alaska…
I’m like: OK.
And he went on, “but some of you will know that I learned with the great New
England poet, Robert Frost. It so happens that one of my favorite Robert Frost
poems fits this chassidische tune. So at the end of Adon Olam we’re gonna sing
the Robert Frost poem…”
And I was like: Scottie, you can beam me up NOW!
It was the start of a very significant year for me. I didn’t know it at the time, but
what Rabbi White was doing gave me my first experience of an idea that has
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proven significant in my life and in Hazon’s work, and which is the heart of what I
want to talk about today.
I didn’t have a conscious frame for what hit me so strongly at Georgetown until
about ten years later, after the death of Reb Shlomo Carlebach, zichrono livracha.
After he died I went back through my notes from the last time I had learned with
him, at Yakar in Jerusalem, two months previously. Two sentences somehow
leapt out at me from the page. He had said: “The Torah is a commentary on the
world. And the world is a commentary on the Torah.”
The Torah is a commentary on the world. And the world is a commentary on the
Torah.
That’s what, in retrospect, had hit me so powerfully in those Rosh Hashanah
services at Georgetown. When Rabbi White put together adon olam and a Robert
Frost poem he was saying: These things are not separate.
It’s not just that I’m Jewish – one thing – and American - another.
It’s that I choose to put these two things together.
I choose to place them in relation with each other.
I choose to allow them, in a sense, to comment on each other – to use a
chasidische tune to frame Robert Frost in a very new way; and to allow the
words of Robert Frost to offer a unique midrash on the liturgical themes of Rosh
Hashanah.
This is a critical insight. It both challenges us, and helps us, in innumerable ways.
Reb Shlomo’s words became the theme-quote of Hazon, when I founded it a few
years later. They underpin everything we have done, certainly everything we
have tried to do, these last fourteen years.
And I especially wanted to say something about them today because they shed
critical perspective on Hornstein and on the degrees you are receiving.
The heart of this is that we need to take “Jewish” out of the small boxes we put it
into – the boxes of religion, shul, Israel, organized Jewish life – and place it into
the center of our lives, of this country and of the world we live in. Place it right
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into the boxes of public policy, strategy, organizational values, leadership best
practice, the habits and challenges of daily life. And vice versa – I want those
aspects of the world we live in to help us understand Jewish tradition, afresh, in
myriad ways.
At Hazon, this includes things like bringing contemporary questions about food
into relationship with two thousand years of Jewish food traditions. Building a
Jewish Food Movement. Launching Jewish Community-Supported Agriculture
programs around the country. Putting Jewish purchasing power behind local
organic farms, whilst simultaneously advocating for keeping kosher and
critiquing aspects of the kashrut industry. Or asking what Jewish tradition can or
should say – and can or could learn – from our contemporary environmental
crises.
I want to give three specific examples of what this might mean, in the future,
when I talk about this interplay between Jewish tradition and the wider world
we live in.
Think for instance about time. Time is so central to Jewish life. Shabbat is
different than a random Tuesday. Kol Nidrei night is different from Seder night.
(Which is good, because we might all break our vows after drinking four cups of
wine. On the other hand: it is true that on both kol nidrei and seder night you do
spend a loooong time waiting to eat.) In any case: in general we treat Jewish time
as how we run privately, and then American time is how we live in the world.
But some of you may have seen a recent story about Romemu, a shul in New
York. They announced that they were not going to send or receive email at all
during Pesach. I forgot about this and I sent an email during Pesach to Ilene
Sameth, their Executive Director. Here’s what I got back: “This is an automated
reply. In observance of Passover, Romemu is neither sending nor receiving email
until after the conclusion of the holiday. Because it is our practice to consider email
to be chametz (that which should not be consumed or even owned on Pesach), your
message has been deleted and will not be read. Please resend your message
again after the conclusion of the holiday.”
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Obviously my immediate reaction was:
wow, this is the first time I’ve wished that Pesach lasted longer.
Not to mention: how can a growing, vibrant, Jewish organization expect to survive
eight whole days without being offered credit checks, erectile dysfunction pills, or
the chance to help a fleeing Nigerian prince make you a millionaire?
Also: does this mean I have to find a non-Jew to sell all my emails to for the week?
But on serious reflection, it’s a really interesting autoreply. What they’re saying
is:
a/ we think Jewish tradition is wise. And that includes the tradition of getting rid
of our chametz which, as the rabbis teach, we should understand metaphorically
as well as literally;
b/ not only do we think that Jewish tradition is wise but, also, this is 2014. We do
want to get rid of the chometz that our people have gotten rid of for two
thousand years. But are there any new kinds of chometz around? We’re free of
Pharaoh and the Czar and Hitler and Stalin; but are there other ways that we are
enslaved, or enslave ourselves, as we go into this holiday that’s about freedom
and liberation?
And so that leads to c/: let’s be clear, there isn’t a management class in this
country that has really taught us how to handle email – so why not, actually, turn
to an older and far wiser tradition and see what it might teach us? what if we
treat email as chometz? – might that not renew our understanding of Pesach, and
maybe help us live better lives today?
This interest in the significance of Jewish time is one of the reasons that Hazon is
doing so much work on the forthcoming shmita year, the sabbatical year in
Jewish life, which is another good example of what I’m talking about. The word
shmita means “release.” Normally it intrudes on Jewish life only when the New
York Times runs basically an identical story every seven years about arguments
in Israel between the orthodox, the ultra-orthodox and the secular in relation to
land-use and a thing called the heter mechira, a kind of super-sized version of
selling your chometz.
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But shmita is much more than that. It’s a series of provisions in the Torah which
variously relate not only to land and food but also to debt, inequality, time itself,
and the nature of community.
What if we bring shmita out of the realm of “religion” and bring it into
relationship with the other aspects of our lives, including aspects of public policy
and leadership that are normally the domain of the other side of the Hornstein
training? We’ve been raising this question for several years now, and this shmita
cycle some really interesting things are starting to happen.
There are fifteen public parks in Israel, for example, that are going to waive their
entrance fee during the shmita year – which starts this coming Rosh Hashanah –
specifically because people who felt that the Torah was a commentary on the
world, and the world a commentary on the Torah, lobbied the relevant ministries
and said, shmita isn’t just about the land lying fallow, or releasing debts; it’s also,
more deeply, about sharing the commons with each other. So why not have these
public parks be free for the shmita year?
Here in the States, my friend Amichai Lau-Lavie is going to launch a 12-month
process, during the shmita year, called Digital Detox – thinking each month about
different aspects of our digital lives that we might want to let go of, to release.
And one other example in Israel: there’s a tech guy called Yossi Tsuria who’s
celebrating shmita by having 60 R&D guys from Cisco meet with top scientists in
different departments at Hebrew U, once a month, to review key discoveries of
the last six years, – and to imagine how they might be applied in the next sevenyear cycle of Jewish time. What an amazing way to allow the shmita cycle to
afford a unique commentary on the world we live in, and vice versa.
Let me give a different kind of example of a deeper interplay between the Torah
and the world: thinking about leadership and followership and about ecosystems of community.
Hannah and Lauren earlier on shared one of their favorite mishnayot from Pirkei
Avot. This is one of mine:
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aseh l’cha rav; u’knei l’cha chaver; v’hevei dan et kol ha’adam l’chaf zechut.
Literally:
aseh l’cha rav - make someone your teacher.
u’knei l’cha chaver - Buy yourself a friend. A very weird idea if you think about it –
it’s not normally how we think of acquiring friends.
And then v’hevei dan et kol ha’adam l’chaf zechut. And give each person the
benefit of the doubt.
Well it’s very nice as an epigram, but what does it mean?
The heart of disentangling it I think involves this curious phrase ‘k’nei l’cha
chaver” – acquire a friend; literally, buy yourself a friend. Very strange. But I
think what it’s getting at is the notion that friendship, like a purchase - in which I
give something and I receive something – is fundamentally about reciprocity.
Going back-and-forth. If I’m only giving giving giving – or taking and taking –
eventually the relationship will wither. Pirkei avot is teaching that friendship
must be reciprocal.
If that’s so, that then helps us understand how radical is the first phase – aseh
l’cha rav, which, critically, is not reciprocal. It’s saying, you have the direct
responsibility, in a relationship with a rabbi, a teacher, a leader, to make them
your rabbi, your teacher, your leader. This is where the juxtaposition between
Jewish thought and Western thought – between “the Torah”, in Reb Shlomo’s
formulation, and “the world” – is so fascinating.
Because the western world doesn’t say this at all. It says that when we’re in a
classroom we essentially say to our teachers – you show me what you’ve got. You
show me that you’re smart, and that you can hold my attention. And if so, then
maybe I’ll show up on time, and do the reading. But if I don’t think you’re good
then forget it – I’ll show up late, or leave early, or sit in the back and text my
friends. Very disempowering for a teacher.
Aseh l’cha rav reverses this entirely. It’s saying: if we want a teacher to teach well,
a CEO to lead well, an elected official to govern well, a department head to
supervise us well, then aseh l’cha rav – you, meaning each one of us; you, those of
you who are graduating today - you make that person your teacher, your leader.
You, by your own behavior: support, empower and encourage them. Incredibly
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radical idea, and profound in its ability – if you really try to apply it – of creating
healthy institutions around us.
And part of how you do that, by the way, is the third clause, v’hevei dan et kol
ha’adam l’chaf z’chut – give that particular person whom you choose to empower
as your teacher or leader or supervisor, the benefit of the doubt.
I share this teaching with you because for me it is such a powerful and
quintessential example of what I mean. I’m not saying that Jewish teaching
trumps whatever you’ve learned in management theory. I’m not saying that
management theory trumps the Mishnah. I’m saying that as you move through
your lives, and through your careers, you can and should allow a much deeper
interplay between Jewish tradition, on the one hand, and the wider world, on the
other. The Torah really is a commentary on the world, and the world a
commentary on the Torah.
I want to give one final example: the tension between contemporary sociology,
on the one hand, and Jewish history on the other. I’m going to echo in a slightly
different way some of the comments made earlier by Professor Sarna.
I hope in the last two or three years you’ve learned about the importance of
evaluation data and the difference between inputs, outputs, outcomes and
impacts. All important. A daily part of Hazon and the work we do. My first career
was in finance and numbers are my friend: I have no problem using evaluation
data.
But: data has to go hand-in-hand with vision.
Data can only record that which is or has been; it tells us nothing about what
might be, nothing about the future, nothing about human agency. Jewish history
is in this sense a profound critique of Jewish sociology.
The midrash tells us that in Egypt, in 400 years of slavery, the children of Israel
kept three things: their own names, their own language and their own clothing.
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Very good: but what then could the sociologists have told us if they’d done a
study of the Jewish people, 398 years after slavery began?
Pew Mitzrayim – headline news:
- There are 600,000 adult males here;
- they’ve kept their names, their language, their clothes.
- They’ve been in slavery for twenty generations, and there’s no indication that
they plan to leave. So presumably they’ll be here for another twenty generations.
Or a Global Pew Study of 1850 – the Jews have been praying to return to
Jerusalem for 1800 years -- but it hasn’t actually happened. Presumably it won’t
happen in the next 1800 years either.
Or a Pew Study of denominational life in the USA in the 1950s – orthodoxy is
small and weak, suburban Reform and Conservative shuls are growing.
Presumably that’ll be even more true two or three generations from now.
As we know: Not so, not so, and not so.
I’d add: it’s especially appropriate to be sharing this with you today, on lag
b’omer. In Talmud Yevamot we learn that 24,000 of Rabbi Akiva’s students died
of the plague. Only five remained, of whom Shimon Bar Yochai, whose hillula is
celebrated today, was one. And yet today we are all the heirs of Rabbi Akiva and
of Shimon Bar Yochai. Lag b’omer isn’t just barbecues and bonfires, or even
graduation ceremonies; it comes to teach, also and again, that a small number of
people can make a very great difference.
In financial markets there’s a phrase people sometimes quote – “the trend is your
friend.” It means – for instance – if a stock’s going up, or a market’s going up,
likely it will continue to do so. But of course – as we know – trends also reverse.
Markets go down. Stocks rebound.
So as you move into your professional careers, understand that the dual degrees
you have earned stand deeply in relation with each other. Use data to teach you
all that it can, and let its lessons inform your decisions. But don’t ignore vision, or
the multiple lessons of Jewish history; those places where one person can make
a difference– and where that one person might be you.
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And that brings me back to Rabbi White. Liz and I had him over for afternoon tea,
just before Pesach this year, and it was the first time I’d seen him in well over a
decade. The Rosh Hashanah service that had such a huge impact on me was no
big deal for him – presumably one of well over 80 Rosh Hashanah services he led
at Georgetown over a 40-year period. That’s a lot of Manischewitz and pickled
herring. Plus he’s 82 years old. No reason for him to remember it especially.
But I told him about the Reisman award that I’m so honored to be receiving
today. I shared with him the line from Reb Shomo, about the world being a
commentary on the Torah and the Torah being a commentary on the world. And
I told him about my Rosh Hashanah at Georgetown, that the first time I really
experienced this idea was when he had juxtaposed Robert Frost, adon alom and
that old chassidische tune.
When I got to that part of the story I paused for a moment, smiled, and then I
opened my mouth, and at the same moment, so did he. And more than 25 years
after last I heard it, in one voice, we both sang:
[singing]
The words are lovely, dark and deep
And I have promises to keep
And miles to go, before I sleep
And miles to go, before I sleep…
Thank you. Well done. And b’hatzlacha on the journey.
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Welcoming Remarks, Hannah Sherman and Noah Zaves
Invocation, David Mersky
Salute to Graduating Students, First year cohort
Introduction of Hornstein Director, Dina Shvetsov
Remarks from Program Director, Ellen Smith
Introduction of Hornstein Chair, Yuliya Serebryana
Remarks from Hornstein Chair, Jonathan Sarna
Perspectives on Jewish Life, Lauren Fredman and Hannah Sherman
Introduction of Bernard Reisman Award Recipient, Elisheva Massel
Keynote Address
Nigel Savage
President, Hazon
Perspectives on Jewish Leadership, Geoffrey Poor and Jason Pressberg
Presentation of Diplomas
Graduating Students’ Tribute to Faculty
Presentation of Class Gift, Levi Kerzhner and Yuliya Serebryana
“What a long, strange trip it’s been”, Hannah Sherman and Noah Zaves
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