Go Forth - Dvar Torah for Graduation 2017

Go Forth

Dvar Torah for Graduation

May 21, 2017

Rabbi Marshall Lesack

We are a people who values its past.

We study and teach our history, and our lessons learned, to our children. We respect and revere those who have come before us, and seek out their wisdom. We practice traditions and rituals that originated long before we were around, and incorporate them into our lives. We look to our past for guidance, for support and for encouragement in a world that sometimes is hard to understand.

We are a people who values its past...but we do not live in the past.

We are a people who integrates the past into our core being: ...planning...preparing...and building for the future.

We are builders, and dreamers, and visionaries...people who plant trees today so that our grandchildren can benefit from them tomorrow.

Our past influences us. But it is our future on which we train our focus.

1) Avraham left behind everything he knew to build a new future for himself and his family because of two simple words - Lech Lecha - go forth. He did not know exactly what lay ahead, what he would encounter or what challenges he would face. He knew his past. He knew from where he came and how it led him to his present. And taken together, it impacted him as he moved toward his future.

הַבֶּט־נָ֣א הַשָּׁמַ֗יְמָה וּסְפֹר֙ הַכּ֣וֹכָבִ֔ים אִם־תּוּכַ֖ל לִסְפֹּ֣ר אֹתָ֑ם...כֹּ֥ה יִהְיֶ֖ה זַרְעֶֽךָ

“Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” ... “So shall your offspring be.”

Understanding of his past, cognizant of its impact on him as an individual, he plotted a course for the future which led to the birth of the Jewish people.

2) When the Jews left Egypt, they too began a journey into the unknown. They knew of their oppression, of their struggles, of God’s miracles and of their deliverance. Heavily impacted by their past, God decided that their descendants would be the people to enter the promised land. And so, deeply connected to the experiences of the ancestors, not far removed from the moments of the Exodus, they entered the land of Israel to start a new life for the Jewish people. To this day, we honor the moment of our redemption and its influence on the future of Judaism, every time we recite kiddush and sanctify our holy days:

זכר ליציאת מצרים

In memory of the Exodus from Egypt.

3) When the 2nd Temple was destroyed, the future of Judaism was in question. But our rabbis knew that our Torah, our values, our mitzvot could not be extinguished. Rabbis escaped to Yavneh and built batei midrash - study halls - to continue the teaching of Torah. Not long after, Torah academies were established in Sura and Pumbedita, and by the time the Jews established communities in Italy, Germany and France in the early middle ages, our rabbis had already produced the Mishna, the Talmud, Midrashim, Commentaries, the beginning of Jewish law codes and more.

These rabbis, tied to our past yet fully focused on our future, provided the framework through which we practice our Judaism today.

4) Fast forward to the modern era, we remain the people of “Od lo avdah tikvateinu” - our hope...that of 2,000 years...is not yet lost. Never relinquishing our ties to the land of Israel...never forgetting the promise made to our forefathers...we have come home. Celebrating 69 years of independence and, in just 3 more days, 50 years since the reunification of Jerusalem, we have turned the memories of our past and the visions for our future into our reality:

Lihyot am chofshi be'artzeinu, Eretz Tziyon viyrushalayim

To be a free people in our land; The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

5) Less than 3 weeks ago, many of you returned from the March of the Living. You saw with your own eyes both the pain and the promise of our people, our history and our future. And you did it with holy vessels, with survivors, who could share their experiences and their deep wisdom with you.

In December, while attending a conference on holocaust education, I had the privilege of hearing Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of England, speak to my group. Rabbi Sacks mentioned that in all of his years meeting survivors, teaching survivors, counseling survivors and consoling survivors, that there is one item that he learned more than any other during his time with them. To paraphrase Rabbi Sacks, it was the ability to move forward.

It was the ability to look to the future. It was the ability to be impacted by the past, not defined by it or stuck in it, but to use what you could from it to plot a path forward. If there ever were a people who had earned the right to not look to the future, it was this people. But on the whole, they did just the opposite.

They followed in the footsteps of our tradition, taking from the past - which yes, has its eras and its many moments of pain; but alongside it its eras and many moments of celebration - and they looked to the future.

We are a people that will always be built on our past. It is that past that has helped shape us into who we are and enabled us to determine who we want to become. We are forever tied to our past as we plot our course for the future.

As you prepare for your departure from high school, and from the school that has been your home and your community for so many years, you know full well that you have been shaped by this experience and your time here. While your life as a DKJA student will soon be in the past, the importance of that life will remain with you forever. Your memories, your friendships, your relationships with teachers, your victories and your defeats, the tests you passed and the papers you did poorly on, those late nights of study, the jokes among friends, the days you used your time wisely and the days you wasted, the challenges you overcame, the questions you asked, and the person that you have become during your time here……...all of this will influence you as you now look to your own future.

You come from a people that incorporates its past into its planning for tomorrow.

You are builders. You are dreamers. You are visionaries.

Lecha Lecha. Go forth.

Kadima. Onward.

The future is yours for the taking.  

Mazal tov.