Graduation 2018

Rabbi Dr. Seth N. Grauer

 

כבוד הרבנים, מנהלים, צוות המורים, חברי הועד, הורים, וכמובן כל הבוגרים – ברוכים הבאים ותודה.

Honoured Rabbis, fellow administrators, members of the faculty, members of the board of directors, parents and of course our graduates – welcome, thank you and mazel tov to you our 2018 graduates.

Seniors – I know there is much excitement and you are anxiously awaiting receiving your diplomas, but I would like to ask you to try and focus on what I believe is an important message and I invite you – our parents and guests – to listen in as well.

Many graduation speeches charge graduates to be leaders, but not everyone has the background and the potential. I believe that you are different, and I would like to show you why.

In honor of the 70th anniversary of the State of Israel, I would like to focus my remarks a bit around Israel and some of the challenges that we are facing.

Our world is changing, and it is changing fast.

We are a Religious Zionist school that believes in Religion and Zionism and the synthesis between them. We believe in Halacha, Jewish values and our traditions. And we believe that Israel is our homeland.

But we are being challenged from all sides. Both the state of Israel as well as our Orthodox Jewish practices and values are under attack from within our ranks and outside.

But I believe you have a unique background that can help you to be our leaders against these assaults.

Let me illustrate:

A few short weeks ago on May 14th at the Hebrew Union College graduation, Michael Chabon, a popularist Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and secular Jew, gave a commencement address that shocked many Reform Jews let alone the rest of the Jewish world and the Jewish community.

HUC is the reform movements seminary – their rabbinic school – and to a room full of aspiring and motivated young future reform rabbis and future Jewish leaders, Chabon grouped together Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and Israel’s emphasis on in-marriage, marriage within the Jewish community, as both of them being variations of hateful ghettos.

He said that the reason that Israel builds walls and encourages in marriage has nothing to do with safety, security and a desire to maintain and grow our communities – but rather both as examples of exclusion, bigotry, closemindedness and intolerance. Halacha certainly played no role within Jewish marriages.
In his own words in relation to marriage:

“An endogamous marriage (which means a marriage within one culture or ethnic group) is a ghetto of two. … It draws a circle around the married couple, inscribes them – and any eventual children who come along – within a figurative wall of tradition, custom, shared history, and a common inheritance of chromosomes and culture.”

Chabon urged the HUC graduates and their parents to abandon advocacy for Jewish-Jewish marriage, rejecting the view that this is critical to raising Jewishly committed children.

He even said that he needs to do “teshuvah” for having married a Jew and for having taught his four children that marrying Jews is the preferred option.

Chabon continued and not surprisingly targeted and attacked virtually everything sacred and special about halacha and Judaism as well. For Chabon – Orthodoxy and Zionism were both terrible.

His attacks against Israel and their walls of safety and security were no less extreme and outlandish than his attacks against Jewish marriage.

What is most alarming though about Chabon’s views are that among many liberal American Jews these views aren’t so crazy.

Thankfully though, not all HUC students were able to sit quietly during this commencement address.

Morin Zaray, a soon to be graduate sitting in the audience, wrote the following blog in which in she said:

As I heard Chabon’s simplified takedown of my country, the room began to spin. I turned to look at my brother, who served in a combat unit in the Israel Defense Forces. He looked sick to his stomach.

I got up from my seat and approached my family. I wanted to stand up and scream, but my voice wouldn’t come out. I felt ashamed for being part of this gathering, ashamed that many in the audience were just nodding at this reductionist view of a multilayered and complicated country.

I asked my mother if not seeing me graduate would disappoint her. She responded that she would feel ashamed to see me walk on that stage after what had been said.

We stood up and left the sanctuary. Standing outside, I was nearly brought to tears as I heard the crowd of Jews give Chabon thunderous applause.

For someone who presents himself as an intellectual steeped in nuance, Michael Chabon has a remarkable ability to present a one-dimensional reality in which the Jews are evil oppressors and the Palestinians are powerless victims, with no agency, no responsibility and no blame.

In June, I begin my career in the Jewish nonprofit field, guided by two truths: (1) To live as a Jew at a time when there is a Jewish state is an incredible miracle, and (2) this miracle is not the black-and-white narrative people like Michael Chabon would have us believe but is full of complicated, challenging and fascinating colors.

Israel is certainly complex and we need to embrace those complexities, but you our graduating students need to be our leaders to take on that task.

We need you to defend Orthodoxy and remain committed to an observant life of Halacha.

And to make things even more complex the divide between Jews in Israel and Jews abroad is getting wider and wider.

Let me give you a few statistics: A recent major survey commissioned by the American Jewish Committee looking at the rising gap between Israelis and world Jewry found that:

• 77 percent of Israelis approved of the president’s handling of US-Israel relations, while only 34 percent of American Jews did.

• When it came to Trump’s moving the embassy to Jerusalem, Eighty-five percent of Israelis supported the embassy move, while only 46 percent of American Jews did.

• Eighty-one percent of American Jews want to see the Orthodox monopoly on marriage, divorce and conversion in Israel completely broken, while only 49 percent of Israelis support the change in status quo.

• On one of the most contentious issues, regarding a mixed-gender prayer area next to the Kotel, 73 percent of American Jews express support, compared to just 42 percent of Israelis.

This is not about who is right is right and who is wrong. The conclusions from this poll and these statistics are clear: Jews in Israel and Jews in the North America are facing fundamental disagreements around major issues that our community will need to confront over the next decade.

The distance between our communities is growing and the connection felt between many NA Jews and the State of Israel is getting more and more tenuous.
Earlier this year, Chief Rabbi David Lau came and visited our community of Toronto. It was part of a Mizrachi celebration in honour of a 70 for 70 campaign in which Mizrachi Canada set out to collect 70 Sifrei Torah to send to Israel in honor of the 70th anniversary of the state.

The Chief Rabbi spoke all over our city including a breakfast at Federation in which he met with many leading Conservative and Reform rabbis and lay leaders of our city. I wasn’t there so I cannot speak from a first-hand account, but my good friend and colleague, Rabbi Chaim Strauchler, reported to me that some of the rabbis who were present were so upset they questioned if UJA should re-consider their support towards the state of Israel in general.

Rabbi Yael Splansky of Holy Blossom here in Toronto, wrote a Facebook post immediately after that meeting where she concluded by saying:

The Chief Ashkenazic Rabbi of Israel has given up on the non-chareidi majority of world Jewry. I believe he has forfeited the title of unifying figure and should be known more accurately as Chief Chareidi Rabbi.
I don’t have the answers and many of these issues are so complex I honestly cannot tell you that I am certain about what I feel.

But we need you to bridge these gaps and help to heal these rifts.

The good news is that specifically you are all uniquely well prepared for all of this in ways that so many others are not.

You have been exposed to Israel in ways that most are not. You have taken courses in Modern Zionism that truly look at Israel through critical and complex lenses and you have interacted with Israelis throughout your four years. No other Jewish day school in North America has more shelichim and greater engagement with Israel than we do.

I am confident in your training and your abilities to step up, lead and create progress.

I would like to close by drawing upon this weeks parsha for one very small piece of advice that I believe we can learn from Moshe at Mei Meriva.

The Rambam writes in his Shemonei Perakim that Moshe was punished by not allowing him to lead the Jewish people into Israel, because he lost control, he got angry and he lost his temper.

The Gemara tells us that Yesh Koneh Olam Haba BeShaa Achat – there are some who can acquire Olam Haba in an instant, but there are also some who can lose it. We spend an entire life building a reputation, but we must be incredibly careful because it can be destroyed in an instant.

In our world of social media and pictures and videos we have lost all privacy and our mistakes and momentary lapses of judgement become magnified and publicized in ways that can ruin years of accomplishments and successes.

I cannot emphasize this enough – we all have to be so incredibly careful of where we go, what we do, who we associate ourselves with and how our reputations develop.

You are all about to graduate. In a short while, you will walk off this stage as Or Chaim and Ulpana alumni.

You will be graduates from an unbelievable institution that will always stand behind you and support you – whether you realize it or not.

We will take pride and a bit of credit in all your future accomplishments and we will always remind people that you came from Or Chaim or Ulpana.

10 years from now we will say did you hear what so and so did – you know she graduated Ulpana in 2017 or he is an Or Chaim graduate.

This year we honoured all past student council presidents from Ulpana and it gave me a chance to marvel with amazement about how much so many of our graduates have accomplished and where they are in life.

You are joining a very exclusive and impressive club to be part of.

I promise – I, along with all my colleagues, will be shepping nachas along with your parents as we watch you continue to grow.

To our parents – I wish you could have been there at the Dani restaurant for our graduation dinner celebrations. Watching our faculty and administration speak about each of your children and seeing just how well they know your children was special.

It is a closeness and a bonding that is truly unique to Or Chaim and Ulpana that I believe in many ways we all take it for granted.

I have complete confidence in all of you and I cannot wait to see what you become.

I wish you only the best, mazel, bracha and hatzlacha in everything you do.

Make us proud – I am certain you will. Thank you.