Dear Brandeis community,

 

There are moments in the life of a head of school that can feel excruciatingly hard to balance, when my role as a school leader and my role as a parent come into direct conflict. Yesterday morning was one of those moments: as I sat in an important and emotional conversation with one of our best teachers, Kate frantically texted me from the beit midrash that 1 White's The Little Red Hen play was starting, and Sonia was looking for me, and where was I? My phone buzzing in my chest pocket like a guilty conscience, I tried to find meaningful closure quickly.

 

Thankfully, I made it before the do-si-do was done, and saw the whole of the narrative of the play. And what a play it was! In a nutshell, three little red hens ask for help with the work of planting and harvesting wheat and making matzah for Passover, but the other animals refuse to help. Then when the Seder is prepared the other animals all show up complaining that they are hungry, and asking if they can eat. What chutzpah! – Sonia had the line as one of the little red hens, and she nailed it (as the room full of laughter can attest, proud parent bias notwithstanding). But since during Passover we invite all who are hungry to share our meal, those other animals are invited in, and the play ended with the classic children’s song “Magic Penny,” with our first graders reminding us that “Love is something if you give it away / you end up having more.” I was so grateful for the spirit of collaboration among the teachers and subjects—from art and music to science and drama—and for the clear joy the kids took in the song, dance, and story. Those moments take huge amounts of work (especially the first time through); I was glad to see Ms. Schoentag, as the conductor of the total project, take a moment to appreciate her colleagues for the work they put in. And I left with Sonia’s laugh line in my head, thinking about the chutzpah it takes to work together and try new things.  

 

Chutzpah has a hilarious definition on one of my favorite sources for word histories, the Online Etymology Dictionary:

 

also hutzpah, 1892, from Yiddish khutspe "impudence, gall." from Hebrew hutspah. The classic definition is that given by Leo Rosten: "that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan."

 

That of course is the chutzpah of those layabout farm animals coming and complaining of hunger when they’ve refused to help prepare any food. But another definition of chutzpah (on the Apple New Oxford American Dictionary App, for example), and one that rings true with contemporary usage, offers the word “audacity,” and it is that definition that I have in mind this morning—audacity, courage, bravery.

 

Last week on Shabbat, I arrived home to find a snazzy box on my porch from Hello Mazel, a new project from some of our friends here in San Francisco (Rabbi Noa Kushner at The Kitchen, Randi Zuckerberg, Ali Pincus, and others) working to rethink Judaism (to defamiliarize it, following Shlovsky’s quote from last week’s Word of the Week). The box was full of interesting takes on Passover traditions—a build-your-own seder plate and a Haggadah in the form of a deck of cards. But what caught my attention from among the objects and tasty treats was a small envelope filled with green string. What is this? I wondered along with Sonia and Alma, as we looked them over. It is not an uncommon experience for me to encounter Jewish traditions that I haven’t seen before—I assumed this was some abiding Passover ritual that had just never made it into my family seders. But no—when I pulled out the descriptions of the items, I found that the green strings are part of a “new wearable Pesach tradition,” in which the green string is worn as a bracelet during the holiday “as a reminder of people who are not free.” I love the new tradition, but I love it even more that we are living in a moment and in a city where the courage to innovate is alive and well in Judaism, and I am proud to be part of this Brandeis community, adding our share to that work. #pesachbracelet!

 

Yesterday, I had a no-show for a meeting, which gave me a few minutes to read through the text of the Passover portion of the Torah, from Exodus. In it, Moses calls the leaders of the Jewish people together to instruct them to smear lamb’s blood on their doorposts to ward off the Angel of Death. He says to them that they must keep this service as “an institution for you and your children for all time,” and when it comes to pass that your children ask you what this service means, you will explain to them the meaning of it. That right there is the origin of our responsibility to retell the story of Passover to our children annually as well as the origin of the four questions that we invite our children to ask, and I thought to myself reading it yesterday about the audacity embedded in our shared tradition—imagine, an institution for all time! When I get particularly bold I speak of the next 53 years for The Brandeis School of San Francisco, but the next 5776 years are beyond my scope. And imagine too: a tradition stretching across millennia that demands that we listen to our children, and invite their questions as a ritual. When we speak of the responsibility we each have, to think of ourselves as having been personally freed from slavery in the land of Egypt—and we tell our children that it is part of their work to ask questions, to rethink, to push—we enact a beautiful balance: between tradition and innovation, between past and present, in order to help sustain and recreate this way of living, this institution for all time. What chutzpah indeed!

 

Wishing you all Passover breaks filled with charoset and chutzpah, loved ones and rest, my friends.

 

Warmly,

 

Dan