I read the story quite some time ago. It was told by a young woman who boarded an airplane early one winter Friday morning. She was on her way to Chicago from New York to spend a weekend there with friends.
It may not have been the first day I reported to my new job, but it was not many days later that I first met Richard Hood. I had joined a team of new PhDs, some trained as psychologists and some as educators, whose assignment it was to breathe new life into a very old-fashioned, one might even say backward, school system in suburban Washington, D.C.
I read the story quite some time ago. It was told by a young woman who boarded an airplane early one winter Friday morning. She was on her way to Chicago from New York to spend a weekend there with friends.
I arrived quite early to the fourth session of the weekly class, in which we were using the book of Genesis as a source for studying leadership.
I was several minutes late for the class, and all three students, Richard, Simon, and Leon, were present and already involved in what seemed to be quite a heated discussion. Simon, usually the most reticent of the three, was the one who was talking the most.
He was an old man, frail, tired, and bereaved. News of Hitler's advancing army preoccupied him, and he was overwhelmed, if not broken, by the requests for advice he was receiving from hundreds of troubled Jews. Indeed, he may have already sensed that he had only months to live.
I love to teach teachers. I’ve had a number of opportunities in my career to lead workshops designed to enhance the skills of classroom teachers. Some of the most powerful learning experiences that I’ve had have occurred during such workshops.
I try to focus these weekly columns upon individuals who are barely mentioned in the weekly Torah portion. They often have an important, but insufficiently appreciated, role to play.
There are moments in life when we must start all over, when we have no choice but to begin again. Such moments seem to typically follow tragic events. Sudden loss, especially the loss of those closest to us, forces us to begin again. Our only other options are lifelong despair and depression.
Regular readers of this column are familiar with my dear grandfathers, both of whom passed away more than fifty years ago, may their memories be a blessing. Although they were quite a different from each other, they both taught me lessons that have lasted throughout the years.
I picked him up at the airport. He was arriving in Baltimore, where I was then a rabbi, to deliver an address and then return home to New York...
I have always found this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Lech Lecha (Genesis 12:1-17:27), especially inspiring and instructive. It is in this parsha that we are told the story of Abraham’s aliyah, of his journey to the Holy Land.
If you are reading this column regularly, you may remember that Miriam was the shy participant in the class that I have been describing. You will surely remember that this was a class in which I used the book of Genesis as a springboard for discussions about leadership. I had been asked to assist the members of the class to develop leadership skills for use in their respective Jewish synagogue communities.
"Individuation!" That was Leon's opening statement of the evening.
When I was still a pulpit rabbi back in Baltimore, I would meet with a group of teenagers from time to time. The agenda was open-ended, and my goal was to encourage the group to share their feelings and attitudes freely. One of the favorite topics chosen by the kids was their school curriculum and what they found wrong with it.
Why did I choose the title “Person in the Parsha” when I began to compose these weekly columns many years ago? I hesitate to tell you the truth; namely, that I had several reasons for doing so. But one reason was the fact that almost every parsha has in it a central human figure, Abraham or Moses for example, and often several such figures. Surely, a weekly column must include some comment about that person’s heroic achievements or occasional frustrations.
Lately, I’ve been reflecting on the early origins of my basic beliefs. One of those beliefs, which has thankfully persisted to this day, has been the belief in fairness. I guess that I first learned about fairness on the playgrounds of the neighborhood in Brooklyn, where I grew up.