Inaugural Address
Dr. Hal M. Lewis
President and Chief Executive Officer
Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies
February 7, 2010
Cherished colleagues, esteemed guests and graduates, ladies and gentlemen: On the afternoon before the start of Yom Kippur, Max and Sam ran into each other on the street. After exchanging a few brief pleasantries, Sam looked at his watch and said, “I’ve got to run, I’ll see you in services tonight?” “To tell you the truth,” said Max, “tonight is the final game of the World Series; I’m gonna pass on services, so I can stay home and watch the game.” Sam was incredulous. “I love you Max, really, but this is the 21st century! Have you never heard of Tivo or DVRs? Record it man!” “No kidding,” said Max, “I had no idea you could tape Kol Nidre.” As we gather this afternoon on the eve of another important sporting event, I am grateful that so many of you have chosen to spend your pre-game festivities here with us.
Mark Twain once observed, “A self-made man is as likely as a self-laid egg.” I agree. So too, I believe in the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel that, “Only one who is an heir is qualified to be a pioneer.” Especially on this day, I am aware of how much I owe to so many, in this room, and beyond. And so I begin this address, by paying homage to, and expressing gratitude for, the many in my life who have brought me to this occasion.
I am here this afternoon firstbecause of my family—nuclear and extended—whose support, encouragement, and influence are daily with me. I am blessed too by my friends, whose impassioned fervor and steadfast sanctuary make them both the birch and the oak of a winter’s warming fire. Across the decades, my teachers, my colleagues, and my students—many from this very institution—have inspired and elevated me. And I have been privileged as well to work with many wonderful and dedicated trustees and extremely generous donors. On this day, I also acknowledge the towering examples of my predecessors, and I am especially pleased that Dr. Sulkin, our immediate past President, is with us today. Indeed, I am a man richly blessed, and I am grateful beyond words.
In the first century, with Jerusalem under siege by Rome, and the Holy Temple - the epicenter of Jewish religious and political life—about to be destroyed, the revered rabbinic scholar, Yochanan ben Zakkai made an unprecedented decision that would save Judaism and transform it forevermore. Tein li Yavneh v’hakhameha—Give me Yavneh and its sages, he proclaimed to the Roman general Vespasian. Rather than surrender to the notion that destruction of the Temple meant the end of Jewish life, ben Zakkai and a small group of scholars moved from the rubble and despair that was Jerusalem to the village of Yavneh where they would go on to establish the preeminent academic institute of their day. Yavneh became the seat of the relocated national court, and the work done at the academy there redefined what it meant to be Jewish without a Holy Temple, and absent the security of geo-political sovereignty.
Nearly twenty centuries later, the examples of Yochanan ben Zakkai and those Yavneh sages have much to teach us here at Spertus. It is no secret that we gather this afternoon, at a time of great uncertainty for this institution. The economy has not been kind to us and the future is fraught with challenge. But we take our cue from the scholars of Yavneh who understood that times of great upheaval demand a willingness to change, lest we condemn ourselves to obsolescence. Like them, we begin with the recognition that, as the leadership expert Peter Drucker used to say, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Today I affirm our intention to invent a new future for Spertus, a future in which the hopes and dreams of yesterday morph into the promise of tomorrow.
From Rabbi Yochanan and his colleagues we learn other lessons as well. In the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple, Judaism’s survival, they declared, is linked, not to cultic offerings, but to the development of a system based on learning—learning that is not pediatric in focus, but is in every sense of the word adult. Those sages understood, to paraphrase Rabbi Jerome Epstein, of the United Synagogue, that Jewish learning is a lot like the emergency oxygen found on airplanes. Unless adults use it first on themselves, they will be unable to assist their children or grandchildren later on. Because they knew that the Jewish future depends on a commitment to lifelong learning, the sages of Yavneh insisted that, unlike the rituals of the destroyed Temple, which were hierarchical and restricted, the halls of study belong to all who wish to enter.
At Spertus we embrace these ideas. Going forward we will rededicate ourselves to serving adults of all ages and backgrounds, who wish to access the breadth and depth of the Jewish experience. Through a variety of portals spanning the continuum from—graduate degrees and continuing professional education, to arts and cultural programming—Spertus welcomes a diversity of adult learners—scholars and casual students, Jews and non-Jews, Gen X-singles and inter-faith couples.
That Judaism could survive and thrive in the face of the destruction of its once central institution is proof, taught the Yavneh scholars, of its adaptability and portability. Judaism, they argued, does not depend upon a building, nor is its practice restricted to a particular geographic locale. As the heirs to that tradition we avow that our work too, is more important than any single venue. In the months ahead, through enhanced use of technology and strategic collaboration we will expand and disseminate our classes and programming beyond these walls to serve the Jewish communities across greater Chicago, and over time across North America, as we have already begun to do with our graduate programs in Canada.
At the core of Rabbi Yochanan’s vision is the notion that Judaism’s continued vitality depends upon each generation finding new meaning in classical sources. At Spertus, we celebrate this process of creative engagement with sacred works, and in the twenty-first century, we assert that there are new texts that compel us as well. Today the Jewish experience includes an evolving and expanded world of culture—literature, dance, art, music, theatre, and poetry, and these too are Jewish texts, worthy of study and ongoing interpretation. Here at Spertus the integration of our cherished archives and collections, fine art, and music, material culture, and film, will be vital to the learning process, and these resources will be as available to faculty and students as our books and rare manuscripts.
In the face of the destruction of the Temple, Judaism’s seminal institution, Yochanan ben Zakkai should have succumbed to the darkness. That he did not, and that the religion of ancient Israel was reinvented and renewed is evidence of the redemptive and transformative power of lifelong learning in Judaism. “When I pray,” taught the medieval authorities, “I speak to God. But when I study, God speaks to me.” In the tradition of Yochanan ben Zakkai and those sages at Yavneh, our optimism for the future of Spertus, comes not from wishful thinking or well-meaning naïveté, but rather from the commitment to create a Yavneh of our own, a dynamic twenty-first-century center where adults of all ages and backgrounds can, through a multiplicity of offerings encounter the magnificence of the Jewish experience, and then, proceed to inspire others. “Ring the bells that still can ring,” wrote the poet Leonard Cohen. “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack, in every-thing. That’s how the light gets in. That’s how the light gets in.”
These students and the thousands more like them who learn at Spertus, attend Spertus programs, are challenged by the richness of the Jewish experience because of us—they are how the light gets in. And they will go on to enlighten countless others. For them and those who come after them - on this day of commencement and inauguration—I pledge our unceasing efforts to reclaim the legacy and embody the resilience of Yochanan ben Zakkai and the sages of Yavneh, because today, as then, the future demands nothing less. Thank you.
