Today, amongst family, friends, and colleagues, I was (and am) honored and grateful to receive The Ruby Award. The Ruby Award comes out of Jewish Learning Works and is described as follows:
The Ruby Award is an annual award for excellence in Jewish youth education and engagement, established in 2020 in collaboration with the San Francisco Teen Initiative. Jewish LearningWorks is proud to give this award, and name it this year in memory of Robert Ruby, to honor his commitment to teen education.
The Ruby Award is offered to enhance the prominence and celebrate the essential work of Jewish youth professionals in the Bay Area. This annual opportunity for recognition amplifies the importance of teen engagement, and highlights the success of youth professionals.
I want to tell you all about this for a few reasons. 1) It’s necessary to elevate the work of Jewish education, and this award (as well as everything Jewish Learning Works does) honors the hard work of educators and those who support them 2) I’m proud of my work 3) I said a few words upon receiving this award and wanted to share them with you.
Before I share what I wrote, I want to give another huge thank you to Jewish Learning Works for caring about those who truly dedicate their lives to supporting and teaching young people in the Jewish community. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Ruby Award Acceptance Words
This week we read the last two parshiot of the book of Leviticus, Behar and Bechukotai. We start off learning about shmita (the year of release for the land and debts) and the jubilee (the really big year of release for the land and debts). We learn how to hold property, ie wealth, loosely. These laws, and the many more that follow, are like concrete applications of the foundational idea that no one really owns anything.
Leviticus 25:23:
וְהָאָ֗רֶץ לֹ֤א תִמָּכֵר֙ לִצְמִתֻ֔ת כִּי־לִ֖י הָאָ֑רֶץ כִּֽי־גֵרִ֧ים וְתוֹשָׁבִ֛ים אַתֶּ֖ם עִמָּדִֽי׃
But the land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but strangers (or travelers) resident with Me.
God is the constant, we are the variables. The Earth remains, though generations come and go (as Kohelet says), yes even if the Earth becomes uninhabitable to humans, even more so, it will outlast us.
This text reminds me of Bereshit, “For dust you are, And to dust you shall return” (3:19), and even more Kohelet, “A time for being born and a time for dying, A time for planting and a time for uprooting the planted” (3:2).
And as soon as I learned I would be receiving this Ruby Award, in some way I felt this same sense of passing through that all of these texts express. This same sense of stranger-hood. The great world of Jewish learning, past and present, spread out on either side of me and I knew my place in this tradition was significant but transient. As if I was a stranger resident in the land of Torah.
In some ways, ironically perhaps, it is my job not to be an expert, but to be a stranger to Torah. As a teacher, I am always engaging in new learning myself, looking up answers to questions from parents or students, researching new ideas for lesson plans, reading new books and texts – ever deeper – learning new techniques (Julie Batz taught me trope this year!), experimenting with rituals, and on and on. I must remain a stranger to our tradition by pushing myself into uncharted territory for the sake of my students – to make sure I’m showing up as the most energized and engaged learner I can be – and for my own gratification.
Most teaching is role modeling. So, to be a great teacher is to be a great student. And to be a great student is to know that the more you know, the more you realize you do NOT know. So too with pretty much anything – although I’d have to argue that there is a particularly large amount of stuff to learn in the Jewish world.
It is for this reason, among many, that I am humbled to be recognized for my work as a Jewish educator. While I am deeply proud of my career and the high bars I have set for myself, I am also acutely aware of how much growth lies in front of me. More than anything, this award motivates me. Thank you for the honor and the jolt of energy, alike.