News Detail
World, World
Dear Brandeis community,
As we prepare to send off our class of 2016, I wanted to share with you the words I shared with them this morning. This will be my last Word of the Week for this year (!), but I will also be writing a final, wrap-up “Word of the Year” letter that will go out next week, so you will hear from me in writing again before we scatter for the summer.
Eighth graders, it is my honor to be the first to address you this morning, as we mark the passage of your years here at Brandeis, from preschoolers tumbling down halls to the strong young people standing before us today. We are all so very proud of you.
Please take a moment to look out into this assembled crowd—younger siblings and reading buddies who look up to you, teachers who have challenged and shaped you along the way, and parents, grandparents, aunts, or uncles who have loved and guided you at every turn. Know that we are all here today to support you, and that we will all continue to be present for you. May you carry the image of this community and the knowledge of our support as a source of strength as you walk the paths ahead.
In thinking of what to share with you this morning, my mind turned to the Jewish Objectivist poet George Oppen, a poet from whom I’ve drawn strength myself, and inspiration, along my path.
In his poem “World, World—,” Oppen writes:
Failure, worse failure, nothing seen
From prominence,
Too much seen in the ditch.
Those who will not look
Tho they feel it on their skins
Are not pierced;
One cannot count them
Tho they are present.
It is entirely wild, wildest
Where there is traffic
And populace.
‘Thought leaps on us’ because we are here. That is the fact of the matter.
Soul-searchings, these prescriptions,
Are a medical faddism, an attempt to escape,
To lose oneself in the self.
The self is no mystery, the mystery is
That there is something for us to stand on.
We want to be here.
The act of being, the act of being
More than oneself.
Here Oppen presents an understanding of what it means to be a person, and I think we could say as well what it means to be steeped in Jewish values—that there are those who allow themselves to see the failures and fractures of the world around them, who do not get lost in themselves but, rather, recognize their connection to the broader world. And so “the act of being” becomes “the act of being / More than oneself.” For George Oppen, this is what it meant to be among those who are counted: to let yourself see and engage with what needs repairing in our world.
Elie Wiesel said it differently but meant the same when he said that “The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel offers us another take on the same theme of connection, in his quote about “Awe,” from which we draw the A in the acronym for our new CREATE Space: “The meaning of awe is to realize that life takes place under wide horizons, horizons that range beyond the span of an individual life or even the life of a nation, a generation, or an era. Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.” Heschel would have argued, I suspect, that awe is the opposite of indifference.
This week in Orlando, last week in Tel Aviv, we have been reminded again of some of the worst failures of our world. So graduates, as you leave Brandeis I would wish for you this:
May you let yourself look: may you engage with the world, even in its failings.
May you never be indifferent: may you insist on loving kindness, on creativity and courage, on connection, on the spirit, on life.
May you always feel awe, and live life in radical amazement.
May you always be counted among those who are working toward a better world.
As you leave Brandeis, you will continue to do the work of adolescence, of finding your voice, and your self, and your path. And as you do so, you will find that your self is more than just your self—in it you will find a connection to each other, to your beloved K-8 school on Brotherhood Way, to your family, to your history, and to the world around you. So I would say to you again: find strength in that connection, and carry it with you as you walk the paths ahead. Mazel tov, graduates. We are all so very proud of you.
Wishing you all weekends full of powerful connections, my friends.
Warmly,
Dan
