Rabbi Daniel Siegel

Building

Our school community was blessed this week in joining together for a celebratory חנוכת הבית / Hanukkat Habayit – a dedication ceremony of our new Innovation Centre. What truly makes us blessed, however, is not the dedication of a building, but the dedicating of ourselves as builders. In speaking of children, our Jewish tradition says אל תקרי בניך אלא בוניך – Do not see them only as your children, but see them as your builders, as well. 

חנוכה/Hanukkah, which means dedication, is of the same root letters as חינוך, which means education. We can only dedicate ourselves as builders through education.

In our dedication ceremony, students and staff sang in unison the שמע/Shema, which appears in this week’s parashah, VaEtchanan, and which contains the words of our school’s motto:

BeKhol Levavkha, U-VeKhol Nafshekha U-VeKhol Me’odekha/בכל לבבך ובכל נפשך ובכל מאודך

These words, from our Torah and recited daily in our prayers, call upon each of us to dedicate ourselves to living Jewishly with all our mind, with all our spirit and with all our being. These words appear, as well, in the מזוזהm/mezuzah, which is central to our dedication ceremony, and are on the uniform of every student in our school community. We declare in our dress, in our teachings, in our prayers and on the doorposts of our buildings that it is ourselves that we must dedicate.

We are blessed, then, in dedicating ourselves as builders of our Emanuel community.

When we put up the מזוזות/mezuzot, we said the blessing לקבוע מזוזה/to affix the mezuzah. The combination of these 2 words is significant. Whereas לקבוע means to affix – to make set and permanent – the word מזוזה/mezuzah has in it the root letters זוז/zuz, which means to move, the opposite of being fixed.

In affixing the מזוזה/mezuzah, our Jewish tradition is telling us that what must never change is change. Change must be a constant – we must welcome and promote change. As a Jewish school we must value growth and not let fear reduce us to a fixed mindset. We must value meaningful risk and exploration, making the growth mindset our fixed mindset.

By its very name, may our new Innovation Centre always remind us that buildings may grow old, but true builders never do.