We All Stood Together, Koby Rosen

We All Stood Together Koby Rosen, RZJHS 2020

Koby delivered these words during the graduation ceremony.

We All Stood Together. Past tense. That is what we are facing right now as we metamorphose beyond Rochelle Zell Jewish High School. If we were not a close grade this transition would be easy. We would just turn around and wave and smile and venture down our paths without ever looking back. But that is not us.

I like to consider the class of 2020 a presence. A storm in the desert. Bold, awesome, impossible, miraculous. We led the school in Tefillah, academics, clubs, athletics, (mathletics), spirit, culture, camaraderie, community. We embody imitatio dei, the virtue of imitating G-d as we spoke in creation. In our four years we transformed the school.

We have reinstalled trust in the student body. We have fostered a tribe where we are proud of one another’s accomplishments; we are hurt by one another’s pain. When we call out for one another, we are always there. Hinenu, here we are.

Here we are today. A future we have seen time and again but never thought would arrive. Not for us, not for the storm. But we are ready.

When we, the Israelites, B’nai Yisrael, prepared to accept the Torah at Sinai, “there was thunder and lightning up on the mountain”. We are thunder, our booming charisma reverberating throughout the school. We are lightning bolts, illuminating inspirations destined to touch down and inscribe our names in the Earth.

The Israelites accepted the Torah. Then the storm was gone. The Torah was still there.

We, the class of 2020, my friends, my mishpucha, we are more than a storm.

Sophie Himmelfarb, RZJHS 2020

in his book The Lonely Man of Faith about two archetypal human beings: Adam 1 and Adam 2. Adam 1 is the storm. On top of the mountain, making everyone tremble. Adam 2 is silence. The impossible love when nothing is said. Just heartbeats.

Shakespeare wrote in heartbeats; intellectuals classify it as iambic pentameter. Hebrew speaks in heartbeats (halmut halev). Everyone knows that feelings, emotions, the soul, do not reside in the heart. So what is so special about a heartbeat? Everyone has one.

A heartbeat is special because it is common, it is shared. It is not what makes us human, but it reminds us we are all human. We served as speakers to that heartbeat. We were relatable, we made underclassmen laugh, we gave people rides, we coached them, we tutored them, we helped them, we encouraged them, we sacrificed for them.

We brought ourselves down, dissipated the lightning and the thunder, to be with them. A heartbeat means you are alive. See Rosen, page 29