This speech was given by Stephanie Ives who was honored at the Beit Rabban Annual Gala for her ten years of service as Head of School. Monday was the Shloshim — the thirty-day anniversary of my father's death. Tonight is my first communal celebration since he passed. This is a very powerful reentry for me, and I hope it is for my mother, who is here. I wasn't quite sure how I'd feel — but something that happened this morning made it clear: there is no more fitting place to re

“I found the mistake! Do you see it? Everybody clap…respectfully!” Ernest C. Bairstow, the sculptor who carved “euture” instead of “future” on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial, wasn’t there to hear it, but I like to think that he would have appreciated the moment on Wednesday night when an eighth-grade student exhorted her classmates to applaud his error. You see, while it is not (yet) etched into our classroom wall, we do have a poster reminding Bikkurim students that “mista

I spend a lot of time in Israel for someone who doesn't live there. I've absorbed many of the cultural idiosyncrasies and actually internalized them — I find it perfectly natural to touch other people's children, call strangers by endearing names, and, unless I catch myself, stand uncomfortably close to people in line by American standards. Still, Israeli culture regularly surprises me. A few years ago I was aggressively chastised by a stranger for picking a wildflower. I did

At each b'nai mitzvah, we give students a framed quote from Pirkei Avot: "It is not on you to finish the work, but neither are you released from the obligation to do the work." This gift is intended to convey that we believe the world can get better, that our students are the change agents it needs, and that they are obligated to do all they can to repair it. Alongside this, we teach humility: the humility to recognize that partnership is essential to making change, that big