Dear Friends,
My dear friend Alex Troy is the former headmaster of the A.H.A. (American Hebrew Academy) high school in Greensboro, North Carolina. While he was head of school there he used to write periodic communal messages entitled “AHA moments”. I am sorry to say that that A.H.A. closed this past summer. With his permission, I hope to adopt the title in my periodic messages to our own A.H.A. (Addlestone Hebrew Academy) community.
Oprah made “an aha moment” famous as a pop culture phrase when she coined the term which she defined in an interview with Harry Connick Jr. as realizing something you already know to be true but just didn’t remember until it was stirred by some experience or special moment.
In fact, the great Italian Jewish mystical ethicist Rabbi Luzzato introduced his magnum opus that was later translated by both Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan and Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan with this same exact idea.
There he states that whatever a person doesn’t endeavor to bring to the surface of one’s mind will be ignored even though one knows it to be true. The rest of his classic work named “Mesilat Yesharim-The Path of the Just” merely “reminds” us of those things we know are true but may have temporarily forgotten.
Earlier this summer I was gifted a desk ornament by a past president of our school that is a paperweight that I keep in front of my keyboard. This ceramic piece says the word “INSPIRE” in capital letters. She told me that in her mind this was a quality a head of school should attempt to strengthen in our school.
With that in mind on the last day before school we continued the prevailing custom of having a staff lunch and a movie. The movie I chose and highly recommend is the documentary about Mr. Rodgers called “Won’t You Be My Neighbor”. A reason Mr. Rodgers is one of my heros is because he had the uncanny ability to remind people, especially children, of eternal truths we have temporarily forgotten.
The reason I chose this movie for the staff is because I found it inspiring to watch and I thought it might inspire the staff who in turn would inspire our students. Later in the year I look forward to seeing one of my favorite actors, Tom Hanks, portraying Mr. Rodgers in a new movie about his life.
Periodically throughout the year I hope we can all inspire each other to grow and become better people and more importantly set the example for our children to emulate following Gandhi’s teaching “Be the change you want to see in others”.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Paul
Head of School
