My address to graduating Mandel fellows at the Mandel
Graduation Ceremony, October 19, 2015:
This week’s Torah portion begins with God commanding Abram
to embark on a journey (Genesis 12, 1):
And the Lord said unto Abram, Get you forth from your land, and from your birthplace, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you.
The timing of this command is interesting. Abram was 175
years old when he died (Genesis 25, 7), and began this journey at the age of 75
(Geneses 12, 4). In biblical terms—and
perhaps from Mr. Mandel’s perspective—this is a kind of mid-career leadership
program.
Abram’s journey has three noteworthy characteristics:
- It’s a journey into the
unknown. Abram has to get up and go without knowing in advance where he’s going
to—just “the land that I will show you.”
- More than a journey
towards, this is a journey from. Not only does God not reveal the destination,
he emphasizes what Abram is to leave behind: “your land, your birthplace, your
father’s house.”
- The journey is not only physical; it requires emotional effort. The command given is not “Go!”, but in Hebrew “lech lecha,” meaning “go for yourself,” or “go unto yourself.”
Studying at Mandel can be compared to a journey.
Like Abram, every one of our fellows had to give something
up in order to study at MLI. Some left behind a successful career in another
field; others relinquished some of their income so they could study one day a
week; others worked day and night for the rest of the week so that they could
have a day a week in class.
You’ve given up more significant things, too: like Abram’s, your
journey also has an element of setting off into the unknown, leaving behind the
familiar and the obvious, and moving away from your comfort zones.
Journeys require faith. In Abram’s case, he had to have
faith that God would take care of him and bring him safely to his destination.
For Mandel fellows, they have to trust that the Institute will be a safe
place—for creativity, for questions, for uncertainty, for trial and error.
The Institute faculty work hard every single day to
construct and safeguard this safe space. I’d like to take this opportunity to
thank them wholeheartedly.
But alongside the similarities between studying at MLI and
Abram’s journey, there are differences too.
Mandel fellows are not required to leave their “father’s house.”
On the contrary, we want you to be faithful to your roots, while also being
able to see them from new perspectives. It’s important to us that you bring
your backgrounds with you to the Institute, share them with others, and learn
from what others bring too.
Similarly, we cannot lead you, our fellows, on a certain
path from point A to point Z, or even from A to B, and nor would we wish to do
so. We expect you to create your own paths, each and every one of you, guided
by your own individual values and world views. Our role is to help you to dream
and to dare, to set targets, to learn the paths taken by those who came before
you, to spot hurdles and shortcuts, to choose what to take with you and what to
leave behind, and to remember that your journeys neither begin nor end at the
Institute.
Dear fellows: My wish for all of you is that your own
journeys bring you, as the Torah commentator Rashi puts it, “personal pleasure
and benefit,” but also that these journeys will, as the Torah continues, “bring
blessings to all the families of the world.”