Heroes can only show themselves to be heroic in times of great challenge, danger, or suffering. The current moment is a time of heroes, a time of reaching and pushing ourselves to be more. More as individuals, and more as a community.
It is a time when we are witnessing heroism on a grand scale and on the world stage. A defending army protecting its people, and protecting the citizens of the opposing side more than our enemy does. This army of citizen soldiers, young men and women mixed with parents and even grandparent reservists, are all risking their lives to protect their homes, their families, their nation… to protect you and me.
And it is a time of heroes here at home. Parents in our community who are committing themselves to activism, to organizing and mobilizing the community to provide needed supplies to our soldiers. Parents who advocate, bang down the doors of our political institutions, and galvanize phalanxes of phone call squads, peaceful protest demonstrations, and e-mails to and conversations with elected officials. Parents who find time to deliver flowers and meals to local families impacted by the war, to make sure each of them knows that everyone is thinking about them and is here for them. And parents in our community who rally our combined efforts to pray and learn and bang down the doors of Our Father, Our King.
Each of these actions, both overseas and locally, are all part of the active history being written right now by our Maimonides School community.
It is in this environment, this crucible of necessity, that our children are witnessing and learning what it means to stand up and reach towards heroism. Our students who have learned so quickly to muster their solemnity and kavanah each day without fail as we recite chapters of Tehillim and Avinu Malkeinu. Our students who volunteer to drive supplies to the airport, who set up bake sales and lemonade stands to raise significant sums of money to support our beloved homeland. Our students who wave flags and sing to the heavens with joy and pride for Israel as they march through our school hallways.
And it is our students who marched for Israel – our entire Upper School of students and their teachers, plus the students of our eighth grade who politely demanded to be counted in so they too could stand up. Together, these students boarded buses and made sure to stand up and shout to the heavens, to our elected officials, to each other, and to the world that the Nation of Israel is alive!
These past few weeks we have been reading in our sacred texts of the ethical origins of our Nation of Israel. In the weekly sidra of Toldot, the Torah enigmatically takes steps to reiterate the genealogy of both Rivka and Yitzchak. The Rav zt”l explains that our Torah includes that Rivka was the daughter of Bethuel and the sister of Lavan (25:20) for a direct purpose: So that we, her descendants, understand that her righteousness and strength, her heroism, was born out of the crucible of her environment. The challenges of growing up around both of the influences the Torah mentions was the crisis through which Rivka found her way, found her voice, and expressed her strength.
The Torah puzzlingly describes Yitzchak’s ancestry as well. The Kedushat Levi zt”l beautifully points out that the Torah names Yitzchak as the “son of Avraham” (25:19) not because the reader needs to be told that information yet again, but rather because the reader needs to internalize the idea that being an heir of our forebearers is not a natural quality that we inherit through birth. Rather children must actively, through their deeds, merit their association with their parents and ancestors.
Our children are living in an age of heroes. They are witnessing their parents step up each day and demonstrate acts of heroism and courage, both big and small. They are seeing with their own eyes that it is through times of darkness that we learn to shine our light the brightest.
And our children, from our youngest to our oldest about to step out on their own, are stepping up themselves. They have accepted upon themselves the mantle of their parents and of their ancestors. They are the reason we fight as hard as we do, and they are the reason we should all feel a degree of comfort, and an incalculable degree of pride.
May our collective efforts, heroism big and small, hasten our world to a time of safety and peace for all parents in Israel and a swift victory over our enemies.
Mi k’amcha Yisrael – who is like your nation of Israel, and who is like this great community of teachers, parents, and children! | 
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