Rituals, Meaning, and the First Day of School 

This past weekend, we celebrated a milestone birthday for my mother. It was a moving weekend, with all of her children and grandchildren gathered together to pay tribute to her, share stories, and reminisce.

One of the memories that came to me was a simple one. Growing up, every year on the first day of school, our mother would gather us on the front steps and take a picture: backpacks on, smiles minted, pencils sharpened, ready to begin another school year.

Of course, there was no social media then. There was nowhere to post the picture. It was just for us, just for our family.

I can imagine there were years when I was less than enthusiastic about participating in this opening-day ritual. But somehow it stuck. In fact, it became one of those family rituals that continued even into our college years. We came to expect it and, in our own way, look forward to it. Yesterday, I dropped off our youngest child for his last year of undergraduate studies and this morning, our eldest, a teacher at a school in Manhattan, shared her first day of school picture on our family chat.

Why do these little rituals matter so much?

This summer, one of the books I read was Bruce Feiler’s newly released A Time to Gather: How Ritual Created the World and How It Can Save Us. I am grateful to one of our Yavneh parents who, knowing that I enjoy Feiler’s books, alerted me to a live conversation with the author at a public library about a half hour away. It was a fascinating evening.

Feiler explores the role that ritual plays in giving shape and meaning to our lives. He begins with four of the great milestones that human beings have traditionally marked through ritual…birth, adolescence, marriage, and death. Organized religion has been particularly effective at elevating these moments. Within Judaism, of course, we have created powerful rituals around each of them. As an educator, I am particularly drawn to the Bar and Bat Mitzvah, through which we transform a young person’s transition toward adulthood into a moment of learning, responsibility, and Jewish identity.

Yet, Feiler’s theory extends well beyond these major milestones. Our lives today do not necessarily follow the linear paths or predetermined scripts that they once did. Instead, our lives contain dozens of transitions and meaningful moments that are waiting to be noticed and elevated.

Feiler offers a wonderfully simple definition of ritual: “a shared, unnecessary act that makes us feel at home.”

Each word matters.

A ritual is shared… it connects us with other people.

It is unnecessary… we don't actually need to take a first-day-of-school picture, break a glass under a chuppah, or blow out birthday candles. The very fact that the act isn't practically necessary allows it to carry symbolic meaning.

It is an act… ritual isn't merely something we think or feel. It is something we do.

And ultimately, it makes us feel at home. Ritual creates belonging. It reminds us that we are part of a family, a community, a tradition, or something larger than ourselves.

When we intentionally mark ordinary moments, we elevate them. We are saying: This matters. Pay attention. Remember this.

That idea led me back this summer to another book on my bookshelf, the slim but essential Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, by the acclaimed Jewish historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi.

In the preface to the 1989 edition, Yerushalmi marvels that this, his shortest book, had somehow “traveled the farthest” and had the widest impact.

Yerushalmi draws a profound distinction between history and memory.

History asks: What happened?

Jewish memory asks: How do we make what happened continue to live within us? This is something essential that we often ponder as parents and educators.

Yerushalmi argues that throughout Jewish history, memory was preserved not primarily by historians or history books, but through ritual, repetition, and reenactment. The historian, he writes, “was not its primary custodian.”

One of Yerushalmi’s prime examples comes directly from this past week’s parsha.

In Devarim 26, an ordinary Israelite brings his first fruits to the Beit HaMikdash. But bringing the fruit isn't enough. He is required to tell a story:

“אֲרַמִּי֙ אֹבֵ֣ד אָבִ֔י”

He recounts our descent to Egypt, our enslavement, our crying out to God, our redemption, and finally our arrival in the Land of Israel:

“וַיּוֹצִאֵ֤נוּ ה' מִמִּצְרַ֔יִם … וַיְבִאֵ֖נוּ אֶל־הַמָּק֣וֹם הַזֶּ֑ה”

God took us out of Egypt…and brought us to this place.

Notice the language.

He doesn't say, “Long ago, my ancestors were slaves in Egypt.”

He says “us.”

God redeemed us.

God brought us here.

An event that occurred generations earlier is transformed through words and ritual into personal memory. And, of course, these very same verses later become the centerpiece of the Pesach Seder. Generation after generation, parents and children gather around a table and tell the story again.

We don't simply study the Exodus.

We reenact it.

We eat the matzah. We taste the maror. We drink the wine. We ask the questions. We tell the stories.

The past becomes present.

Yerushalmi asks how Jews have managed to “preserve, transmit, and revitalize” memory across generations. Feiler helps us understand the mechanism. We turn memory into an act. We perform it with other people. We give the act symbolic meaning. And through repetition, it becomes part of who we are.

Yerushalmi helps us understand why ritual has preserved Jewish memory. Feiler helps us understand how we can create meaningful rituals in our own lives.

And perhaps there is an important lesson here for us as parents and educators as another school year begins.

If we want something to become part of a child's identity, we cannot only teach it. Sometimes we need to ritualize it.

Give it words. Give it a song. Give it a special food. Give it a place. Give it a photograph. Give it people with whom to share it. And then do it again next year.

Because years later, our children may not remember what we told them on the first day of a particular grade. They may not remember the homework assignment or what was packed in their lunch.

But they may remember standing on the front steps.

They may remember the backpack, or a note attached to a morning snack.

They may remember their siblings standing beside them.

And they may remember that someone who loved them stopped the rush of an ordinary morning long enough to say, without actually saying it:

This moment matters. This beginning matters. You matter. Let's remember it.

So, by all means, take those first-day-of-school pictures, whether you chose to post them or keep them for your family.



But most importantly, make the memory.

SIncerely,

Rabbi Jonathan Knapp  

Head of School