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Jewish Life & Celebrations

Educational Achievement

The Educational Achievement Ceremony

Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine
The Educational Achievement ceremony honors members of the community who have completed a program of college or university study.
Sherwin T. Wine, Celebration, Prometheus Books, 2003, pp 355-358.

Education is life: From the moment we are born we begin to learn, and until the day we die we continue to learn.

We are born incomplete: Our possibility is so much greater than our reality. The infant is only an intimation of the adult to be. But neither instinct nor destiny are enough to guarantee our future. Our big brain and open mind respond to the world and help us go beyond our inheritance to understanding and wisdom. Something is always happening to us, and we change with every experience.

Long after our body ceases to grow, our mind continues to grow. Even when we become physical adults, the curious child never completely leaves us. Maturity is as elusive as perfection.

We are not the first generation to strive for self-esteem. We are not the first people to dream dreams and to work hard to fulfill them. There are millions of people who came before, who lived in earlier times and in more primitive places. There are ancestors of long ago who gave us life and culture, who gave up the pleasures of the present to guarantee the survival of the future. There are loved ones who bore us and cared for us who left the marks of their achievement upon our lives.

We are the heirs to a legacy of learning. What we know rests on the discoveries of the people of the past. What we create builds on the inventiveness of those who preceded us. As others did not betray their potential, so must we not betray ours. Our achievements are our gifts to the future.

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