This week, I stood with the clergy and watched a parade of Shlenker School students walk by in Purim costumes. It was the highlight of the morning as they made their way down the halls through Beth Israel, turned the corners, and returned to The Shlenker School. They were beyond cute and overjoyed to be welcomed by all of us on their parade route.

Purim day is a day where everything is topsy-turvy, and this Purim day was no exception. The halls the students walked through are nothing compared to the world we walk through every day. Their halls are peaceful, tranquil, and filled with joy. Their classrooms are renovated and inspiring. Every day they arrive to engaging and inspiring lessons that prepare them for a future we still dream about for them. Those safe learning spaces are built by design and with Houston police officers who protect them, and us, on campus all week. Knowing that our children are safe and sound enables us to turn and address the world for their sake.

Our ability to address the world is more difficult, today, because the systems and norms on which we relied are unstable and shifting. Incivility and bigotry are rampant. War is raging, too, but it might serve the purpose of ending the existential threat to Israel and its allies, including America, and stabilizing our future. It’s not hyperbole to say that the U.S. has been under threat by the Islamists and Iran for years. War in the Middle East can feel far away, but globalization makes it closer than we might be ready to admit. Globalization is about more than markets and the internet. It’s also about closing the distance between faraway places through information, data, and influence. What used to be exotic because it was distant and unknown is now instantly available and familiar, whether it’s goods and products or antisemitism and terror.

It’s been said that a good offense is the best defense. Investments in Jewish education, community, and faith are our best defense because they enable us to thrive in disruptive times. The more we know about ourselves and what Judaism commands us to do and to be, the better able we are to thrive and support those who depend on us. In history, the Assyrians, Babylonians, Romans, Ottomans, and the Nazi regime aimed to destroy us. They did their harm and devastated our people, but they’re the ones who are written about in the past tense and vilified for their inhumanity. History is a great teacher when we learn from it. And Judaism is a great faith when it helps us see that after war there can be peace, and hatred of Jews can’t deter us from being who we and our children were created to be.

We cherish life. We bring children into the world to perpetuate our covenant with God whose inspired words of Torah bind us eternally and to each other. In these disruptive times, we can’t fail to show our children the future. It’s not dark or doomed. It’s bright and illuminated with hope found in the unfolding story of our people’s faithfulness and resilience.

Am Yisrael Chai.

L’Shalom,