What's Your Passing Grade This New Year?

Shabbat Shalom and Shanah Tovah!

An old joke has it that when the sea gets too high, you either have to raise the ship or lower the water. That’s something like what the New York State Department of Education decided to do this year when it discovered a way to help more students pass the state’s math exam for seventh graders. For years, a passing grade was 60, but last year it was lowered to 44, resulting in the highest percentage of students to pass the test in recent memory. Amazing!

It’s true that sometimes standards need to be lowered. An article in USA Today reported how some luxury hotel chains have decided to lower their standards (and their prices) somewhat in order to attract more budget-conscious travelers. Sometimes lowering standards is both necessary and constructive.

But as the High Holy Days begin, our tradition compels us to do just the opposite: not to lower our standards but to raise them. Not to be satisfied with who we are but ask how we can be more. Not to live at the standard everyone does, but to ask ourselves how we can live at a standard everyone should.

The writer Lewis Mumford once wrote, “The final goal of human effort is man’s self-transformation.” That also is the raison d’etre of the High Holy Days, to be transformed through the seeking of a higher standard for ourselves as men and women and children of God. When it comes to who and what we are as human beings and Jews, the standard can never be too high.

L’shanah Tovah Tikateivu.

Rabbi Rosen