The Story of One of West Point’s Greatest Graduation Speeches—to Graduating Jewish Cadets in 2023

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High Five Casino. This is Lee Habib with Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Up next, you're going to hear from Dara Horn. She gave a commencement speech to the West Point graduates who happened to be Jewish in 2023.

And I came across this from a friend. And the story came to life. Here's Dara on who she is, and how she came to write this speech. My name is Dara Horn, and I'm a writer. I've published six books. My first five books were novels that all deal very deeply with Jewish history, culture, belief, texts, but incorporate those sort of ancient stories into modern contexts. And my most recent book is a nonfiction book with the rather provocative title, People Love Dead Jews. It's a collection of essays about the role that Jews play in a non-Jewish society. And I also have a spinoff podcast from this book called Adventures with Dead Jews, that tells a bunch of stories that aren't in the book because it's a bottomless topic, the role that Jews play in a non-Jewish society.

And I tend to approach these things with a little bit of an off-kilter kind of tone, as you can sort of maybe tell by the title. So the invitation to West Point, though, was quite unexpected. What happened was there was a cadet there, which is undergraduates that are called cadets. There was a cadet there named Jacob Foster, and he was listening to my podcast and really enjoyed it, and then went and read my book People Love Dead Jews, and then approached the Jewish chaplain at West Point and asked if I could be invited to be their baccalaureate speaker at the Jewish baccalaureate service as part of their commencement at West Point.

And I got this invitation. I was very honored, but also very intimidated because I thought, you know, people love dead Jews. Not really a great fit for commencement inspirational speech at West Point.

You know, it was like sort of a mismatch there. And I was sort of, you know, I was flattered that they invited me, but I was a little bit confused what they wanted. Because I think there's a lot of expectations when you speak at a graduation, that you're really speaking to the graduates, and you're supposed to give them some kind of message. And I just thought, you know, all of the platitudes that people say to graduates at typical colleges and universities kind of don't apply here.

Because, you know, the cadets at West Point, they graduate, they're commissioned as second lieutenants, and then they're serving the country for, you know, they all have requirements of how many years they're going to serve. These are people who made this decision of what they were going to do, essentially, with their lives and careers at a very young age. They don't need me to tell them, here's my advice for life, you know, what should you do? What should you do with yourself? Like, they've already decided.

And so I thought, what am I going to say to these people? You know, in the United States, and in most Western democracies, our whole system is based on a concept of rights. What's interesting about Jewish civilization is that it does have this parallel to American civilization, in that it's a culture that's based on a shared system of laws and a shared text that we're all interpreting, right? For in the United States, of course, it's the Constitution. In Judaism, traditionally, it's the Torah, right? It's the Hebrew Bible. But what's different about the Jewish premise of civilization is that it's not based on this idea of rights.

Instead, it's based on an idea of obligation, or what we call in Judaism, commandment. And that was the point where I saw some a parallel with what these young people were doing at West Point. And I realized very quickly that this date was the day before the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. And I saw in these graduates at West Point, in a sense, we're meeting that moment in the same way. They are also standing in their own kind of Sinai, where they're accepting their obligations, like in this case, you know, in a similar in a sense, in a similar way to the Jewish holiday of Shavuot.

And the Jewish holiday of Shavuot is the holiday where we celebrate the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. So this is really a moment in Jewish life of accepting obligations from God, which is a ceremony where they were going to be commissioned as officers a few days later. And when I realized that I thought that this is perhaps a good way to speak to these American Jewish graduates at West Point. Without any further ado, this is the speech that I gave at the Jewish Baccalaureate Service for the graduating Jewish cadets of the class of 2023 at the United States Military Academy at West Point on May 24, 2023. Normally, a graduation speaker is supposed to offer the new graduates a dose of wisdom and guidance. I'm probably supposed to advise all of you to wear sunscreen and make mistakes and live life to the fullest. But the truth is that looking at all of you and all of you everywhere in this room, graduates, alumni, veterans, officers, and of course also the family and friends who have poured their hearts into supporting all of you during these challenging years and the even more challenging years ahead, during which you've all dedicated your lives to defending our democracy, I honestly feel outclassed by every single person in this room.

What can I possibly say to you that you don't already know? You're already all deeply aware of what many other college graduates only learn after years of aimlessly stumbling through life, which is that a life of meaning only comes from service to others. Compared to your peers graduating from other colleges around the country, you have all spent the last four years being extremely driven and extremely devoted. And to say something that is slightly less graduation worthy, you've also spent these years being extremely uncomfortable and also extremely uncool.

I cannot pretend to understand your experience, but I do know the profound value of being uncool and uncomfortable. And so does every Jew who has ever lived for the last 3,000 years. And you're listening to Dara Horn's Commencement to the West Point Cadets graduating class of 2023, the Jewish Cadets, and talking about being uncool and uncomfortable and how Jews throughout history have known something about both. When we come back, more of this remarkable story and this remarkable speech, Dara Horn's speech to the West Point class of 2023, the Jewish Cadets, here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns.

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Let's pick up where we last left off. Growing up in our pluralistic American society, many of us were taught a kind of clunky lesson by very well-meaning people who wanted to teach us how to respect our leaders. The way we were often taught this important value is by someone essentially telling us, see this group of people over here who you might be inclined to be prejudiced against? You shouldn't hate those people because they're just like you and me.

They're just like everyone else. But the problem is that Jews have spent the past 3,000 years not being like everyone else. Uncoolness is Judaism's brand.

Going all the way back to the ancient Near East where everyone else was worshiping a Marvel Cinematic Universe of sexy deities, and the Jews were sort of like the losers in the school cafeteria, praying to their bossy and very unsexy invisible god. And in the many centuries as a minority in places around the world, Jews have made this choice over and over again to remain uncomfortable, to distinguish themselves from their neighbors in any number of ways, to cling to those distinctions, and over the course of their lives to learn and understand what those distinctions really mean. They made that choice even when they had easier options, and even when it meant risking their lives. One of the things I've learned in my work as a writer, and especially most recently as the writer of a book with the somewhat provocative title, People Love Dead Jews, is the profound value of being uncomfortable.

I think that the uncomfortable moments are always where the story is, because those are the moments when you're about to learn something that you might have gone through your entire life not knowing. The only way that people ever learn and change is by being uncomfortable, by choosing to put themselves in situations that push them to the very edge of what they think they understand. And that's a choice that all of you know very well. You've all chosen at a really young age to dedicate yourselves completely to defending our nation, and without any way of predicting where that commitment might take you.

And you've chosen not only to commit to that uncomfortable and uncertain future, but to lead others through. Major Frommer pointed out to me that Judaism actually has many unexpected similarities with cadet life at West Point. Both are governed by these extremely complex rituals and rules of daily living that determine details of things like what you wear, how you cut your hair, what you eat, how you walk, how you talk, and basically how you spend every hour of every day. But military life and Jewish life are also similar in a much more fundamental way.

They're both based on the ideal of obligation, or what we call in Judaism, commandment. Tomorrow night is Shavuot, the holiday where we celebrate the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai thousands of years ago. And Jewish legend teaches us that it wasn't only the Jews of that generation who stood at Sinai, but that all future Jews were also physically and socially present at that moment, standing at Sinai to receive the Torah from God. As an American Jew, I used to be very uncomfortable and troubled by that legend, because it seemed to directly contradict the American view of our place in history. In the United States, one of our foundational ideas is that it shouldn't ever matter who your parents or grandparents or great grandparents were, it doesn't matter where you come from or what your background is, what matters is what you do with the opportunities this country gives us.

Of course, that's what we call the American dream. In Jewish culture, this foundational legend we have of all of us standing at Sinai seemed to me like the exact opposite of the American dream, because that legend suggests that actually it does matter who your parents are, who your grandparents and great-great grandparents are, and that the most important event in your life happened thousands of years before you were born and there's nothing you can do about it. But Shavuot is also when we celebrate the biblical story of Ruth, the first convert to Judaism, who rejected all the easier options open to her and instead chose to join the Jewish people. The reality is that today all Jews are Jews by choice, free to decide whether and how we will engage with this tradition. The Hasidic master Nachman of Brotzov taught that the Torah is actually given not just at one point in history, but at every moment, in every hour of every day. Whether or not we believe that we all once stood at Sinai, we are all constantly choosing what this tradition means to us and whether we want to stand at Sinai again. Judaism isn't really a religion, the way that some of our neighbors might understand that word as a set of abstract beliefs.

Instead it's a radical idea about freedom and responsibility. The core idea of Judaism is monotheism and the rejection of idolatry. Today we think that idolatry in the ancient world meant something like praying to a statue, but that is not what idolatry was then or now. In the ancient Near East, many nations had many, many gods and one of those gods was the dictator. In ancient Egypt where the Jews' ancestors were enslaved, the pharaoh was considered one of the gods. So when the Jewish people said that they don't bow to idols, what they actually meant was that they don't bow to tyrants. People have often wondered how the Jews have endured for so many thousands of years as one of the only ancient peoples who still exist today.

I think the answer is similar to America's endurance as now one of the longest lasting democracies in the modern world. I think in both cases it lies in the refusal to bow to tyrants. The Jewish people almost 3,000 years ago, like the American people almost 300 years ago, had to create a model of human leadership that was the antidote to tyranny. The generation of freed slaves who accepted the Torah discovered that freedom actually requires hard work because it turns out that societies that are not run by tyrants require constant cooperation, compromises, decision-making, problem-solving, dedication, and vigilance to sustain them. We all know the famous words from the Torah that God tells to the Egyptian Pharaoh through Moses, let my people go. But in the Torah, every time that phrase, let my people go, let my people go, appears, it's followed by another phrase. Let my people go so they may serve me in the wilderness. The purpose of freedom is to allow the people to willingly accept the commandments, laws about how to create a just society.

Human dignity only comes from choosing to take on those responsibilities and accepting those obligations to others. Today at West Point, you are all now standing once more at a kind of Sinai, recognizing your obligations. And a few days from now, you are going to be commissioned as officers and not long after that, you are all going out to serve in the wilderness. And you've been listening to Darrowhorn's speech to the class of 2023 at West Point, the Jewish cadets were assembled, and she told them one heck of a story, because this is beautiful storytelling via a speech. And we've spent a lot of time on great speeches, quite a few from Churchill, Roosevelt's beautiful prayer on the night of D-Day to 100 million Americans, and even to Anne Frank all the way in Holland. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, a beauty, and we had a Lincoln impersonator do that. And Darrow's speech, I think, stands up with all of them.

It's just so beautiful. All Jews, she said, are Jews by choice. And so true, as all Christians are. And she talked about uncoolness being Judaism's brand, and talked about the profound value of being uncomfortable. Last, that Jews, like Americans, and like Christians too, don't bow to tyrants.

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High Five Casino. And we continue with Tara Horn here on Our American Stories and her remarkable speech to the Jewish cadets graduating class at West Point in 2023. Let's return to the final part. Our American forebears of all backgrounds saw this country as a wilderness. An open place of both fear and possibility. And I think that the future itself for all of us is also a kind of wilderness. Full of uncertainty but also full of promise.

All of you have committed to a future that you can't possibly imagine. And so did your parents when they raised you not so long ago. When the Jewish people accepted the Torah at Mount Sinai they said na'aseh v'nishma, we will do it and then we will listen to it. They accepted the Torah's laws before even hearing what those laws were and without regard to where those obligations might lead them.

And only later did they listen to those laws, learn them and discover what they might mean. All of you have responded to that call in your lives as Americans to defend this country with everything that you have and to use your talents to lead others in its defense. And by being here today and in all of your many roles in this Jewish community here at West Point, all of you are also responding to that call in your lives as American Jews. For some of you the power and beauty of Judaism is something that has always been part of your life.

For some of you it's something that you either discovered or deepened here in this place that you entered while instinctively knowing what it means to live a life of commitment. But all of you are about to go out into the wilderness. Your lives as American military leaders in the coming years will be well structured with many challenging but apparent paths in front of you. But how you continue to lead and deepen your Jewish lives and what paths you'll take as Jewish leaders is still entirely up to you.

That freedom and responsibility will be very uncomfortable. You will be making those choices in many places where you might not have a Jewish community to support you and at a moment in history where a resurgence of hatred might tempt you to make the more comfortable choice of not being openly Jewish at all. But you also have the courage of many generations of Jews behind you who have made the uncomfortable choice. The ancient generations going back to Sinai, the more recent generations who escaped the persecutions of other places to come to this country, and also the thousand plus Jewish graduates of West Point to whose names we've just added yours. This country is one of the few places in the world where Jews have had the opportunity to serve as military leaders, but in every place that Jews have had that opportunity they have seized it.

Even in the 900s the Hebrew poet Shmuel HaNagid was the chief general of Spain's empire leading armies into battle. In the ancient world Jews were so renowned for being elite warriors that they were actively recruited by Persian and other imperial forces who manned their most dangerous outposts entirely with Jewish commanders. And as all of you know we have had Jewish graduates from West Point from the very beginning. These were all people who deeply understood the call to a life of service. You have spent the past four years learning from the many military leaders around you and maybe sometimes learning from them how you don't want to lead.

And I think you have that in common with all West Point graduates from the past 200 years. But allow me to take a moment to prepare you for your future with some advice given to the very first Jewish military leader long before West Point existed. When Moses died in the wilderness the leadership of the Jewish people passed to Joshua, a man with whom today's graduates share much in common. Joshua was born into a people who had endured great oppression in the past in a foreign land but whose new generation was born free from the sufferings of their elders.

Their challenge was different to build and protect a society that allowed for many different tribes and perspectives to live together and flourish. Like many of our graduates today Joshua was different from his own parents and even from his predecessor Moses because unlike his civilian predecessors Joshua was a warrior, a military leader tasked with entering enemy territory and defending the nation. Joshua had already engaged in covert operations sneaking into the promised land to collect intelligence on how to conquer it.

Nearly all of the other spies who had entered the promised land with him told Moses that the land was unconquerable. Only Joshua and his deputy were unafraid of the daunting military task that lay ahead of them and so when Moses died God gave Joshua a commencement speech. At what is essentially Joshua's commissioning ceremony God said to Joshua the famous Hebrew words, Be strong and courageous, but the way God continued this commencement speech is very revealing. God did not give Joshua military advice or tell him to respect his elders or to wear sunscreen. Instead God told Joshua to keep learning. God said to Joshua you should keep the book of the Torah always on your lips you should recite from it night and day. For God to be strong and courageous meant being brave enough to always continue learning, to keep going back to that uncomfortable place, to be curious and humble enough to learn what you don't yet know, not just about the battlefield and not just about life but about this timeless Jewish civilization, this powerful antidote to tyranny that has brought us to this moment and that now relies upon you to sustain it. So on this momentous day I am not going to tell you to wear sunscreen because I think that you have all of the rules and regulations you need that are going to tell you exactly what you're supposed to wear.

You also already know that you will make mistakes and you already can teach the rest of us about how to live life to the fullest. Instead I want to offer you the words of the God of our ancestors, be strong and courageous, be strong and courageous enough to lead people into battle, be strong and courageous enough to learn again and again what is worth defending, be strong and courageous enough to stand at Sinai at every hour of every day, be strong and courageous as you carry forth with you the antidote to tyranny. Baruch atah Adonai Elohinu Melech ha-lam she'hayanu v'kiyamanu v'hiyayanu wasman ha-zeh. Blessed are you Lord our God, ruler of the universe who has kept us alive and sustained us and brought us to this moment and I'm saying this blessing just for myself for the honor of being in your presence today. May God bless all of you graduates, may God bless America and all of its defenders. Mazel tov. And you've been listening to Dara Horn, an award-winning author, recipient of three National Jewish Book Awards, and you can see her work in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Smithsonian, the Atlantic. This one appeared in the tablet this speech.

I cried reading it on an airplane. Again, I'm not Jewish, but these ideas, these words, they're just so beautiful. Be strong and courageous, he said, to lead people into battle and to learn what's worth defending. Be strong and courageous and carry forth with you the antidote to tyranny.

The story of Dara Horn's commencement speech at West Point to the Jewish cadets graduating class of 2023, how it came to be here on Our American Stories. Roku has what you need to make your college home away from home feel more like your own. Make your dorm the place to be with Roku TV or bring a Roku streaming stick to easily access all your favorite free and premium content like iHeartRadio. Stream your favorite playlist with the Roku vibe setting smart light strips to sync your music to millions of colors and make your dorm feel more like you. Make your dorm the place to be with Roku TV, streaming players, and smart lights.

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