The Blogs: Commencement Address to Barrack Hebrew Academy

This is adapted from the commencement address delivered by Paul Bernstein, CEO of Prizmah, to Barrack Hebrew Academy earlier this month

Thank you to the board, faculty and staff, supporters, and all the families of Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy.

Most importantly, mazal tov to the Class of 2026.

Graduates, today is one of those rare moments in life when everyone in the room is focused on you. Enjoy it. Enjoy the nachat your parents are experiencing for your success. Please indulge them when they want that extra, cheesy photo with your siblings and grandparents.

This is a special moment for you and for them, capping a lifetime of memories and formative experiences at Barrack and at your previous schools.

Before I go any further, let’s tackle the subject that has been the make or break of commencement speeches in 2026.

Everyone’s talking about AI.

In fact, I suspect there is an AI system somewhere right now generating a graduation speech about AI.

Let me reassure you: I am not going to spend the next ten minutes predicting which jobs AI will replace, whether robots will become your managers, or whether ChatGPT will someday be giving this speech instead of me.

Instead, I’ll echo what Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, said at a recent commencement address. “You all have AI,” Wozniak said. “You all have AI.” That is “actual intelligence.”

As you graduate from Barrack, you have a powerful combination: your intelligence, intellectual and emotional, combined with the power of a profound Jewish and secular education.

If you want to know how Jews have survived for thousands of years and contributed so much to the world around us, it is because we place education at the heart of our “operating system.”

I just marked ten years as the founding CEO of Prizmah, the network that serves Jewish day schools across North America.

It has been one of the great privileges of my life to work with extraordinary educators and leaders in hundreds of Jewish day schools.

In this role, I am reminded every day that our teachers and this community do far more than prepare students for college.

They prepare students for life.

I know this because they did it for me.

Outside of my family, my Jewish day school education was probably the most formative experience of my life.

I left school remembering lessons from Torah and from study of Talmud, such as Pirkei Avot, that guide me decades later, underpin my values, and determine what I strive to achieve.

I left with a deep sense of responsibility to the world around me.

I left with an understanding that being Jewish is not simply something we are. It is something we do.

And most of all, I left with the imprint of teachers whose influence has never left me.

My kindergarten teacher was a woman named Hazel Goldreich.

Before becoming my teacher in London, Hazel and her husband Arthur played an extraordinary role in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Their farm was a secret safe house for leaders of the African National Congress. Nelson Mandela lived there before his arrest.

Think about that for a moment.

A woman who had helped shape history chose to become a teacher.

As a child, I didn’t fully understand the significance of her story.

But I understood her kindness.

I understood her belief that every child mattered.

And over time I came to understand that she was living a profoundly Jewish lesson: that we are called not only to witness the world as it is, but to help build the world as it should be.

A few years later, another teacher gifted me a different lesson.

In July 1976, Jewish communities around the world awoke to the astounding news of the rescue of hostages at Entebbe.

The operation felt miraculous.

But when I arrived at school that day, my teacher shared something deeply personal.

One Jewish hostage was not rescued and later died in hospital in Uganda. As we know from the recent hostages in Gaza, the value of Pidyon Shvuyim, Redemption of Captives, is central to Jewish values. The death of one hostage at Entebbe was a terrible loss, despite the heroic rescue of all the others. That hostage, Dora Bloch, was my teacher’s aunt.

Suddenly, a global story became personal, almost intimate.

I learned that day what it means when we say Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh—every Jew is responsible for one another.

The Jewish people were not an abstraction.

They were family. Like this community at Barrack is your family.

My teachers’ lessons have stayed with me for a lifetime.

And that’s why I hope you never underestimate what you have gained here.

You have learned chemistry and calculus.

Literature, history, Tanakh, and Talmud.

But you have also learned something deeper.

You have learned how to ask questions.

How to wrestle with ideas.

How to disagree respectfully.

How to hold complexity.

How to balance particular responsibility to your own community with universal responsibility for the world.

Those are skills for a lifetime.

And more than anything, through your Jewish day school experience, you have, I hope, learned who you are. At Prizmah, when we talk about the magic of a Jewish day school experience, it is in this:

“When you know who you are, you can be anything.”

Some of you will become entrepreneurs.

Some of you will become doctors, lawyers, scientists, artists, public servants, or community leaders.

Perhaps one of you will someday become Governor of Pennsylvania.

Perhaps one of you will even run for president.

And if you do, I hope you remember today and invite me to the inauguration.

I am enjoying a career driven by my passions and a determination to make a difference. I didn’t start out with a vocation, and even today I sometimes wonder what I’m going to do when I grow up.

I am proud of the opportunities I’ve had and the times in my life I’ve been able to make the world just a little bit better.

When I look at who had the greatest impact on my life and when I ask myself who are the heroes shaping our world for the better, there is one profession I want to mention in particular.

Teaching.

In Jewish tradition, our greatest leader, Moses, is not remembered as Moses the warrior.

Not Moses the politician.

Not Moses the miracle worker.

He is Moshe Rabbeinu. Moses our teacher.

The importance of Moshe as a teacher is punctuated in this week’s Parsha, Beha’alotekha.

Joshua approaches Moses, fearful about the way that Eldad and Medad, two Elders of B’nei Yisrael, were prophesying. Joshua appealed to Moses to restrain them. But instead of exerting control, Moshe says:

מִי יִתֵּן כׇּל־עַם יְהֹוָה נְבִיאִים

כִּי־יִתֵּן יְהֹוָה אֶת־רוּחוֹ עֲלֵיהֶם׃

“Would that all Gd’s people were prophets, that Gd inspired them!”

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks explains how this demonstrates the nature of real leadership embraced by the Tanakh and rabbinical Judaism.

Instead of focusing on leadership solely by power, Moshe embraces leadership by influence.

Our teachers are the ultimate influencers and we embrace their leadership.

The people who shape the future are the people who teach it.

Many achievements in my life trace back, in some way, to teachers.

I can still remember lessons from classrooms decades ago.

I certainly cannot remember most meetings I attended last year.

Teachers change lives.

Teachers shape generations.

Teachers create futures they may never personally see.

And so tonight, I want us to pause and thank the remarkable educators of Barrack Hebrew Academy, who invested their hearts in this class.

The impact of your work will echo for decades.

Thank you.

For each of you graduates, when you think about your future journey, I love the opportunities that lie ahead and the choices you might make.

I hope that whatever you choose, you’ll consider being a hero and an influencer. Not an influencer measured by clicks and likes, but an influencer of the hearts and minds of future generations.

There are many ways you can and will do this, and I hope for some it will be as a teacher. You can change the world.

To your parents:

Thank you as well.

You made sacrifices to give your children this education.

You made a decision not simply about schooling, but about values.

You chose an education that would help your children understand who they are, where they come from, and what responsibilities they carry into the world.

I hope that tonight brings you enormous pride.

Graduates, you enter adulthood at a moment that often feels uncertain.

You are constantly reminded about technological disruption, political division, antisemitism, war, climate change, and countless other challenges.

The threats are real.

But I remain profoundly optimistic.

I am optimistic because I spend my life surrounded by Jewish day school students and teachers.

I am optimistic because our people have faced and come through uncertainty before.

And I am optimistic because I see the Class of 2026 and I imagine the next chapters in your journey.

The future is not something that happens to us.

It is something each of you will help create.

My wish for you is simple.

Be proud of who you are.