On a plane from Baltimore to Brussels – the first leg of my journey to Budapest for the second year of Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School’s partnership with the Scheiber Sandor Gimnazium – I listened to the entire Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young album, Déjà Vu. Having come out in 1970, the height of an era that celebrated freedom in the midst of an unpopular war and civil unrest, the album reinforced my long-held suspicion that I had missed my true calling; I was supposed to have been a hippie. But since the Summer of Love arrived when I was barely out of first grade and Woodstock happened before my age hit double digits, I had looked back on that time with the longing of one who never truly experienced it.
Until today.
Standing in front of my 12th grade Seminar on Democracy at SSG, I introduced the topic for my session: the Power of Protests. Referring to the Jewish value of tikkun olam, literally “repairing the world,” I discussed our belief that each person has a responsibility to make the world better, to right the wrongs that we encounter. I connected Ghandi’s famous plea to “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” and I played for them the speech that Martin Luther King Jr. gave the night before his assassination, when he prophetically told his followers that, although he had seen the promised land, he might not get there with them. I watched the interest on their faces as I showed them the anti-Vietnam War protest at the Capitol during the 1967 March on Washington turn to wonder and inspiration as I moved forward over 50 years to the March for Our Lives, with its 18-year-old keynote speaker, David Hogg.
The video clips led to an impassioned discussion of their own country, of recent student demonstrations against the poor state of Hungary’s educational system, of their demands that the newly elected Prime Minister Viktor Orban not turn his back on the students and their need for a quality education. During our discussion, I learned that the leader of one of the most recent Hungarian student protests was sitting in my class right in front of me. This young man and his classmates drew strength and validation from their American counterparts who are demanding a safer school environment from their elected leaders.
I had come to class to teach my Hungarian students about an American construct — social justice through student protest from the 1960s to the present. They taught me that they had already ignited that flame. I left class rooting for them to succeed in repairing their world and hoping that they would sustain the courage to “be the change.” In a song on Déjà Vu, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young tell us to “Teach your children well.” I think, today, we have taught one another.
