“You Are All Here to Listen to a Frog”
Perhaps the strangest commencement speeches of all time began with a few opening remarks given in a high pitched, awkward stutter, followed by the words: “You are all here to listen to a frog.”
By frog, he was referring to perhaps the most famous amphibian on the planet, Kermit, who was there on the campus of the University of Maryland, in the tiniest cap and gown imaginable, to offer the following three pieces of advice to the Class of 2025:
- Find your people, “Because” as he told the graduates, “life is not a solo act. No, it’s not. It’s a big, messy, delightful ensemble piece.”
- Then when you have found your people, take a leap together.
- And, lastly, but equally important, after you have accomplished the first two goals, stay connected. “Stay connected to your loved ones, stay connected to your friends, and most of all stay connected to your dreams. No matter how big. No matter how impossible they seem.”
What amazing advice from a frog, no less. Important advice for college graduates, and important advice to all of us here gathered on the First Day of the New Jewish Year, 5786.
“Hayom Harat Olam”
“Today the world was created”
Rosh Hashanah is when we celebrate creation. The creation of worlds, the creation of life, the creation of ideas, the creation of new possibilities, pushing aside our fears and leaning into our desires.
Yes, this past year has been hard, as hostages continue to languish in dark tunnels, our beloved Israel is mired in war and bloodshed, and our country and the world is increasingly a heated and violent place to live.
Today, we choose to focus not on all the anxiety that has built up over the past 354 Jewish days, but on our hopes and our dreams for the next 354.
Dreaming is about what we want, what we hope, and what we can achieve. As Kermit told the graduates, dreaming is “how we figure out where we want to go. And life is how we get there.”
Dreaming is also very Jewish.
From Joseph’s dreams in Biblical times, to Theodore Herzl’s in modern ones, Jews have always been able to look beyond the wilderness of our existence into Promised Lands far beyond our imagination. As Herzl famously said: “Im Tirtztu Ein Zo Agada” “If we will it, it is not a dream.”
Today, I would like to share the story of a dream so outlandish, so full of chutzpah, that even today, two hundred years after its inception, it is still shocking that it happened at all. And, while, as you will soon see, this particular dream had absolutely no chance of coming to fruition, not only because of how outlandish it was but because it ignored a key piece of Kermit’s advice.
So, let’s refresh ourselves by going over Kermit’s key instructions: Find your people, Leap Together, and Stay Connected. After I finish sharing the story with you, I will ask you what exactly this dreamer had forgotten.
To tell this tale, I’ll need to take you back a few hundred years and introduce you to a man by the name of Mordecai Manuel Noah. Born on July 14, 1785, in my childhood home of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he was the child of Revolutionary War heroes, and a true American. In his lifetime, Noah had many roles including as a journalist in some of the top newspapers of his day, as a celebrated playwright most notably of one of the most important American plays of his time “She Would Be a Soldier” – a play still taught in colleges today, and as the American ambassador to Tunis, among other things.
He had flair and moxie, a self-assuredness that was contagious and inspiring. He was a Renaissance man in every aspect of the word. But, he was also most definitely a Jew, at a period that did not always value Jews.
Mordecai Manuel Noah found this out the hard way, when he was summarily dismissed as a diplomat by then Secretary of State and soon to be President James Monroe, with a note that called his faith “an obstacle to the exercise of [his] Consular function.” This was certainly a slap in the face to Noah, and a wake-up about what it really meant to be a Jew. But what was even more chilling to him was the state he found World Jewry to be in at the time. Touring Europe and West Africa, he saw how restrictive the communities they lived in were and how little control they had over their own destinies. This was nothing like the condition of American Jews even in the early 19th Century.
He came back determined to make a difference. But how? It just so happened that the state of New York had just acquired a large parcel of land from the Seneca Nation and was putting it up for auction. Maybe this could be the answer he was looking for. In his estimation, Jews around the world needed something more than more rights in the countries they were living. What they needed was a home of their own.
So, using the funds he had made from his play, Noah managed to cobble together enough to purchase almost 2,500 square acres of land in a place only twenty minutes from where we are right now – straight up the 290 to the 190, over a bridge, and straight into what is now called Grand Island.
This would be the first Jewish state in nearly two thousand years, a place that, if it were up to Noah, would be from then forth called Ararat after the mountain the ark of his Biblical namesake came to a rest in the days of the flood. So sure, was Mordecai Manuel Noah of the necessity of his idea, he had a cornerstone made to be used in its first official building, which read:
“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; Ararat, A City of Refuge for the Jews, Founded by Mordecai Manuel Noah, in the Month Tishrei, September 1825 and in the 50th year of American Independence.”
Then, with stone in hand, he made his way up the newly built Erie Canal into downtown Buffalo, where a group of Masons and Native American leaders led a large delegation into St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral for an opening ceremony. Placing the cornerstone on the Eucharistic Table – a fact that Rev. Rebecca Barnes the current dean of St. Paul’s told me, caused the table to groan under its weight – he proceeded to read his proclamation, announcing to the world his intentions. Finally, the event concluded with gunfire and cannonade, and then nothing. Noah simply reboarded his ship and returned home.
It turns out there were two fundamental flaws, among others, in this dream ever coming to fruition:
- The lack of Jews in Western New York at the time.
- The lack of any possible way of getting onto Grand Island from Buffalo.
More than this though, as I told you from the outset, he had ignored a key piece of Kermit’s advice. I’ll remind you again what Kermit’s key instructions were: Find your people, Leap Together, and Stay Connected.
He had not – yes, you guessed it – found his people.
Noah had everything lined up, the place to take his leap, the stone for its new construction, the proclamation to the world, and all the many steps that would occur when Ararat was established. But, as any small Muppet frog could have told him, he had not yet found his people. In turns out, the Jewish communities he had visited during his ambassadorship, the ones he had seen as oppressed – were, in fact, perfectly content where they were and had no desire of coming to a small, unpopulated island in Upstate New York.
So, this is where Noah’s dream came and died, right? Well sort of, because while Noah never found his people in his lifetime, his people, in a way, found him. It turns out, Noah’s short stint in Western New York helped pave the way for thousands of Jews to settle here, over the next two centuries. His proclamation helped show this was a safe place for Jews to make their homes.
More than that, Ararat was the first of many dreams about a Jewish homeland that eventually led to the modern State of Israel. Noah was prescient about the global State of the Jews, correctly forecasting the rise of antisemitism that eventually would lead to the destruction of all the Jewish communities he had visited at the hands of the Nazis. Looking back, we must wonder how different Jewish life would be today if only those communities had taken Noah up on his offer at the time it was made.
Here in Western New York Noah’s willingness to take a leap, set the stage for thousands of future leapers, whose dreams and ideas – from electricity to air conditioning – have reshaped not only our region, but the entire world. And, his encouragement of interreligious dialogue was, at least in part, responsible for the birth of organizations such as the Network of Religious Communities and the National Federation of Just Communities, organizations I am proud to support and serve on their boards.
Leaping does not always take us where we want to go. But where would we be if we did not leap at all?
In this room, are hundreds of dreams still unrealized. We have the capacity with these dreams to transform not only our own lives, but the entire world, if we only banded together to will them into existence. Even knowing that some dreams that we have will never come to fruition. Maybe what we thought we wanted in the past is not what we will want in the future. Life, circumstance, health, will get in the way of those dreams, and force us to alter and adjust in ways we did not expect. As the Yiddish saying goes, “People Plan, God Laughs.”
But, some dreams will. Thirteen years ago, our leadership took the bold step and dreamed of Congregation Shir Shalom into existence. It took a lot of time, effort, and hard work but today we are an established piece of the landscape of Western New York. Please take our commemorative 13th Anniversary pins before you leave, if you have not done so already.
For me personally, I try to enter every year with a set of dreams and hopes for myself, my family, and our community. Some of these, like the novels I hope to complete, the list of songs I hope to compose, the guitar I had to place back in my closet for lack of use, and the Shir Shalom prayer book we hoped to create, may never come to fruition. But, every year, I still go back to the drawing board and start again. Dreams could be as simple as finding a new friend, or reconnecting with an old one, joining a new group, learning a new skill, or just finding more “me” time during the year. Here, on these holiest days of the year, open your heart to new possibilities.
Shema, listen to the deepest recesses of your soul because as my Bar Mitzvah rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg reminds us, “Every day, Creation is renewed. / Wake up and see unfolding/In the spreading light of dawn / The world and all it contains / Coming into being, new, fresh / Filled with divine goodness / and love.”
Because, as Kermit told us, dreaming is “how we figure out where we want to go. And life is how we get there.”
There is too much hate in this world. We need more hope.
In his lifetime, Mordecai Manuel Noah never stopped dreaming of safety and security for Jews around the world, preaching to his dying day about the need for a Jewish refuge. While his beloved Ararat never came into existence, many of his dreams have. On this, the two hundredth anniversary of his great leap, let us use him for inspiration, continuing to dream of a better, safer world, not only for Jews, but for all humans. Ken Yehi Ratzon – May it be so.
I leave you with the words of a song Kermit had the 2025 graduates sing at the end of his commencement speech, one that you are no doubt familiar:
Why are there so many songs about rainbows?
And what’s on the other side?
Rainbows are visions, but only illusions.
And rainbows have nothing to hide.
So, we’ve been told, and some choose to believe it.
I know they’re wrong; wait and see.
Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection.
The lovers, the dreamers and me!
A Shanah Tovah U’Metukah, a Sweet New Year!