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72 SHOFAR GRADUATION: MOTIFS AND MEANINGSl Walter Ackerman Walter Ackerman is Shane Family Professor of Education at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. Prior to settling in Israel he was Vice-President for Academic Affairs of the University of Judaism in Los Angeles. His major research interests are the development of the Israeli school system and the history of Jewish education in the United States. He is one of the editors of Education in an Evolving Society: Schooling in Israel (Hebrew and German) and has written extensively on many aspects of Jewish education in America. I. The Jewish school, like other client-serving institutions, must create occasions which permit it to proclaim purpose, exhibit achievements, and validate commitments. These occasions, no matter their specific context, provide opportunities to project idealized versions of what the school represents and does. They frame the ground for future activity and are moments of affirmation and definition for all who participate in the enterprise. Graduations are such an occasion. They are a time when a school presents itself to the community it serves and tells its "story." Among the ceremonies which punctuate life in school, graduation exercises are perhaps that rite which best tells what a school thinks about itself and how it would like to be perceived by those whose loyalties it seeks. In what follows here I have attempted to compare and analyze graduation exercises at four American Jewish high schools. My purpose is to try to understand and interpret the image projected by each school and to note the differences between them. Looking at schools in this way can, I believe, contribute to our understanding ofJewish education in the United States. II. A graduation is a public event whose immediate purpose is to provide a setting for presenting evidence of achievement-a diploma r certificate-to lMy thanks to all those who helped. Volume 10, No.1 Fall1991 73 students who have. successfully completed a course of study. The origins of the ceremony date back to the universities of medieval Europe; the first academic degree of record was conferred by the University of Bologna in the middle of the twelfth century. From there the practice spread to other institutions of higher learning in Europe, and, over the years, formal patterns of protocol and practice for the occasion were developed. The first college graduation in the United States took place at Harvard in 1642, six years after the admission of the first class. With the passage of time, the idea of a specific exercise to mark the culmination of a stage of study was adopted by high schools and even elementary schools. The Jewish religious tradition knows two practices which bear a certain resemblance to a graduation. One is the ceremony of ordination (Semikkah) which was the occasion of "appointm~ntand solemn public dedication to the office of judge and teacher of the Law." Originating in the "laying on of hands" which symbolized the transfer of authority from Moses to Joshua (Number 27: 22--23), ordination was institutionalized during the period of the Second Temple and became the procedure by which members of. the Sanhedrin were dedicated to office. Strictly speaking that ceremony was perhaps more like a rite of initiation. It did, however, testify to the achievement of a certain level of learning. The tradition of rabbinical ordination, particularly in later times, may be considered the equivalent of conferring a degree. The other ceremony, one perhaps more close related to modern graduation exercises, takes place when an individual or group completes the study of a particular tractate or of the entire Talmud (Siyyum Ha'Shas: Si)yum Mesikktah). The occasion, generally celebrated in the synagogue, is marked by a number of fixed elements: a homily which by drawing on both the text just completed and the one to be studied next calls attention to the never-ending cycle of learning; the recitation of a formulary prayer (Hadran), "We shall return to this tractate and it shall return to us; we will direct our minds to this tractate and it will remain mindful of us; we shall not forget this tractate and it will not forget us, neither in this world nor in...

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