The graduates marched in to Modest Mouse’s “Float On” and Queen’s “We Are the Champions.” The student address was delivered in a kind of freestyle prose accompanied by acoustic guitar. The graduates received multiple hugs along with their diplomas, and marched out to Gaya’s “Yachad,” an Israeli pop favorite.
Indeed, graduation of the class of 2005 at Jewish Community High School of the Bay on Thursday afternoon, June 9, was anything but ordinary. The 29 graduates were continually referred to as pioneers and commended for their bravery in choosing to be the first class to graduate from the 4-year-old high school in San Francisco.
“Like the crew from the USS Enterprise, these students chose to boldly go where no student had ever gone before,” said David Smock, the assistant head of school, in his state of the senior class address.
In some ways, of course, the commencement had the usual trappings of any other of these days: the mix of high heels and clunky boots — both combat and cowboy — peeking out from under dark blue gowns of the girls; the occasional pierced eyebrow among the boys.
Andy Ross Perry took the prize for most original graduation hairstyle: neon red with spikes. And he also distinguished himself by his gigantic smile and outstretched arms as he went to pick up his diploma.
His fellow classmates wildly cheered him on as he blew kisses to the crowd as if they were all his adoring fans.
While the occasional tear could be spotted among the graduates, mostly the commencement was cause for celebration — by the founders, the parents and the students themselves.
At a reception before the ceremony, Nancy Zimmerman Pechner of San Rafael, who first envisioned the school almost a decade ago, said she never imagined that “in eight years, there would be the first graduating class. I feel very blessed.”
The reception also featured completion by a scribe of a brand new Torah, becoming the second Torah to belong to the school.
Noah Alper of Berkeley, a JCHS co-founder whose son David was among the graduates, compared the festivities to a wedding, in that the school had matured and entered the world. “But there’s a double sense of fulfillment and personal accomplishment,” he added, “in seeing my son finish up.”
And Mem Dryan Bernstein, formerly of the Bay Area, whose financial backing through the Keren Keshet Foundation enabled the school to purchase its building, expressed her pride and gratitude for the students, teachers, board members, parents and everyone else who ever had anything to do with the school.
Meanwhile, the seniors convened in the dance room before the ceremony, where Ross Bercun played guitar and led his classmates in “La Bamba.”
“If emotions could be a taste, it would be scrumtralescent,” said David Zucker, using a word made up by actor Will Ferrell.
Salome Donenfeld and her friends described their class as close as family. “I don’t think you can find another class like this,” she said.
Aryeh Lazar seemed to prove this, flying in from Israel to participate in the graduation. Lazar attended JCHS for his first two years of high school, but then moved with his father to Israel, where he has spent half of his life.
“I had a great experience here,” he said, “while in Israel I never really felt I was learning anything. Here, I found I could write.”
Lazar is returning soon to Israel, where he will enlist in the Israel Defense Forces.
The graduation took place inside a large tent — flaps whipping in the wind — that had been set up in the school’s courtyard.
In his address, Smock began by saying that he knew this student body was unique because of the amount of musical equipment that showed up with the kids each day; among the electric guitars, amplifiers and saxophones, there was the electric ukulele.
Calling them a group of “free thinkers and free spirits, creative expressers, poets, dancers and philosophers,” he also said, “they’re quite funky fresh.”
On a serious note, he said, “They didn’t just go to school here, they helped make this school and create it.”
In the student address, delivered by Aurora Simcovich and Donenfeld, the girls took turns delivering lines about their educational experience to guitar rhythms played by Elie Sherman.
“Four years ago was our genesis,” Simcovich began, “when my Jewish soul wore a gentile cape.”
Donenfeld remarked that as students they learned that they have the power to protest “as injustices have graced the system.”
She was referring to the shake-up at the school that began with the unexpected departure in February of Rabbi Ed Harwitz, the head of school. Donenfeld thanked Harwitz for “shaping a community we were fortunate enough to experience.”
Harwitz was given a prominent role at the graduation, giving out the hugs and diplomas along with Smock and Judaic studies teacher Daniel Zeldin.
Harvard Professor of Yiddish and comparative literature Ruth Wisse delivered the keynote address, calling the students the “feistiest group of people I’ve ever spoken to.” Her talk focused on the work she felt she had to do in establishing a Jewish studies department at McGill University in Montreal, in the generation following the Holocaust.
“It may not have been as important as the establishment of the state of Israel,” she said, “but being that most Jewish scholars were killed in the Holocaust, we are continuing their unfinished work.”
Before the commencement began, graduating senior Yoni Berk remarked, “So many people feel that we’re the next generation of community leaders, and now we’re leaving here, to go into the future.”