Rabbi Creditor's Remarks at the Baccalaureate Service for Governor’s School for Government & International Studies

Baccalaureate Service - June 15, 2006

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

 

Dear Faculty, Administration, Graduates, Families and Friends,

As a father of a graduate of the class of 1997, it is a personal pleasure to participate in this Baccalaureate Service. Tonight and graduation night are two most important dates in your young lives. Doors are closing and doors are opening. That is not new. It happened when you moved from elementary to middle school and then to high school. The great difference is that your parents, who told you what to do and when to do it, even when you did want to hear it, will no longer be there to badger, exhort, uphold and encourage you. For the first time, you will have to do it yourself, entirely. This will be exciting. But, you will also be challenged in ways you never imagined. How will you respond? From where will you draw upon to respond? Let me tell you a story to illustrate.

The story is about an eleven year old who went fishing every chance he got from the dock at his family's cabin on an island in the middle of a New Hampshire lake.

On the day before the bass season opened, he and his father were fishing early in the evening, catching sunfish and perch with worms. Then he tied on a small silver lure and practiced casting. The lure struck the water and caused colored ripples in the sunset, and then silver ripples as the moon rose over the lake. When his pole doubled over, he knew something huge was on the other end. His father watched with admiration as the boy skillfully worked the fish alongside the dock. Finally he very gingerly lifted the exhausted fish from the water. It was the largest one he had ever seen, but it was a bass.

The boy and his father looked at the handsome fish, gills playing back and forth in the moonlight. The father lit a match and looked at his watch. It was 10:00 P.M. – two hours before the season opened. He looked at the fish, then at the boy.

            "You'll have to put it back, son," he said.

            "Dad!" cried the boy.

            "There will be other fish," said his father.

            "Not as big as this one," cried the boy.

He looked around the lake. No other fisherman or boats were anywhere around in the moonlight. He looked again at his father. Even though no one had seen them, nor could anyone ever know what time he caught the fish, the boy could tell by the clarity of his father's voice that the decision was not negotiable. He slowly worked the hook out of the lip of the huge bass, and lowered it into the black water. The creature swished its powerful body and disappeared. The boy suspected that he would never again see such a great fish. Today that boy has a successful career. He takes his own sons and daughters fishing from the same dock. And he has never again caught such a magnificent fish as the one he landed that night long ago. But he remembers that fish every time there is a question of right and wrong.

My dear students, I don't know if any of you will ever catch a bass before bass season begins. But I know from the core of my being, that you will be presented with moral and ethical dilemmas. And you will think that no one sees and no one knows. That is not true! Our faith, different in the details yet with common ground teaches us that, yes, The One above us surely knows, and we are answerable. Our divine faiths teach us from our different but similarly holy texts that there are rights and there are wrongs. Now, as you emerge from this chapter in your journeys you will need to seek the truth from the faiths that will never desert you, from God to whom you can always turn. Remember the story of the big bass when you face the big decisions.

I pray that your lives will be filled with many blessings now and forever more.

Let us pray to the Almighty, in our different names, that the Divine will protect our men and women who serve our flag and country, standing in harms way so that we may gather here tonight, strengthen their moral fiber as He steadies their hands, and return them to the waiting arms of their loved ones whole of body and sound of mind.

May the world in which you grow up be blessed with peace.                

Amen.