Every Child is a Whole World.

Jewish educators are often asked what keeps us doing this work.

Sometimes the answer is joyful. We teach because we love watching a student sound out Hebrew words they once thought were impossible. We teach because we believe Torah, prayer, memory, and Jewish tradition still have something to say to our children. We teach because we want them to feel that Judaism is not only something from the past, but something that belongs to them.

But that is not the whole answer.

Sometimes we keep teaching because our students leave marks on us that we could not erase even if we tried.

Three years ago, along with our entire community, I learned that Drew Hassenbein and Ethan Falkowitz had been killed by a drunk driver. I had the privilege of working with both of them, and the text I received that morning is still seared into my memory.

There are moments when language fails.

This was one of them.

At the time, I had taken a break from tutoring for medical reasons. I had been cleared to return, but I was not sure I was ready. I was still healing. I was still hesitant. The part of me that had once known exactly why this work mattered felt quieter than it used to.

And then came a loss that made everything else feel small.

It did not give me answers. It did not make me feel strong. It did not turn grief into purpose in some neat or comfortable way. Grief does not work like that.

But it did remind me of something I had always believed and had maybe forgotten how deeply I believed it: every child we teach is a whole world.

Jewish tradition teaches that to lose one life is to lose an entire world. That teaching is often quoted in moments of tragedy, but it is not only a teaching about death. It is also a teaching about how we are meant to see people while they are living.

A student is never just a student.

A student is a world of questions, jokes, worries, talents, contradictions, dreams, and possibilities. A student is a family’s child. A friend’s best friend. A teammate. A voice in the room. A presence at the table. A person whose life reaches farther than any educator can ever fully know.

Drew and Ethan were, and remain, whole worlds.

And standing in the grief of their loss, I understood something about Jewish education differently.

This work is not only about teaching Hebrew or preparing students for bnei mitzvah. It is not only about curriculum, holidays, prayers, or programs. Those things matter deeply, but they are not the heart of it.

The heart of Jewish education is presence.

It is the sacred responsibility of seeing our students while they are in front of us. It is noticing who they are becoming. It is creating spaces where they feel known, held, challenged, and loved. It is helping them understand that they belong to a people and a tradition that will hold them in joy, in struggle, in celebration, and in grief.

As educators, we often talk about the ways we hope to inspire our students. We plan the lessons. We choose the texts. We prepare the questions. We imagine what they might take with them.

But the truth is that inspiration does not move in only one direction.

Our students teach us, too.

They teach us through their curiosity. Through their humor. Through the way they surprise us. Through the questions they ask when we least expect it. Through the ordinary moments that seem small at the time, until memory teaches us they were never small at all.

I returned to teaching after Drew and Ethan’s deaths not because grief healed me, and not because their loss needed to become a lesson. No child’s life should ever be reduced to a lesson.

I returned because their memory called me back to the sacredness of this work.

It reminded me that every moment with a student matters more than we know. It reminded me that the relationships we build in Jewish spaces can stay with us long after the class ends, long after the tutoring session ends, long after the student leaves the room.

I have many reasons for being a Jewish educator.

But one of the deepest is this: my students have changed me.

Drew and Ethan changed me.

May their memories continue to be a blessing. May their families and all who loved them continue to be held by community. And may those of us who teach never forget the sacred privilege of standing before a child and remembering that we are standing before a whole world.