Editorial: Seasonal confusion and remembering Yoseph Robinson

Even at the end of a long, hot summer, with the chagim early (at least according to the secular calendar) and autumn not yet in sight, the start of a new school year brings with it feelings of ... spring. There’s a sense of renewal and excitement that is, well, exciting, and exhilarating, if one takes a moment to reflect. That  may be a tall order these days — who has a minute to reflect? — so we tried to do it for you. No need to thank us; it’s all part of the service.

In compiling our two back-to-school special issues (here’s something fun, by the way: try saying ‘Back-to-back, Back-to-School Special’ 10 times fast), it’s notable how even in this economy, when so many of us struggle to stay ahead of the tuition bills, so many yeshivas and day schools — especially high schools — seem to be welcoming freshman classes of record size. So many schools have added faculty to meet the demand of a growing student body, and so many have added classes, activities and technology to offer the best education they can to their students — and presumably, to best compete with all the other institutions striving to do the same.

This is something to be thankful for, on the whole. In Lakewood, N.J., on Wednesday morning — for the second time in 10 days — a yeshiva announced on what was supposed to be the first day of school that the doors would remain closed. 150 students of Yeshivat Keter Torah, a yeshiva for Sefardic children, are now displaced, according to Yeshiva World News.

Here, 100 or so miles to the north, we’ll leave for another day, another week, perhaps even for sometime in the cold winter to come, the question of who will ultimately pay for all this magnificence. For now, we’ll just bask in the glow of spring-summer-fall and of a community trying to do its best for its children. We wish everyone a healthy and successful school year.

We’re not ones to pretend we know precisely why G-d does the things He does. We don’t and likely never will, unless He chooses to share. But that doesn’t mean we should be passive and fail to seek meaning in events both momentous and mundane. In finding meaning that is relevant to ourselves, and applying it, lies self-improvement.

The brutal murder of Yoseph Robinson last Thursday was a momentous event, and one that hit close to home here. Like so many others, we found his story of self-improvement and repentance to be compelling. In fact, he was scheduled to be featured in this week’s newspaper and, as one might imagine, news of his untimely death came to us as a particularly nasty shock.

We didn’t know Yoseph well but had the pleasure of speaking with him on a number of occasions. He was warm, friendly, outgoing and sincerely eager to share his story. He knew he had an interesting tale to tell the world. With his heighened sense of publicity as a onetime music executive, he sought opportunities to tell it.

While we knew the highs and lows of Yoseph’s story, we never managed to hear the whole thing in detail directly from him. He offered several times but for perfectly valid reasons the timing was never quite right.

We last spoke briefly two nights before he died. He was happy to learn that we planned to feature him in the paper and we were happy to anticipate finally hearing his story. One of the editors later reported thinking of him just a few minutes or so before a masked gunman would enter the liquor store where Yoseph worked and coldly take his life.

So what message is there in his death? We don’t pretend to know for certain, but Yoseph’s lesson to us might well be that valuable opportunities should not be put off for long.