Before this year’s Seder (or Sedarim, if you conduct two), there was a great deal of chatter on blogs, in podcasts, and throughout social media on how we should commemorate the ongoing imprisonment of 133 innocent Jewish lives, the unconscionable murder of 1,200+ Israelis, and the ongoing conflict in and around the southern and northern borders of the State of Israel. Should we eliminate the song Dayenu as we are not yet satisfied that enough has taken place? Should we add a prayer during Shefoch Chamatcha in which we attempt to invoke God’s wrath on those who attack God and the Jewish people? Should we place one or more empty seats at our tables to “make space” for those still missing from the Pesach celebration?

The simple answer is “yes”. I don’t mean that everyone should have implemented all of these suggestions and more. I mean that keeping the situation in Israel–and the rise in global antisemitism–front and center at our seder was crucial, and that each household hopefully chose those tributes that were meaningful to them.

Questions similar to the ones above become even more cogent as day schools approach the season of “yamim”: Yom Hashoah, Yom Hazikaron, Yom Ha’atzmaut, and Yom Yerushalayim. Do we expand the commemoration of Yom Hashoah to include more recent egregious examples of blatant Jew-hatred? Do we include deaths of innocent non-Jews in our most poignant Yom Hazikaron tributes this year, which include some 1,500 names, new to this year’s event? Do we celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut with extra passion to acknowledge that despite efforts to destroy it, the State of Israel still exists and even thrives?

I would suggest that each school needs to make its own decisions about these most difficult questions. There is no universal answer that can be given across the board. In this case, as in so many others, although we cite “the field of Jewish day schools”, we really maintain very different institutions, with divergent visions, beliefs, and values. Each school needs to address its own culture and clientele while debating and deciding how to commemorate the yamim this year. 

I would further suggest that the decisions not be made unilaterally by administrators. They  should seek input from a variety of their community members: from parents and teachers in their school–and in the case of high schools, the students–and the Jewish leaders in their greater community, to leaders in other schools, in Jewish educational organizations, and in the wider Jewish world.

No matter what decision each school makes, no decision this year will be completely right for everyone in that school. We should recognize this, and give great latitude in accepting the decisions that have been made and give the benefit of the doubt that each decision has been made with the best interest of the school and the students in mind.

Given the current world reality, we face impossible and absurd decisions. Let’s be kind and compassionate to those tasked with making those decisions, and let us pray that this is the last year that such choices will need to be made.