It had been raining all day last Thursday, but nothing could wash away my excitement. It was my first day back on campus after nearly a decade. The precipitation made me feel like a fish returned to the water. When I started at CTI, I was about to finish a second master’s degree at the Jewish Theological Seminary, this time in Modern Jewish Studies. But things got busy, and I was unable to complete the last two courses.

A perpetual student, I have been in and out of school most of my life. My August 31 birthday in Israel, where school always starts on September 1, provided my direction from the get-go. In second grade, I was already helping first graders. In college, it was a dual curriculum. A few years later, while working, I was back in school to get a master’s in Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy at Yeshiva University. And then rabbinical school. And another master’s. The past ten years have been the longest I’ve been away from an academic institution.

It was like a reunion — a few professors, the librarians, a couple of guards — I never forget a face. I saw an “Aviva” and an “Adam” that reminded me of my long-ago classmates. The campus was the same in some ways, different in others.  JTS has gone through a major renovation and architectural changes; it is gorgeous. Déjà vu, but not quite. As Mark Twain famously said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.”

From my early days in New York City, I loved traveling uptown to walk around Columbia’s campus. The five years at JTS’s beautifully cloistered campus on the edge of Columbia University were a pleasure. As JTS students, we could use Columbia’s libraries and other facilities, and I used every opportunity to walk among the stately old buildings patterned after those of the Italian Renaissance, to stroll the tree-lined walkways that connect the many libraries, including the centerpiece — Low Memorial Library. The combination of a campus steeped in history yet imbued with young energy creates an academic electricity. It pushes one to want to be immersed in education.

Education is light. In the beginning, God said, “Let there be light…And God saw the light that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.” Education means to be brought out of darkness into the light. The Latin word “educare” means to bring out, to lead out. Out of darkness. It’s the theme of JTS — the Burning Bush that never fades — and it is the motto of Columbia in Psalm 36:10: “For with You is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light.”  

The course I’m taking this semester is about the history of Jewish migration. Even though many times it was a forced migration, migration of humans is a natural phenomenon, like the migration of birds. The soul is like a bird that needs constantly to move, otherwise it dies in its cage. The wandering Jew is a metaphor for the learning spirit we possess.

The spirit of learning is the humility of the soul. Going back to school is a mindset, a way of life, a gym for the mind. Going back seems to say, “I am thirsty, I need to drink, please give me water.” I feel certain I’m going to do well. I’m hungry for knowledge and thirsty for wisdom. Keeping the mind wet and ready to be reformed, you always want to go back to school.

Happy month of Shevat, the month of growth.

—Rabbi Gadi Capela