It is so great to be here this morning as we reach this important milestone in a project that began almost two years ago with the acquisition of this property at Milken East — the former Familian campus of the AJU. This project of the Milken Community School is as important for our Jewish community as any project I have been privileged to be a part of.
Together, we are transforming Jewish education in Los Angeles and assuring Jewish continuity by educating the next generation of Jewish leaders in our tradition — in Torah — our guidebook for how to live a productive and meaningful life that has sustained us for over 3000 years. Community support for this project gives us each the opportunity to pass to the next generation the birthright that our parents and grandparents passed on to us as we are instructed to in the Shema “you shall teach them diligently to your children”
My father, Raymond Sandler, Zichrono Livracha, immigrated to this country from Latvia to Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921 at the age of 8. My paternal grandfather, Moses Sandler, was a Talmudic scholar and a very pious man. Before he passed away in 1931, he instructed my father as follows: “My son, I want you always to be a good Jew and the most important part of being a good Jew is to be a good human being. Adhering to our religious rituals, while most important, does not in and of itself make one a good Jew. Of course, I would like for you to adhere to these rituals, but I realize that many of the detailed requirements of our religion will be most difficult for you to observe in this modern world in which we live. (And that modern world was Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1931.) So, if you must neglect some of the rituals, you must never forget that being a good Jew means being a good human being, a good, kind and sincere person. No matter in what part of the world you may be, when others seek goodness, let them turn to you. When they need kindness, let them see it in you. When they yearn for the good open Jewish heart, let them feel it in you.”
That is the tradition I come from. That is the tradition we all come from.
If my grandfather was concerned about the continuation of that tradition in Tulsa in 1931, you can only imagine what he would have thought in 1964 when Look Magazine, one of the most prominent magazines at the time, ran a cover story entitled the “Disappearing American Jew.” The premise was that due to a high intermarriage rate, a low birth rate, and the inevitable loss of identity as Jews became more and more assimilated, Jews would practically disappear as Jews by the year 2000. Well, Look Magazine is gone and we are still here.
Yet, what concerned my grandfather in 1931, and what resulted in this Look Magazine article in 1964, still exists in 2025. Are we teaching our children what it means to be a good human being in the Torah sense?
When I look around at gatherings of various Jewish organizations here in the United States and in Israel, I ask myself, Who will be the leaders of these important organizations 30 years from now?
We are far more assimilated into American culture today than we were in 1931 or 1964. Despite the recent increases in antisemitism, it had been very comfortable for Jews to live in this country in a way that concerned my grandfather when he referred to the difficulty of being an observant Jew in what he referred to as “this modern world.”
The answer to my question as to who our leaders will be has become obvious. It will be those who care about Torah, who care about Jewish continuity — it will be those who have been taught Torah and learn who they are, where they come from and why it is important — and I mean important to them. It will be graduates of Jewish camps and Jewish day schools. It will be graduates of Milken Community School.
It is the graduates of the Milken school today who are leaders at the top colleges and universities that they attend. We are so proud of how our graduates have navigated on campuses during these challenging last couple of years. And they will be the first to tell you that they are able to navigate and be leaders on campus because of the education they received at Milken — both secular and Torah.
We are training our future community leaders, business leaders and even political leaders in the tradition of my father and my grandfather — the tradition of your ancestors. And in order to really be successful and teach more students and attract more families to strengthen our school and our community, we need to convince those families that Milken is as outstanding as any school, Jewish or otherwise, in our community. Jewish parents will not send their children to a school if they believe there is a better school a few miles away.
I can assure you that we provide the finest education to our students — secular, spiritual and ethical — today. Our graduates attend the finest colleges and universities. We will only continue to attract the families and students that will assure Jewish continuity and leadership with the state-of-the-art facility we are building to go with our incredible educators.
And when I speak about outstanding educators, I think back on the privilege I had of chairing the board at Brentwood School and leading a search committee for a new head of school there, and the fact that I have had that same privilege here at the Milken Community School. I have never worked with a more committed and talented head of school than Dr. Sarah Shulkind. Nor with a more committed and talented team of educators than the team assembled here at Milken.
And now, with your partnership, we will have that state-of-the-art facility to match and to attract the best and the brightest from our community. Sarah, thank you and your team for taking us to this point of excellence. I am honored to partner with you in this incredible opportunity.
I will close by recounting an experience that I had seven years ago in interviewing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. We discussed all the complex and difficult issues from two-state solution to challenges in Israel to conversion law. At then at the end of the interview, as I was thanking him, he paused and said though he was confident we would be able to address the many challenges we discussed, there was something that he was concerned about that transcended politics and everything else — and that was loss of identity.
He quoted Rabbi Hirsch from New York who had said that those who are not committed to Jewish survival will not survive as Jews. The prime minister went on to say that for there to be continuity of Jewish communities in the world we need to develop Jewish education and the study of Hebrew. We need to bring young Jews to Israel, and to understand that our future depends on that continuity of identity and consciousness. He closed by stating that what is most important, that every Jew should remember, is we are one people and should be proud to be Jews.
Here at the Milken Community School, we are educating young Jews who know Torah. They know who they are and where they come from. They know we are one people and they are proud to be Jews.
Or in the words of my grandfather, when one seeks goodness, they can turn to our students, when one needs kindness, they will see it in our students, and when the world needs a good open Jewish heart, it will feel it in our students.
Thank you all for being here and supporting this most important and transformational project.
