At the year-end graduation ceremony for 12th-grade students from Yeshi High School, held this week at the Resort Hotel in Hadera, the formal production was polished and attended by parents, the city’s mayor, and the head of the education department. But the emotional center of the evening came when class teacher Telam Hazan, a retired brigadier general and former deputy commander of the Paratroopers Brigade, took the stage.
Hazan, who had hosted the class for an entire Shabbat with his wife, Efrat, broke into tears as he spoke to the students. He told them, “My home is your home,” and the article’s author says the sight of a hardened military commander crying with pride captured the essence of education, namely humanity, personal example, fatherhood, and devotion.
The piece connects that moment to Parashat Balak and to a teaching from Pirkei Avot, which contrasts the “disciples of Abraham” with the “disciples of Balaam.” Abraham’s students are defined by a good eye, humility, and a modest spirit, while Balaam’s are marked by jealousy, arrogance, and pursuit of status and materialism.
The writer argues that the graduates may look alike on stage in white shirts, but the real difference begins the next day and is shaped by what, and from whom, they learned. Students exposed to a teacher like Hazan, the article says, are given a lifelong compass, and even after graduation they remain connected to the home and values he opened to them.