Thank you for that warm welcome. I feel honored, but honors day is not about honoring me, it is about honoring these students. Therefore, I want to tell you about them. I've given some thought to the question: what would this audience want to hear about these students. Knowing that many in the audience would be parents, I drew upon my personal experience with parents. As best I can recall, whenever anyone said "Mr. and Mrs. Hailperin, I'd like to have a word with you about your children," the reply was always "What have they been up to now?" That explains my title; I am going to tell you what these students have been up to now.
But don't worry; I'm only going to tell you what they have been up to that causes us to honor them today. Of course, the details vary. You'll have noticed that the program contains a wide range of honors, each with its own selection criteria. However, I see a common thread running through all the honors. Each of these students has, in his or her own way, demonstrated exemplary progress towards the ideal of being a liberally educated person. It is this for which they are being honored, and this that I want to say a word about.
By shedding a little light on that ideal, I can serve two purposes. First, I can give us a greater appreciation for what these students have accomplished. Second, I can remind them, and the rest of us, of what they, and the rest of us, should continue to strive towards. Being liberally educated is an ideal, not a goal we ever achieve.
To illustrate liberal education, let me tell you a story from a Jewish village in Eastern Europe, where a rabbi lived who was particularly known for his wisdom.
One day an illiterate peasant came to this rabbi and said: "Rabbi, I yearn to understand what is written in the Talmud; please teach it to me."
The rabbi was as kind as he was wise, and so in the gentlest possible terms, he explained that even the most learned scholars struggled greatly with the Talmud, and so it might not be the best choice of a starting point for one's studies. But the peasant would not be dissuaded.
The rabbi was as patient as he was wise and kind, so although inwardly he sighed a deep sigh, to the peasant he simply said: "Very well, let us begin."
"Two burglars snuck into a rich man's house by crawling through the chimney. When they got inside, it turned out that one of them had soot all over his face. Therefore, one of them went and washed. The question is, which one?"
"The one with the dirty face, of course," responded the peasant.
The rabbi shook his head sadly and said: "As I feared, you have not yet mastered the logical reasoning necessary for Talmud. A simple chain of inferences shows that it must be the burglar with the clean face who washed. Consider: I described the burglars as sneaking into the rich man's house, so we know they were trying to be stealthy. Therefore, they would not have spoken, instead relying on what they could see. And I ask you, can a man see his own face? No. The burglar with the clean face saw the other's sooty face, assumed his own looked the same, and went to wash."
After a pause to consider this, the peasant brightened up and said: "Oh, I see now. Thank you, rabbi, thank you. Now I understand Talmud."
But the rabbi shook his head sadly again, and sighed another of his deep sighs, this one more openly, saying "No you don't. You don't understand Talmud or anything else if you think two men can crawl through a chimney and only one will get soot on his face."
So, what can we learn from this story? Apparently, there are three ingredients needed for the study of Talmud, and I would suggest they may be the same as the ingredients of a liberal education. First, one needs a skill: the skill at reasoning that allows one to carefully follow a chain of inferences wherever it may lead, no matter how counterintuitive. Second, one needs knowledge: knowledge of how the world really works. Third, one needs a specific attitude about how the logical reasoning and the knowledge of the world combine. One could even call it a habit of mind. Namely, one must never be so dazzled by a brilliant line of reasoning as to forget to check whether the premises of that reasoning are consistent with one's knowledge of the world.
The students gathered here have been engaged in developing all three attributes: skill at reasoning, knowledge of the world, and a critical attitude toward premises. It is precisely because these attributes are so important that the students have earned our honor. For these attributes will serve them well not only in their studies at Gustavus, or of the Talmud, but also in participating in building a better world.
To take but one example: nearly any time you listen to a speech by a policy maker, from the President of the United States on down, arguing for the desirability of some course of action, you will hear reasoning that starts from premises in need of questioning. These students are preparing to do that questioning, and to do much more. That is what these students have been up to, and for that we honor them today.