My older daughter graduated from law school yesterday. And in person!!

I, know, right? Amazing!

Especially for my husband, first generation Latino immigrant. It was his biggest dream fulfilled, and if he hadn’t made it through Covid, as was a real possibility…how different the day would have been for us. I was reminded of the sacredness of life and how quickly that can change. I was reminded not to take it for granted.

In any event, I couldn’t stop crying, and I was grateful for the mask. Just the hint of my tears was a little too much for my daughter: “Mommy, you’re killin’ me.”

Yet, it was all so perfect, beyond our wildest dreams, in every way: the weather, our joy at being together, the party afterwards.

The speeches were quite inspiring as well, especially after such a year. They made me proud, prouder than I ever thought I could or would be; I’d never particularly aspired to have a lawyer in the family. Too many bad lawyer jokes, you know what I mean?

But the speeches referred to and reminded me of people like Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the power of the law in a good way and the power of a single lawyer or judge to effect change or to at least have an influence. We know that it matters which justices fill our Supreme Court—very much!

Of course, first in the order of things in a graduation is hearing the national anthem.

Now, I’ve always been the kind of person who wasn’t so sure about standing for the national anthem, and I definitely don’t put my hand on my chest.

It’s not that I don’t love my country. I just have a hard time with nationalism.

Every morning over the past week, the school behind my apartment building has been preparing the children for their graduation. I can see them and hear the music blasting. First, it’s America the Beautiful, followed by the Black National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing, and then a song from The Greatest Showman, which I’d never heard before, but which my younger daughter “hates” (because some people she knows are “obsessed” with it).

All this seems very much aligned with the Torah reading this week, though. (I was actually wondering if I should name this blog post “Canaan the Beautiful,” but settled on “Oh, Say Can You See.”)

On to the Torah portion, Shlach Lecha, where twelve spies are sent into the land of Canaan, the Promised Land, to scout it out and bring back the news of what kind of place it is; is it indeed a land flowing with milk and honey? What are the people like? What are the cities and towns like? What about the trees? How’s the fruit? Bring some back so we can see!

Upon the scouts’ return, everything’s going great until a couple of them start to spread rumors—wait: are they rumors, or did they start to wonder if what they’d seen was truly as wonderful as they’d thought, or were they imagining things? Was it too good to be true? Did they get scared and start to question the ability of their own people to overcome the people of this other land? (Ah, that good old nationalism: the thing that inspires people to cross oceans, barge in, go to war and take over other lands. This is where it gets sticky for me.)

Whatever it was, their reports of giants in the land that are way too big to confront is taken as blasphemy. God is furious (again); How dare they doubt “Him?” They will be punished; their generation will not be allowed to see or enter the Promised Land!

These are, one could say, the dissenting voices. Should they be allowed to speak? This is what America the Beautiful is based on, right?—Oh, wait, I forgot—we’re not talking about America, we’re talking about the Bible!

Yet the question remains. When does it become dangerous to allow “Free Speech,” and when is it important for a healthy society? We all know what hate speech has done over the past years, causing people to question not only the idea of quarantining and mask-wearing, but even our elections.

This week, we are also remembering the Tulsa Race Massacre, a crime that was not only supported by local law enforcement at the time, but kept secret for many years. Which voices won out there?

It turns out that “saying anything you want” was actually not the original idea behind Free speech after all, which referred to not having to get a permit or pay a government fee in order to print your ideas.

In fact, speaking of the law and judges, the way we talk and think about Free Speech and the First Amendment today comes from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Holmes, with roots in the Civil War, was very much in favor of shutting dissenting voices down in favor of a good cause—like ending slavery. He believed very much in pumping people up with nationalism for the sake of the “right” ideas winning out and shutting down the voices that could threaten that, kind of like what we think of when we talk about World War II and the need to overcome the Nazis.

But all that changed for him in the 1920’s, when he was willing to admit that, “We’ve been wrong before and we’ll likely be wrong again.”

Justice Holmes coined the phrase, “Marketplace of Ideas,” imagining, like a “Free Market,” that the Truth would win out. But both a Free Market and a Marketplace of Ideas assume that everyone has the same resources and that everyone’s microphone is the same size.

Holmes also said, “Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based on imperfect knowledge.” Was Holmes talking about the American justice system, or was he talking about the prophecy in the Torah and this week’s reading?

Either way, I love the words of the song “A Million Dreams,” from The Greatest Showman, whatever my daughter says:

I close my eyes and I can see
The world that's waiting up for me
That I call my own
Through the dark, through the door
Through where no one's been before
But it feels like home

They can say, they can say it all sounds crazy
They can say, they can say I've lost my mind
I don't care, I don't care, so call me crazy
We can live in a world that we design

'Cause every night I lie in bed
The brightest colors fill my head
A million dreams are keeping me awake
I think of what the world could be
A vision of the one I see
A million dreams is all it's gonna take
Oh a million dreams for the world we're gonna make

We can keep dreaming of fulfilling the prophecy—but for all the world: a world where nationalism and national anthems are not necessary in order to reach the Promised Land. (Can you see it?)

Because we have the power to design the world we want, through our speech and our actions—as long as we keep what is sacred in sight.

And if there’s anything we’ve learned this year, I hope it’s that we know what’s sacred. I certainly felt it on graduation day.