Translation by Yehoshua Siskin
700,00 high school students in Israel begin summer vacation today, and as Rabbi Yaakov Edelstein zt"l used to say: "Now the real school year begins".
After all, summer vacation is not a vacation from values or from anything that is important to us. It's a vacation from school alone.
In a certain sense, during vacation we see who we truly are. When there are no school bells, teachers, or exams, we make decisions on our own - when to get up and when to go to sleep, how to fill up the day, how to relate to our surroundings. Indeed most of our lives are lived outside the school system hours imposed by the Ministry of Education. And therefore summer vacation is an authentic taste of life, the most important semester of the year. Now that summer vacation is upon us, the real school year begins.
May our children - and we, too - enjoy success in the weeks ahead.
