On Friday, May 9th, over 300 colleagues, families, and friends gathered for a heartfelt celebration honoring Suzie Newman‘s remarkable career spanning more than three decades with the Rodeph Sholom community. The joyous occasion marked her profound impact on countless lives, during which she was presented with two significant tributes: a Lifelong Synagogue Membership to Congregation Rodeph Sholom and the announcement that the playground between the Synagogue and Early Childhood buildings will be renovated and renamed “The Suzie Newman Playground” in recognition of her enduring legacy and dedication to the community’s youngest learners. Below are Rabbi Ben Spratt’s remarks made at the service that followed the celebratory preneg.
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Our early rabbis imagined that our world is only kept alive by the voices of children learning. If you want to measure the values of a community, you’d best do so by noticing the way they nurture their youth and the people they entrust to guide the next generation. With the honor of serving on the Rodeph Sholom School leadership team for the first dozen years of my rabbinate, and as a parent of two students who were guided under Suzie’s care, much of the measure of this community is directly tied to the immeasurable legacy of Suzie Newman.
It would be a mistake to attribute her savant-like memory to mere neural wizardry. She can still tell you about the personality traits of both my kids, even as I’m lucky when I can remember their names. Her capacity to remember the names of every student across more than three decades, and for many retain the names of their entire family, favorite food, and the esoterica few of us can even hold onto for ourselves, let alone for thousands, is all a direct extension of her care. Suzie truly believes in the preciousness of every person. As our community faced tragedy layered on tragedy, I witnessed her own heartbreak even as she devoted herself to her team, to our families, to our students.
It took me years to notice a pattern in many of our conversations and exchanges. A pattern that for me pointed to some of the most awe-inspiring magic at the heart of you, Suzie. So many of our interactions always began with you saying, “Oh Rabbi,” – note that she has never once been willing to call me Ben – “Oh Rabbi, I’m glad I bumped into you. I was thinking of you earlier and…” Amongst the tens of thousands of people who enter her orbit, Suzie is the person who is thinking of us all. Constantly. Every child, every parent, every faculty member. We are blessed with a school that teaches an abundance of wisdom. But there are some things that cannot be taught from a book or a smartboard, and only gleaned from encounters with remarkable, singular individuals. Generations of our community have been shaped by your love, Suzie. You have woven hearts and generations, pains and joys, upheavals with the rare moments of calm.
And as you chose to be the weaver of so many, you are forever woven into the story of Rodeph Sholom. While I’m not much with the knitting needles, I wanted to help mark this moment with a few words rather than threads:
The Weaver
In Honor of Suzie Newman
She does not walk with thunder.
But look—
how her hands move
like river reeds in rhythm,
gathering threads
we did not know were loose.
A strand of question,
a flicker of wonder,
a fray of fear pulled gently,
then tucked into pattern.
She listens.
To the soft unraveling
of a child’s quiet thought,
to the bright tug
of a new idea
catching on the edge of breath.
What patience—
to sit in the middle of so much becoming,
to trust the needle,
the work of days,
the slow-growing cloth
that will someday hold
a story.
Outside, spring is stitching
green into every field,
and she too
is stitching:
a mind to a question,
a heart to a horizon,
a child to the wild
possibility of their own hands.And when they go—
those once-loose threads,
spun now into strength—
she stays behind,
quiet,
already weaving again.
