The following is the prepared text of “Finding Awe,” the address by Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl for delivery at Stanford’s Baccalaureate ceremony on June 17, 2023.

Wow. You are a beautiful and awesome sight!
In the Jewish tradition, we have a blessing for every occasion –
including seeing a huge gathering of people.
I think today counts.
So I open with that blessing:
Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech HaOlam, chacham ha-razim.
Blessed are you, Eternal One, the Knower of Secrets.

Just when you might feel anonymous in a mass of people like this,
this blessing reminds us that someone knows your innermost heart.
You might prefer that God, or the universe, or even your roommates,
didn’t know *all* of your secrets.
(I get it. This is college.)
But in the spirit of revealing secrets, I’ll share one of mine:
I suspect that I was invited to speak here today,
because of the worst day of my life.

On January 15, 2022, I received a phone call
from a rabbi in Colleyville, Texas.
He and three others were being held at gunpoint
by a man who came from England to free a notorious terrorist
held in a federal prison down the road.
The gunman insisted on talking to me.
When I got on the phone,
he said I had an hour to deliver that prisoner to the Colleyville synagogue.
Or else.
When I told him I might need more time,
he parroted the age-old antisemitic trope of Jewish power and influence:
“You run the biggest synagogue in New York,
just make a few phone calls.
Remember,” he said, “I love death more than you love life.”

My legs buckled under me.
I had just heard the sound of a very dark heart.
I felt a tremendous responsibility for four people’s lives
and utterly powerless to save them.
But over the course of that day, I also felt something else –
I felt AWE.

I was awed by the steadiness of the rabbi
who kept the gunman from shooting, for over 10 hours.

I was awed by the selflessness of the hostages, who –
when the gunman allowed one of them to go –
each gave up his spot to make sure the one they knew couldn’t run
was freed.

I was awed by their sense of humor, especially the only non-Jewish hostage who said, “If I get out of this alive, I’m definitely going to convert.”

I was awed by the rabbi’s courage to throw a chair at just the right moment,
which enabled the captives to escape with their lives.

Now rabbis are not usually in the hostage negotiation business.
But we are in the awe business.
Dacher Keltner, who is a professor at Berkeley –
but we won’t hold that against him –
recently wrote a beautiful book on the science of awe.
He surveyed thousands of people from 26 countries
and found there were eight wonders
which consistently inspired the most awe in people.
They included: Music. Religious experience. Birth, death.
These wonders are all a regular part of my work.

But Keltner found that that number one source of awe for all people,
across all cultures
was a transcendent goodness he called: “moral beauty.”
These are the exceptional acts of courage, sacrifice, resilience, kindness,
seen not only in crisis moments,
but also in the more everyday struggles of being human.
Turns out that our greatest source of awe is other people.

And why does awe matter?
Not just for a rabbi, but for every one of us?
And can each of us cultivate more awe in our lives, every single day?
The 20th-century philosopher, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, said:
“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement …
to get up in the morning and look around at the world in a way
that takes nothing for granted. …
To be spiritual is to be amazed.”

I would argue – awe is the most important religious stance.

Now there has been a lot of research bemoaning the fact that your generation
is the least religious in American history.
I don’t necessarily worry if your generation doesn’t have religion.
(Though you might want to give it a shot.)
But I DO worry if you are going through life without wonder and awe.
I remember the day I passed a college-age student in Central Park wearing a t-shirt that read: “Born Bored.”
I wanted to pull her under the blossoming cherry tree she was walking past,
totally oblivious, and yell:
“YOU WERE NOT BORN BORED!! NO ONE IS! LOOK UP!”

Even if you’re not under a beautiful tree,
Even if you are in the ugliest place in the world – physically or emotionally –
you can still summon these feelings,
once you wake up to the fact
that your unlikely, beautiful existence is worthy of awe.
I certainly feel that awe standing on this Stanford dais today.
Because, though I never attended this great institution,
it’s an essential part of my story.

My father was admitted here in the late 1950s,
back when Stanford – we recently learned –
actively suppressed Jewish admissions.
His family fled the pogroms of Eastern Europe in the early 20th century
and found their way to Tacoma, Washington,
because they were woodworkers
and the Pacific Northwest was where the trees were.
But after the post-WWII building boom, the family business struggled.
So after two years at Stanford, my father came home
to the University of Washington
because he could no longer afford Stanford tuition.

But the pull of this place was too great.
So he returned senior year, took out loans,
and signed up for ROTC to pay them back.
The Army stationed my father in South Korea.
There in his first year, he was invited to speak
to a group of Korean students about college life in America.
I don’t know if it was my Dad’s charm, his uniform, or his Stanford degree,
but he caught my Mom’s attention.
They came from radically different families, cultures, faiths,
but somehow love prevailed.
They married, had two girls in Seoul, then moved back to Tacoma.

As we grew up, my father didn’t hide his wish
to see his kids at a Stanford graduation,
and my younger sister fulfilled that dream, graduating in ’97.
I’m so grateful that both my parents, my sister, and her family
are all here to see me on this podium today.
I may be here because a deranged gunman from England
thought I was the chief rabbi of America.
But as a biracial, immigrant Korean, with a Buddhist mother,
raised in a tiny Jewish community, even that wild delusion is radically amazing to me!

Awe helps me appreciate that my speaking at Stanford today
is not just random coincidence, dumb luck,
or even result of hard work, but part of a much bigger design.
There are powerful, mysterious forces and systems
that have shaped me, for good and bad,
and changed the course of my life, in ways I can’t always comprehend.

You see – my parents were married in 1968 – only one year after Loving v. Virginia made interracial marriage legal in every state.
I was born in 1972, the year that the first female rabbi
was ordained in Jewish history.
That same year, Yale University was only admitting
1 woman for every 7 men, but in 1972 Congress enacted Title IX,
forcing schools across the country to bring equity for women.
Yale came to parity barely a decade before I arrived on that campus.
I immigrated from Korea in the mid 1970s,
just as Judaism’s Reform Movement changed its attitude and policies toward interfaith families – like mine –
from one of outright rejection – to outreach and inclusion.

I still grew up being told I couldn’t really be Jewish with a face like mine.
I spent a lot of my early years shuffling between Korea and America, trying to fit in,
to belong, somewhere.
And I still hit a stained glass ceiling when I applied to lead my congregation,
with questions of how I would handle the job with my three children.
Or whether I had the gravitas.

I overcame these challenges and prejudices to become
the first Asian American rabbi ordained in North America,
and the first woman to lead my congregation in its 180-year history.
I feel proud of the work I have done.
But I didn’t do it alone.
I stand on the shoulders of courageous rabbis, feminist activists,
brilliant lawyers, wise policymakers, and visionary dreamers
who smashed ceilings, changed laws, and transformed cultures
that enabled my very existence.

Consider for a moment the stories of your own families and communities:
Those who fled persecution and war,
who sacrificed their dreams for the sake of the next generation.
Those who were segregated into degrading inequality,
denied a job, a home, a vote.
Those who couldn’t pursue their own ambitions because of their race,
or gender, or who they loved.

LOOK AROUND.
Every one of us owes our very being to people who came before us.
We know that some of them are here with you now.
And many more are not here, or nameless.
But in this moment –
you are the fulfillment of everything they ever worked for.
So that you could stand here today.
How awe-inspiring is that?

So I urge you: LOOK UP!
And LOOK AROUND.
But don’t forget to also LOOK INSIDE.
Judaism teaches that each person is an entire world.
Every one of you is here to do your part for something that is more lasting
and significant than yourself.
What you create, will ripple out from you into the world
in ways you cannot possibly imagine.
While the vastness of awe can make you feel very small.
It also calls you to transcend yourself – to moral beauty.
Remember: The greatest source of awe in the world is YOU.

My hope for you, as you leave this incredible place,
is that you live your life with radical amazement.
Every day.
To find it in the sublime and beautiful. But also in the quiet and mundane.
And most of all, in the people around you.
Understand that awe is not just a byproduct of an experience, like today.
Awe can be a guiding orientation for a life of meaning, connection, and joy.

And because I’m in the awe business,
I’d love to share an experience of it, together.
We’re going to create the wonder Kelter calls “collective effervescence,”
which is moving together with shared attention.
(My son, who himself just graduated from college, was skeptical
I could get you all to do this. But I trust you’re with me.)
With gratitude to the choreographer, Liz Lerman, who helped me conceive this.

Graduates, if you will – put your right hand on your heart.
Our heart responds to experiences even before our brain does.
So let’s awaken our heart (2 fist pounds) – our first responder – to awe.

First, I invite you to awaken your heart to LOOK UP.
Watch first. (Do motions.)
You try.

Now feel the awe of interconnectedness and LOOK AROUND.
Reach back to your family and friends.
And reach back to all your ancestors
who make it possible for you to be here, in this very moment.
Your turn.

Now awaken your hearts to the awe when you LOOK INSIDE.
Now you look inside.

Return your hand to your heart. Cover it with your other hand.
And bow your head in reverence to the awe. In gratitude.

Now we will put these movements together in a kind of awe dance.
LOOK UP. LOOK AROUND. LOOK INSIDE.

Graduates, will you please rise
and we will do this heart awakening once more together, in silence.
Listen to the heartbeats.

LOOK UP. LOOK INSIDE. LOOK AROUND.

Now I invite everyone here to please rise and share in this invitation to awe.
And if you want to add a Halleluya with me, please do.
(Do it once more singing Cohen’s Halleluya.)

Thank you. And congratulations.