Category: teachers

Eulogy Part II

On June 30, 2026

In family, living with ALS, loss, teachers, teaching

by Barry Lasky on 6/26/26

The weird part is that I actually had the opportunity to share a draft of this with Jess. She was busy one evening working on her funeral arrangements and I told her, “Honestly, I don’t know if you want to know this or not but I started working on a eulogy for you.” She said, “I want to hear it now”. I double checked, “Are you sure?”. And she responded, “Barry, I’m an extrovert. You don’t think I want to know all the fabulous things you’re going to say about me?”

So oddly enough, the following is Jessie approved…

When Jess and I first met, when we first starting dating, we divided our time into two broad categories…”Plan A” and “Plan B”. Plan B was everything you might expect. Going out to dinner or to see a movie or some live music. Plan B was being out and about in public having fun and getting to know one another.

Plan A was time alone together, just enjoying each other’s company. As Rabbi Aaron (Meyer) and Rabbi Rachel (Nussbaum) said when they officiated at our wedding, it was obvious to us and obvious to many folks around us that Jessie and I had very much found in each other “our person”. And so Plan A was the plan more often than not. Our preferred plan was just to be together, just to spend time with our person.

Well, we soon realized we had to add a third category. Often we would be out and about in public but sharing our respective Jewish communities with one another. Whether it was Kabbalat Shabbat at Temple De Hirsch Sinai on a Friday night (…Jessie’s favorite), or a Shabbat Morning Minyan at Kavana (…my favorite), or a Shabbat dinner or Passover Seder at one of your homes…these times felt neither Plan A nor Plan B, they were both public and personal. Jewish community is like that, it’s both public and private at the same time, it’s a liminal space, an in between space. So this became Plan Bet, named for the Hebrew letter B.

And so we carried on with Plan A, Plan B, and Plan Bet, mixing and matching them to suit the moment. And we carried on like that into our relationship and then into our marriage.

Plan B was the first to suffer when Jess’s mobility started to decline. We still went out and did stuff, of course. But with all the extra time and effort involved it was a matter of picking and choosing our battles. It was hard to justify a big outing when we could just as easily cook a meal or stream a movie at home without the accessibility challenges. Or better yet, snuggle up and read a good book aloud together.

Then the pandemic hit and all the movie theaters and all the restaurants closed anyway. Plan B was pretty much done. And the Temples closed down as well. Both De Hirsch and Kavana pivoted and went online as fast as they could. That was much appreciated and we definitely tuned in and tried to make the best of it. But it wasn’t really the same, of course.

Now, I have to say that the pandemic years were difficult. Not just for the loss of Plan B and Plan Bet. We experienced all the stress and anxiety and isolation that everyone experienced. And we had to layer on top of that Jess’s declining health and increasing care needs and deal with all of that in the context of a quarantine. It was hard.

But I also have to say, it was awesome. It was Plan A all the time! Jess and I did nothing but spend time with each other. And much more time than we would have or could have if we had not gone into quarantine. It was hard but it was also all kinds of wonderful.

So in situations like this with a long, fatal illness people often say they want to remember their loved one “…as she was…before all of this happened”. And I get it. I will. I will always remember Jess out and about around town with all her abilities.

I will always remember Jess ice skating, that freedom of movement which she loved. I will always remember Jess dancing (…not because she was a great dancer, but because of how she decided that she wanted to be the kind of person who enjoyed dancing and then proceeded to read and understand and evaluate and re-evaluate and teach herself how to dance). I will always remember Jess in the classroom, teaching, which she lived for. And I will always remember her amazing smile.

And I wouldn’t wish ALS on any family. It’s truly horrible. However, there’s plenty from this time that I do want to remember. I want to remember Jess showing up every day with courage and grace and humor, and as much acceptance as she could muster. I want to remember her constantly figuring out what she could do, even as more and more was receding just beyond her grasp.

In the Torah there’s a word/phrase, hineini (הִנֵּנִי). It’s usually translated as “Here I am!” But it’s not just “I’m here” in the sense of location. It carries with it more of a sense of place and time and presence. I’m here and now…in this moment.

Most famously, G-d calls to Abraham at the start of the Akedah, the story of the Binding of Isaac, and Abraham responds hineini, “Here I Am”. Moses also responds with hineini as G-d calls to him in the form of the Burning Bush. It’s often used like this at the start of a pivotal narrative when the speaker doesn’t know what’s happening or what will be asked of them. They simply respond “Here I am!”. The speaker is responding to the moment with presence and genuine awareness, more than anything.

Hineini appears two more times in the Akedah. Abraham also responds with hineini when Isaac calls out to him, his father, in confusion. And Abraham responds with hineini again at the climax of the story when an Angel appears and commands him to spare his son’s life.

So hineini is not just used at the start of a story, but also as things are shifting and changing, at critical inflection points. The speaker responds hineini to pause and gather themselves and return to the moment, to understand how things have changed and how they may need to change in response.

Despite her illness and decline, despite loss after loss, despite her fear and sadness, despite all of it, Jessie really embodied hineini over and over again these past few years. She kept showing up day after day no matter what. She kept saying “Here I am. What’s going on? What can I still do?”

Above all, I think that’s what I want to remember. That was the heart of Plan A all along, abiding in each other’s presence to see what we could accomplish. That was my person.

When I shared this with Jess I told her she was not allowed to go full teacher/editor on me. Luckily, she loved it pretty much as is. She said it was very barry. But she did want to add a brief addendum. It’s a sentiment paraphrased from her all time favorite television show, The West Wing.

Jessie wanted to thank you all for coming today. And for making this a real celebration of her life. She’s genuinely sad she couldn’t be here with you today. After all, she only missed it by a few days.

Zichronah l’vrachah / May her memory be for a blessing
זיכרונה לברכה

Eulogy Part I

By Jessie

On June 29, 2026

In family, living with ALS, loss, teachers, teaching

by Rabbi Jeffrey Silverstein on 6/26/26

The Jewish people have always prized the value of education; we know that learning and teaching are how we unlock the great potential of a world in repair. It is no surprise, then, that in our tradition we have many sources that speak to the honor due to teachers, but perhaps it is this selection from Talmud Bava Batra that speaks to us most today. Our sages taught, explaining a verse from the Book of Daniel, that “‘those who lead others to righteousness will be like the stars forever and ever,’ These are school teachers.” and we could add today: “This is Jessie Towbin.”

Jessie was born in New Haven, Connecticut on April 23rd, 1970, though she grew up in Bethany from the time she was six months old. According to her mother, Linda, Jessie made herself known from her very first day – and she was instantly proud of her daughter. This was a pride that would only grow as Jessie’s marvelous character was revealed over the course of her childhood. Even as a pre-schooler and kindergartener, she demonstrated a deep sense of herself and those around her. An instance of this, that perhaps was an indication of her calling to teach, happened after she finished Kindergarten.

During the year Jessie never complained about her teacher, who was known to be unpopular with students and parents alike. However, at the end of the year, when given the chance to reflect, Jessie shared her evaluation with the wisdom of a much older person. Linda shared that Jessie said, matter-of-factly, that her teacher “may know how to teach…but she doesn’t know how to be nice, and she doesn’t know how to take care of children.”

When it was Jessie’s turn, she too knew how to teach, but she also knew how to treat her students with respect, to honor their dignity, and to take care of them. Much of this was simply a part of Jessie’s nature, however in her self-authored obituary, she also attributes her philosophy of teaching to the great deal of research on teaching and school reform that she had the privilege to study before ever setting foot in a classroom. For 24 years Jessie lived and honed her philosophy across four different schools, touching the lives of a great deal of students and fellow educators along her way.

Jessie did not only teach in the classroom; she was generous with her talents and passions. Notably, Jessie was on the education committee for the Bridge Family Religion School at Temple De Hirsch Sinai. It is known around the religion school that her keen insight was truly instrumental as our programs have evolved. Her impact on our community is a legacy that we will feel for many years to come.

In her life, through private journals, annotated bibliographies, curricula and lesson plans, letters, and in the last few years her blog, Jessie was a prolific writer. Her writing reveals much about who she was, about her sense of humor, her intellectual humility, and her deep wisdom.

In a 2017 blog post for CSTP (Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession), Jessie wrote about her process of choosing a read-aloud book for her eighth graders after her initial choice of To Kill a Mockingbird didn’t capture her students’ attention. She writes, “most of the time, I have to start with my group of students in mind, and search for the book that will be the right match. I had forgotten to do that when I selected To Kill a Mockingbird, and then, against my better judgment, I continued to put the curriculum ahead of the students. Anisa’s question gave me the jolt I needed to change course. The next morning, I told the kids that I valued To Kill a Mockingbird and hoped they would each choose to read it at some point, but I could see that it was not the right book for the class at this time.”

Later in the same post she writes: “I imagine that there are individuals who would see this course of events as a reason not to trust teachers’ professional judgment, and instead to centralize all decisions about instructional materials at the district or school board level. For me it has the opposite effect. It makes me think about the absurdity of individuals far removed from classrooms making decisions about text selections. If I, who know my students deeply, can occasionally make the wrong choice, how could it be alright to leave the decision making to individuals who don’t know my students at all?”

I will also share some of Jessie’s more recent words in two excerpts from her final blog post. In it, Jessie reflects on her experience living with ALS. Towards the beginning of the post, she writes:

“Occasionally I have a particular resentment for the people living with ALS who are slow progressors. I started going downhill within 9 months after diagnosis. That’s when my dominant arm lost all strength. Then at 11 months, I noticed my speech was sounding garbled. I had to give up driving after I fell and broke my elbow…So, at times, I have a special resentment for people living with ALS for many years who can speak and use their hands, and are maybe in a wheelchair or maybe not.”

And yet, true to the character she possessed and demonstrated throughout her life, at the end of the same post, Jessie writes:

“Recently, I found out about a group of young women who are living with ALS. They have young children or don’t get to have children, because of this terrible disease. That helps put things in perspective for me.

I’m lucky that I was able to have kids, and I was able to hold them while they were infants and toddlers. They are both young adults now. I was lucky to have so much time with my kids before I succumbed to the worst symptoms of ALS.”

Even in her pain and grief at all she had lost, Jessie maintained an appreciation for all she had gotten to have and all she still had. And she had so much. In her life Jessie was brought so much joy from her sons Ethan and Max. She had a great love and devoted partner in Barry. She had the love and support of her parents and siblings. She had a Jewish identity that filled her life with pride and meaning. She had a calling and made a meaningful impact in a field for which she had immense passion. She had big communities and close friends. She had many teachers and many more students.

Over the course of her life Jessie led so many to righteousness. She will truly shine as the stars forever and ever. May we continue to enjoy the reflection of her shine and feel the warmth from the legacy and words she left behind. Her memory WILL be for a blessing.

Mrs. Prezioso and Why I Loved Geometry

By Jessie

On April 28, 2025

In living with ALS, teachers

Senator Elizabeth Warren is collecting stories from Americans: “If you have a favorite memory from public school, you could only go to school because you got financial aid, or you have any story that can remind people why we need to save these programs [of the Department of Education] share it now.” I shared an abbreviated version of my Tribute to Miss Brooks, and now I’m sharing with you my memories of another dear teacher: Mrs. Prezioso, my ninth grade geometry teacher. Senator Warren is reading some of the stories from the Senate floor, with the author’s permission. I invite you to send her your story.

On the first day of geometry class, Mrs. Prezioso gave each of us an index card and invited us to write on it our feelings and experiences with math. I wrote that I didn’t like it and sometimes feared it. No one was more shocked than I, when geometry quickly became my favorite class in ninth grade.

I loved solving geometric proofs. They totally fit my abstract-sequential way of processing information and my affinity for logic. I remember the time I stared forever at a proof we had for homework, and finally saw the solution. It took three steps. After someone asked about it the next day, Mrs. Prezioso took everyone through her solution, which took about 25 steps. I waited silently for her to finish. Then I revealed my vastly more efficient solution. Mrs. Prezioso and my classmates were amazed. That sealed my fate as the “best” geometry mind and the teacher’s pet.

I was definitely the teacher’s pet. It was mutual. But what I remember most about Mrs . Prezioso is the rapport she had with all of us. She told us that she felt so comfortable with us that she did things that she would not do with other classes. She read The Missing Piece, by Shel Silverstein, to us, because she had used it for an exam in her Master’s program. She brought in the film of her on the television show Candid Camera when she was little. In order to make it clearer for confused students, and then because we got a kick out of it, she would stand in the front of the room and say, “I’m an isosceles triangle,” while holding her arms at angles to her sides, and then turn around to demonstrate that it was the same on both sides.

Mrs. Prezioso also shared with us that her son, who was in graduate school to be a psychologist, thought she was crazy because she loved math. Hearing that inspired me to create a sign using my family’s Macintosh computer. I drew a picture of Mrs. Prezioso, and above that it said MISSING. Below the picture, I wrote, “ Escaped from the institution where she was committed by her family because of her love for math. Be careful. She is disguised as an isosceles triangle.” I taped it to the chalkboard in front of the room before she got there. She took a really long time to turn around, and all of us were snickering and trying very hard not to bust out in guffaws. When Mrs. Prezioso finally turned around, she read the sign and laughed. I don’t remember if we did any geometry for the rest of the class. I was too busy beaming. (See below for the actual sign, a little different from how I remembered it.)

I remained in close contact with Mrs. Prezioso for the next 27 years. The summer before we went to college, Mrs. Prezioso took three of us who had stayed in touch with her to lunch. I continued to have lunch with Mrs. Prezioso whenever I was in town. I always looked forward to seeing her and catching up. Even when we corresponded by email, it was very special to see her in person, especially the time I brought baby Ethan to meet her. By then I called her by her first name, Arlene.

Mrs. Prezioso had to retire because of health problems. Her family suspected that her breathing problems were due to her years of exposure to black mold in the school following the remodel, which happened long after I graduated.

It got increasingly difficult to get together, because Mrs. Prezioso suffered from emphysema for at least the last 15 years of her life. More than once she had to cancel our get together, because she wasn’t up to it. She was hospitalized and almost died three times. Her husband spent those years caring for her. We said he was a saint, because of the way he devoted himself to her care.

We kept in touch until her death in 2012, 27 years after I was in her class. As much as she meant to me, there was no way I could have known that she would also offer me a model for living with a degenerative, fatal illness. I have often thought of Mrs. Prezioso since receiving my ALS diagnosis.

I really didn’t understand how she could be too tired to get together. Or how it could take her three days to recover from attending a function. Or how she could be happy just having her husband push her in her wheelchair around the grocery store. Now I do.

On our second date, I told Barry that I was not looking for a caregiver. I meant it, but I got one nonetheless. With Barry, I got my own saint. And I do what I can to be grateful for the small things that bring me joy.

Mrs. Prezioso with me in 1993.

The sign, courtesy of Mr. Prezioso . Spelling was never my forte.

A Tribute to Miss Brooks

By Jessie

On January 23, 2025

In teachers

Mrs. Burns, my kindergarten teacher, clearly loved my best friend, while she did nothing to hide her disdain for me. One day she caught me sticking my tongue out at a classmate in response to an insult. Her idea of teaching me not to do that was to make me stand at her desk and stick my tongue out at her. If I had had thicker skin, I would have enjoyed it, but I cried in humiliation the whole time.

According to my mother, when I came home on the last day of kindergarten, I declared, “Mrs. Burns may know how to teach, but she doesn’t know how to be nice and she doesn’t know how to take care of children.” Then my eyes welled up and I said, “I wanted to like her.”

Intending to avoid another Mrs. Burns, my mother requested that I have Miss Brooks, who had a reputation as an excellent first grade teacher. The administration complied.

I loved Miss Brooks. She was warm and kind, everything Mrs. Burns wasn’t. Whenever we left the classroom, we walked in a single file line, as is the way of elementary students everywhere. Miss Brooks walked next to the line, and always stuck her hand out for the student next to her to hold. I felt special whenever she chose me.

Miss Brooks didn’t play favorites. There were some boys in our class who were a handful, but I don’t remember her treating them differently from the more compliant kids. Don’t get me wrong. Miss Brooks ran a tight ship. But she was never mean.

All of Miss Brooks’s students knew that she loved mice. She had mouse stuffed animals, mouse stickers, and other mice themed things at her desk. We liked knowing something personal about our teacher. We also knew that she was Irish, because she taught us an Irish jig.

I will never forget the time when I was in third grade, (a big kid), and I was walking by myself from one end of the campus back to the third grade building. Miss Brooks was walking ahead of me, without her class. She turned around, saw me, stopped, and stuck her hand out. I held her hand the whole way back and told her about my summer, feeling special the whole time.

The year I started fourth grade, Miss Brooks moved to Rhode Island to take a job as the principal of an elementary school. I wrote to her, and she always wrote back. One time I sent her a gold mouse pin that I got from the prize bin in my dentist’s office. The mouse wore a red dress. Obviously it couldn’t have been high quality having come from my dentist’s prize bin, but you wouldn’t know that from Miss Brooks’s response. She thanked me for the pin and told me that she wore it on her red turtleneck on the first day at her new school. After I read that, I had the biggest grin for hours.

Another time, my friend Alicia and I wrote letters to her and included some cat stickers. I remember that in her reply, Miss Brooks wrote that she would keep the cat stickers away from her “mouse ones.”

When I moved to Rhode Island for graduate school I thought I would look up Miss Brooks. I spent hours on the phone with the receptionist for the principals association. I only knew the year she became a principal. I didn’t know the name of her school. The receptionist could not find her. I figured she got married and changed her name. Or maybe she moved to a different state.

I was crushed. Still am. Maybe it’s because I became a teacher that I wanted so much to reconnect with Miss Brooks. To tell her how she made me feel, because over the years, it has brought me so much joy whenever my former students have told me that I had a positive effect on them.

When I think about Miss Brooks now, I recall a passage in Jewish liturgy about getting to the promised land. It states, “…there is no way to get from here to there, except by joining hands, marching together.”

To read an earlier post about Miss Brooks, click here.