Dr. Shaina Trapedo
In hindsight, my first year directing two Honors programs at Yeshiva University felt exactly as Dickens said it would: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness.” I hope you’ll allow me to explain.
Best of Times
One of life’s greatest gifts is bestowed when one’s career and calling align. I fully believe in the S. Daniel Abraham Honors Program’s mission to help students develop as thoughtful scholars, skilled researchers and impactful leaders who embrace the responsibility of what it means to “be a blessing” to others (Gen. 12:2). This belief was matched by incredible deans, faculty, department chairs and support staff whose commitment to student success runs deeper than students will ever know (unless they take the time to ask the faculties’ families). My colleagues were unsparing in sharing the counsel I sought and the support I needed via expedient emails, WhatsApp voice notes, timely Teams meetings and many “while we commute” conversations.
Having been at YU since 2019, I anticipated this level of collegiality, but was joyfully surprised by the students who stepped forward because they saw the chance not just to partake in an experience, but to shape one. At our first meeting last August, volunteers for the inaugural Honors Student Council at Stern went around the table offering ideas for events, alumni partnerships, speakers and, of course, swag. Their collaborative strength, talents and intellectual abilities brought to mind Christine de Pizan’s City of Ladies (her response to Augustine’s City of God), in which she works with Reason, Rectitude, and Justice to build a city not with stones but stories of women who accomplished extraordinary deeds. Like Pizan’s allegorical companions, these students, and many others throughout the year, answered the call to “take the trowel of your pen and get ready to set to with vigor on the building work.”
At Yeshiva College (YC), I inherited a student council serving the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Honors Program, which helped me understand the fullness of the YC experience and how to be nimble in offering enrichment opportunities for students already juggling minyan, late-night labs, night seder, pre-med requirements, poetry electives, and so on. I’m proud to say that the Smash Burgers usually ran out before the questions did at many Lunch N’ Learns throughout the year, and the off-site Spring YU Honors Shabbaton, jointly organized by Stern and YC Honors students, literally sounded the alarm on how dynamic Honors programming could be. (Yes, the fire alarm went off in the shul hosting our program on Friday night.)
Happily, I leaned hardest into supporting our senior thesis writers, who stood at the precipice of greatness. Having taught at a range of other institutions before coming to YU, I have found unwavering encouragement for my work exploring the connections between Torah, the humanities and social engagement, and it is a joy to offer that same intellectual hospitality to all of our Honors students. Setting up Canvas sections, constructing and communicating clear timelines, facilitating mentorships and meeting with students to keep up research momentum all felt rewarding.
No doubt the value of education and a deep love of learning that has sustained the Jewish people for millennia continues to nourish its future leaders here. From Murray Hill to Furst Hall, I saw students take ownership of their ideas, and sometimes of each other’s Google Docs, to collaboratively reshape the “so what” of a thesis, strengthen claims with credible evidence, and together cultivate a habit of critical thinking, which is arguably the most essential skill needed among college graduates today.
In Spring 2026, 127 Honors students completed an academic journey that culminated in research projects of remarkable depth and ambition. Projects like “The Role of Large Language Models in Autism Intervention,” “What Makes a Hero? The Architecture of Heroism in Tolstoy and Tanakh” and “When Medicine Cannot Cure: What Jewish Perspectives on Death and Mourning Offer Physicians Caring for Terminally Ill Patients,” are just a few titles drawn from dozens of honors theses at Stern College and Yeshiva College spanning STEM, humanities, Judaic studies and beyond. Each one is a testament to what happens when truth-seeking and intellectual curiosity meet genuine scholarly rigor. Of course, none of this happened in isolation, and I am deeply grateful to the faculty mentors who opened their doors and championed this work.
Worst of Times
Of course, every “yes” comes with a “no.” The time and heart I poured into others’ writing came at a cost. I had to sacrifice some of my own writing time, and there were moments that felt genuinely hypocritical as I coached students through reorganizations and deadlines while unable to apply the same discipline to myself. As Shakespeare’s Portia relatably says:
If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do,
chapels had been churches and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces…
I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done,
than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. (The Merchant of Venice, 1.2)
I also felt first-hand how hard it is to ask for help (especially when you’re not even sure what to ask for), but how much harder it is when you don’t. Taking on roles previously split between two faculty members meant real strain, and although this was anticipated and planned for, it took some time before Professor Rebecca Chalme was able to join as Assistant Director of the Stern and YC Honors Programs (and I am truly grateful for her partnership). All the while, dozens of meetings with Honors students revealed a poorly kept secret: high-achieving students are often the most resistant to admitting they need assistance. Those who read the Honors Handbook carefully once again after intersession may have noticed an added clause in the section covering campus resources: “Being smart and capable and asking for help are not mutually exclusive; it’s a sign of strength and resilience.”
And this brings me to the worst of times I have ever known. The season of Darkness began two years ago, when my father was diagnosed with late-stage kidney cancer. His decline, and our family’s collective pain, accelerated last January. I flew back and forth to Los Angeles as often as I could, grateful beyond words to my husband and children who made that possible. I am also indebted to the students who were in my two Spring 2026 courses: a poetry survey and a seminar on the Hebrew Bible and Hamlet, “whose common theme is death of fathers” (1.2).
During especially difficult episodes, there were classes I had to teach over Zoom from his hospital room, which he preferred to my stepping out. I blurred the background to block the view of the students who were patient with me in ways I won’t forget or take for granted. Throughout the semester, we studied the power of the right words at the right moment, and how poetry demonstrates that the need for that power often peaks when one seeks love and encounters loss; it is my fervent hope that their knowledge of the latter is only ever theoretical.
My father, Dr. Paul Bressman (Reb Chaim Peretz ben Aryeh Leib, OBM), passed away on July 16, 2026. In college, he actively pursued a range of interests from chemistry to cameras to the literary club. He insisted on learning by doing and didn’t believe in shortcuts, and he applied this approach to everything he did: treating his patients as a vascular surgeon, serving his country as a Major in the US Army Medical Corps and MASH in Korea, battling thyroid cancer in his forties and teaching his children how to sail, ski, garden, and, most importantly, how to think and speak to Hashem.
He used this same strength to face macular degeneration, an irreversible disease that caused progressive vision loss. Retinal reattachment surgeries, steroid treatments and multiple procedures tried to preserve his sight and quality of life, but ultimately he had difficulty putting food on his plate and filling a glass without spilling at a shul kiddush. He once had to ask a stranger to enter his credit card PIN because he couldn’t see the keypad. These struggles, and the grace with which he handled them, call to mind a verse from the grace after meals he recited with such sincerity– “ שֶׁלֹא נֵבוֹשׁ וְלֹא נִכָּלֵם”- “may we not be ashamed nor confounded.” These words often drew tears from eyes that I was grateful he could not see.
Losing his ability to cycle (when he was riding his bike from LA to Oxnard, all over Mulholland Drive, Laurel Canyon and the Malibu hills) was devastating. And yet, he said, it was nothing compared to the pain of not being able to pray. In consultation with disability aids and compassionate rabbis, he purchased a Merlzin magnifier device, but even with this enhancement, the holes in his field of vision left even the magnified prayers unparsable. On days when his eyes are tired, the holy Hebrew letters seem to swarm like ants across the page.
Yet he still went to shul, day in and day out in his dark glasses, simply to stand in awe and speak to God. He embodied the words the sonnet John Milton wrote about his own blindness, in which the speaker reflects on how his “light is spent… in this dark world and wide…” Even though at this age and stage the speaker’s “Soul [is] more bent To serve therewith my Maker,” he can’t because his “talent is lodged within him, useless.” In response to this seemingly fair complaint, an angelic voice answers:
God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.
When I picture my father at prayer — standing and waiting, eyes covered and hands clasped, free of the gentle weight of a siddur, allowing the cantilations, recitations, and moments of silence to support him — I find new reservoirs of strength and gratitude for the ability to speak to Hashem, to ask for help, and to serve as a “day laborer” (פעלי דיממא) who is obligated to spread the light of day and illuminate the world (Eruvin 65a).
During shiva, I was overwhelmed by how many members of what I can only describe as my YU family sent messages, made donations in loving memory, and rearranged their lives to sit with me and hear how I loved my father more than words could wield the matter. My father weighed every word he uttered to God, and while he found none wanting, in his own hand, he recorded births, recoveries, as well as mundane moments in the margins of his siddur. To him, prayer was an ongoing conversation with God. “Be with me in all that I do,” he wrote in the space above the morning shema. He also didn’t hold back in hard times. “Hashem I am bent,” he wrote next to Ashrei in the afternoon weekday service, “please don’t let me fall.”
Two weeks after his passing, the same siddur was used under my daughter’s chuppah, passed to Rav Yaakov Neuburger to recite one of the sheva brachos after Rabbi Meir Soloveichik had read the ketubah. Grief and joy compressed into the same breath. I am still trying to process that timeline, and all that it required of and bestowed upon my family and me. What stands out to me now is that the same friends who coordinated meals and visited during shiva also made schtick and danced with my daughter Chaya (SCW Honors ‘26) at her wedding. The same colleagues who helped me tear kriyah at my father’s funeral have invited me to give classes in his memory.
Looking Ahead
Although Chaya’s SCW Honors’ companions are astonishing, thankfully, they are not unique. Every cohort can yield friends who will open doors for you, and give you the confidence (and maybe even a pair of cute flats) to walk through them. Here you will meet and grow with the people who will celebrate your milestones and stand by you in challenging moments for years (even generations) to come.
When you go on to graduate programs, fellowships and careers you can’t yet imagine, you’ll discover that your success in life is not just driven by your GPA or your résumé; rather, it’s the relationships you form. So, as Shakespeare’s Polonius advises his son as he sets off for college:
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel. (Hamlet 1.3)
Of course, you don’t necessarily need to be close to benefit from the remarkable individuals sharing space with you at Stern or YC. Just remain open to their perspectives and company, and be hospitable to hearing about their interests and intellectual contributions.
In the age of AI, the relationships that we forge with intentionality, integrity, sensitivity and reciprocity will enrich our lives and the lives of others. That is why one of the primary goals of the year(s) ahead is to build on what the Honors Programs began last year with a focus on fostering community. Alongside the coursework and the thesis sequence, SCW Honors students will plan events, run discussions and help enhance the Shabbat experience at Beren.
Of course, what it means to have honor isn’t gated by an Honors designation. As Pirkei Avot teaches, “Who is honored? One who honors others” (4:1). We all have the capacity to illuminate the world for one another, and what gives our efforts value is what we invest of ourselves in the process. I look forward to the times to come, to the partnerships with students and centers and departments across Yeshiva University, and hope to go forward as my father did, “like a champion who rejoices to run the course” (Ps. 19:6).
Photo Credit: Ellen Bressman