2019年9月1日下午上海宏润博源学校的开学典礼上，Steven Bonda老师代表全体教师欢迎同学们返校，并通过传奇的Chouchani老师的故事跟大家分享了我们为什么要做教师：对知识和学问的追求和热爱，也希望在学生心中点燃这份热爱。Steven老师表示非常荣幸可以在宏润博源任教，非常开心迎接同学们回来，期待新的学期和大家一起成长。以下是上海宏润博源学校Steven老师发言。

Steven老师发言

Good afternoon! It’s a signal honor to address you all briefly on behalf of our teaching staff.

I thought I would talk just a little about why it is that we teachers do what we do. Certainly it isn’t for the money –everybody knows that teaching is not a career track for those who want to get rich!

To help you to understand why I teach, I would like to tell you about one of my personal heroes, who embodies what a teacher ought to be.

Although he was one of the most influential intellectuals of the 20th Century, no one knows what his real name was. He was a Jewish scholar who called himself “Monsieur Chouchani,” which means in French “man of Susa” (Susa being an ancient capital of the Persian Empire). No one knows where he came from, or anything about his background. He appeared rather suddenly in Europe in the mid-20th Century, and soon gained a reputation as a scholar and teacher of extraordinary brilliance and breadth. He was said to have mastered dozens of languages, to be intimately familiar with Jewish Talmudic lore, and to have mastered the ideas of every philosopher who had ever lived. Not only that, he had mastered mathematics, physics, chemistry, and all of the other sciences. He is believed to have had the rare gift of an eidetic memory or total recall. So versatile was he that, on one occasion, he was detained by German authorities during World War II on suspicion of being a Jew, but he was able to convince them that he was a Muslim from the Middle East – by conversing with them in flawless Arabic and reciting long passages from the Koran!

Without any doubt, such an extraordinarily gifted man could have done many things with his genius, but Monsieur Chouchani chose to be a simple teacher. He owned no property other than a few sets of ragged clothing, and he had very little money. His nickname in French was “le clochard,” which means “the vagabond.” After World War II, he found his way to the Americas, and eventually died in obscurity in Montevideo, Uruguay. On his simple tombstone are the words: “His birth and his life are sealed in enigma.”

Who Mr. Chouchani was, where he came from, how he acquired his extraordinary learning, and why he kept his past a secret even from his closest students, will be forever a mystery. But his remarkable legacy is found in the students who were influenced by him. One of them, the great philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (in my humble opinion, the foremost philosopher of the last hundred years), was one of the greatest and most erudite minds of his time. Yet the first time he met Chouchani, the two spent an entire night conversing. At the end of their first meeting, Levinas admitted: “All that I know, he knows, and much more besides.” Besides Levinas, Chouchani also mentored famous Holocaust survivor, author of 57 books, and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, and many other students who became prominent political and academic leaders.

Chouchani’s life was the life of a true teacher. He embodied the twin virtues that all teachers ought to possess, namely, a love of scholarship and the desire to kindle that love in others.Those who answer the summons to teaching will generally live simple, unassuming lives. We will not drive luxury cars nor live in expensive houses. We teach because we are in love with learning, and want to inspire that same love in others.

I think I speak for my colleagues in saying that I am grateful for the opportunity to be able to teach here, in China, at this important time in China’s modern history. Teaching here is such a blessing. The students are so diligent, and there is such a thirst for learning. I look forward to teaching and learning with all of you, and getting to know each of you, in this beautiful and stimulating environment. Like every teacher, including Monsieur Chouchani, I expect great things of my students, and I expect to hear, in a coming day, how you have been able to use the talents and experiences cultivated here to bless this great land of China.

Welcome to Shanghai Hongrun Boyuan School, and thank you very much!

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