The Next "Dor"
Rabbi Ron Shulman
Shabbat Vayehi 5771
No one inherits their parents’ or grandparents’ memories, though sometimes we remember what we are told. Our most ingrained and powerful memories come from what we experience and see for ourselves. As a result, midor l’dor, every generation sees a different world than their ancestors saw, no matter how close in family, community, or relationship.
I am very aware that my daughters, now in their mid-twenties born in the 1980’s, do not relate to my memories of America during the Vietnam War or the Jewish community during the Six-Day War or the Yom Kippur War. My parents and grandparents always knew that I couldn’t fully appreciate their depression era lives, their haunting memories of the Shoah and World War II, or a world without the State of Israel.
All we can do is share our stories and their legacies, hoping that by explaining what events and memories form our values we influence the world view of those who follow us.
I share these observations aware of this news item. In recently released tapes from the Nixon Library, Henry Kissinger makes the following statement. “If they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern.” It was March 1, 1973. For context, I was in High School. Where were you? What, if any, are your memories of that time?
Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir visited the White House. She made a plea for America to assist with the emigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union.
Back then, National Security Advisor Kissinger disagreed with Senator Henry Jackson’s attempt to link Soviet Jewish emigration as a human rights element of American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union.
Kissinger says he believed the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which formed the basis for making human rights a component of foreign policy, would actually reduce the emigration of Soviet Jews. He claims this is the meaning of his horrendous comment, with which President Nixon agreed. “I know,” Nixon responded. “We can’t blow up the world because of it.”
Frankly, I find the comments reprehensible under any circumstance, no matter how Mr. Kissinger may attempt to rationalize them.
Back in 1996, Secretary Kissinger was quoted in J.J. Goldberg’s book, Jewish Power. Kissinger said, “I have been in the position, as a Jew, of conducting the foreign policy of a superpower… I have never obscured the fact that twelve members of my family died in the Holocaust, and that therefore, the fate of the Jewish people was always a matter of profound concern to me. At the same time, destiny put me in a position where I also had to look at other perspectives.”
That may be, but there’s a basic human decency that Kissinger should have known to honor given his identity and his memory. How callous and crude his comments were. Surely there was another way to discuss American Foreign Policy with the President.
Here’s my deeper concern. How does moral memory transfer from one generation to the next? How do those who weren’t present learn from the lessons of one historical event as they witness another?
Our patriarch Jacob has the same concern. He descended into Egypt for a reunion with his long lost son Joseph, now the viceroy of Egypt, with his youngest son Benjamin, and with his ten other sons. Soon Jacob will die. He meets his grandchildren, Joseph’s sons Manasseh and Ephraim.
It’s a truly poignant scene. Joseph places his sons before their grandfather. Jacob stretches out his arms to greet them and to bless his grandsons. But the words of his blessing are first directed at his son, their father Joseph. “And he blessed Joseph, saying…Bless the lads. In them may my name be recalled…” There is no greater blessing for a parent, our rabbis teach, than to see a blessing bestowed upon his or her child.
Jacob’s hope for his grandsons is that their names will be remembered by future generations. Ephraim and Manasseh represent every next Jewish generation, raised with memories different than their elders, raised to live tomorrow as they will determine. As Jewish tradition recognizes, Ephraim and Manasseh are the first children of the Diaspora, raised in a larger world culture, and now asked by their grandfather to honor their Jewish heritage.
We imagine Jacob had to explain to his Egyptian grandchildren something of their roots and his faith. Joseph had to explain to his children where he came from and why that remains relevant. Ephraim and Manasseh have to figure out how to incorporate their father’s and grandfather’s memories into their own experiences, and how to forge an identity that both moves them into the future and roots them in their past.
Like Joseph, we should expect our children’s choices to be different than ours. Like Jacob, we can hope their choices are a reflection of ours. But we have to let them choose, and pay attention to their choices.
Today there is much discussion in the Jewish community about young Jews, those of us who are 22 to 40 years of age and, present company excluded, not usually present in the organizations of American Jewish life. The vast majority of them are not yet focused on Jewish relevance for themselves.
We now know from a variety of sources that personal meaning, social justice, and involvement with all people, not only the Jewish community, are the priorities of those Jews in their 20’s and 30’s who do seek Jewish purpose in their lives.
We also know that they are not drawn to the familiar contours of our communal institutions, and there’s really no reason they should be. Our parents and grandparents designed these organizations for us, not for them.
We shouldn’t be surprised that a few of the generations of Ephraim and Manasseh we raised are creating their own places for prayer, for gathering, for involvement, for culture, and for meaningful engagement with being Jewish. That’s precisely what we did when we were them. It’s a generational cycle. I remember the Havurot and Jewish Catalogues of the 1960’s and 1970’s even if my children don’t.
Instead of complaining about the Jewish character of our children’s and grandchildren’s generations, let’s celebrate, embrace, and help them provide for their interests because they are, in fact, rooted in the values we hold and represent the moral memories every generation must strive to transfer to the next.
We don’t need to remember Golda Meir, Richard Nixon or Henry Kissinger to know that human life is sacred, and that statecraft demands dignity in dialogue and debate.
We don’t need to be older to believe in goodness because it’s not only the young who believe in justice.
We don’t need to belong to any particular organization to find Jewish meaning, but we do need to be part of a Jewish community.
All of us can teach these lessons from the stories of our lives as we remember and share them.
Those who weren’t present learn from the lessons of one historical event as they witness another by doing as Jacob. We bless our children and grandchildren with memories from our time, encouraging them to discover blessing in the opportunities of theirs.
© 2010 Rabbi Ronald J. Shulman
