Rabbi Paskind’s Messasge for Yom Kippur 5787, The Blessings of Intergenerational Community
The Blessings of Intergenerational Community
Yom Kippur 5787
Rabbi Ita Paskind
Congregation Beth El, Norwalk CT
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When I returned from my maternity leave after my daughter Noa was born, part of the fun was bringing her to minyan four mornings a week. I brought the stroller, a baby blanket, toys, a bottle, and my own tallit and tefillin. We never made it on time, but that’s ok. I learned to balance being with the community while enjoying my baby–and the minyan crew were so welcoming. She spent those mornings exploring the chapel, first on her back on the baby blanket, then learning to sit up, then crawl, then climb the stairs–very often under the chairs. My favorite minyan memories from those days were when Noa would toddle over to Marvin’s snazzy red walker and start pushing it, or when she would pick up his cane and bring it over to him. You remember that, Marvin?
Our minyan has always been such a lovely experience–and it continues to be in its current virtual space–but watching my child grow up in that environment was so very special, and I know it was special for the other adults too. I could say the same thing about Shabbat morning services and even Friday evening services, which my own kids started attending when they were 4. Many of you have had the same experience–you raised your children in this synagogue community, and you rejoiced in the many brachot, the blessings, that flowed from these multigenerational friendships.
One of the hallmarks of our special community is that so many of us describe it as our “second family” or as “an extension of our family”.
Many of us found our Beth El friends through our children in Nitzan Nursery School, or through the Navasky Religious School (now Kesher Beth El). Many found friends through the Sisterhood, serving on the Board, coming regularly to services, serving on the Social Action committee. Some of us connected through Marriage Encounter with Rabbi Goldberg or through Young Families activities, and others through the bereaved spouses group. It’s so beautiful that this place has had so many gateways through which we strengthened our Jewish identities and made friends.
Our tradition has always lifted up the connection between community members of all generations. Particularly, I’m reflecting on the beautiful teaching toward the end of the Torah, as Moses renews the covenant with the second generation of Israelites, the ones who will enter into the Promised Land. He says to them: “I make this covenant… not with you alone, but both with those who are standing here with us this day… and with those who are not with us here this day.”
It’s incredible, really. The covenant, the brit, isn’t limited to those who stood at the foot of Mount Sinai and beheld the thunder, the lightning, and heard God’s voice utter the words of the Ten Commandments. The brit is open to all those who will inherit or accept membership in the Israelite people for all time. This approach is just as strong now as it was in Moses’ day. We revel in seeing younger people step into leadership roles, our hearts bursting that our tradition will continue to flourish even as we slow down. And while we are not a proselytizing people, we welcome all who choose Judaism into our community, proud that our ancient traditions are indeed powerful and relevant.
There is something unique in the character of a synagogue to forge bonds between 50-year-olds and 90-year-olds, between 5-year-olds and 70-year olds, between 30-year-olds and 60-year-olds… any permutation of intergenerationality you can think of, and we’ve got it here. I love that. There are great brachot that younger community members receive from our connections to the older members, and there are wonderful brachot that those who have been around the block receive from connecting to the younger, sometimes newer members of our community. On this sacred day, as we prepare to remember the blessings of our departed loved ones, I invite us to consider the intergenerational brachot that enliven our community.
You remember the scene at the end of the book of Genesis, as Jacob’s life comes to an end? He asks his beloved son Joseph to bring his 2 sons, Ephrayim and Menashe, to visit, while he still has a bit of strength. Jacob wants to offer them a bracha, a blessing. And so, sitting up on his bed, he places his hands on his grandson’s heads and utters what has become a beautiful blessing of the children for all generations:
“The Angel who has redeemed me from all harm—
Bless the lads.
In them may my name be recalled,
And the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac,
And may they be teeming multitudes upon the earth.”
In this bracha, Jacob places himself at the turning point between the past and the future. Even at the end of his long life, he considers himself the son of Isaac and the grandson of Abraham, the inheritor of their legacies. And he’s looking right at the future–the two sons of his own beloved son Joseph. As he opens the blessing, he invokes the angel who redeemed him from all sorts of perilous situations as a protective shield for these boys. The actual blessing is a two-parter. First, Jacob prays that all who interact with Ephrayim and Menashe will immediately recognize and honor their connection to Jacob himself, and to Abraham and Isaac. And second, that these boys, like their forebearers, will build large families for many generations to come, presumably filled with those faithful to the covenant with God. It’s no wonder that so many Jewish babies are welcomed into the covenant with the words of this blessing, set to a beautiful melody.
If we step back and consider the format of this bracha, we see that it flows from grandfather to grandchildren, from the older generation to the younger. Jacob has high hopes for his grandchildren–for their future families, and especially, I think, for the way they will carry forward his legacy. What a bracha for the grandchildren–and for their father Joseph–to be able to receive these words, with a gentle hand on each of their heads. They will carry this moment with them for the rest of their lives.
So, too, do the brachot flow from the older generation to the younger in a shul community–in our shul community–and how great to be able to celebrate that today, at this sacred time when we take stock of our lives. The most special bracha of multigenerational community is how I opened today–the community filled with parent-like and grandparent-like folks, who love the presence of children (while not needing to parent them themselves!), who delight in sharing their beloved community with people of all ages. But it’s not just about the people connections. There’s more.
Like in most synagogues, the more veteran members of our shul include many wonderful models of showing up, participating, volunteering, and leading. Our older members make up the majority of attendees at Friday evening services, Shabbat morning services, and morning minyan–when it was in person and also now that it’s on Zoom. It’s true that retirees have more flexibility during these times, but I believe it’s also a generational thing–even when you were in the work force, you made time for making the minyan. Our older members have been the strong volunteer backbone of our community for decades, serving on and leading committees; serving in leadership; managing the sukkah; leading Sisterhood, the Chai Society Women’s Group and the L’Chayim Society Men’s Group, and the Beth Elles; overseeing our kosher kitchen; purchasing and plating and cleaning up from weekly kiddush lunch and Friday night Oneg; and planning social events for the entire community. Our community has greatly benefited from the commitment and efforts of our veteran members. These blessings of volunteerism flow from one generation to the next, as our younger and newer members learn from this example what it takes to make things happen in a synagogue community.
I also see beautiful brachot flowing from one generation to another each week, as we sit around the kiddush tables in the social hall, often chatting about times past. What could otherwise feel like a return to US History class is transformed into a friendly conversation with fellow members who lived it, who witnessed, who acted. These conversations very often include stories about our own congregation’s history–about the origins of Beth El in the home of Sue and Steve Nevas’ grandparents’ home, about the merger of Zera Kodesh congregation into Beth El in 1965, about the building expansion and renovation in the late 1980s during Jim Sugarman’s presidency, about the pride in having brought on Cantor Debbie Katcho-Grey (now Zimmerman) after her ordination as only the 2nd female Conservative cantor… these are things that so many of our members actually lived through and made happen, and it truly enriches our younger members’ experience to learn this congregational history.
Like our patriarch Jacob, our synagogue patriarchs and matriarchs want to see the newer generations–and those we haven’t even met yet!–build on their legacy. On your legacy. What brachot you offer to those of us a few years your junior.
Now, intergenerational community isn’t only about the older generations teaching the younger ones. In a robust community like ours, the brachot flow in the opposite direction as well, from younger to older, although to be honest, sometimes it can be more challenging to recognize them.
Allow me to illustrate with a Talmud story about Moses. All you have to know is that many of the letters in a Torah scroll, which are handwritten by a scribe, have little ornamental flourishes–sometimes called “crowns”–on top of them. Here’s the story.
When Moses ascended to heaven to receive the Torah, he found God sitting and tying small ornamental crowns onto the letters of the Hebrew text. Moses asked God why these additions were necessary. God explained that generations later, a master named Akiva ben Yosef would arise and derive mountains of laws from every single curve and crown. Moses asked to see this remarkable teacher.
Suddenly, Moses found himself transported forward in time and sitting in the back row of Rabbi Akiva’s study hall. Moses could not follow the intricate legal discussions and felt his strength wane, distressed that he could not understand the Torah being taught.
However, when the students asked Rabbi Akiva the source for a specific ruling, Akiva calmly answered, halacha l’Moshe miSinai, “It is a law transmitted to Moses from Sinai.” Hearing this, Moses was comforted and his mind was set at ease, realizing his own original revelation was the foundation for these future expansions.
I love this story. Some of you have heard it before. I hope all of you find it as charming as I do. It’s like a time-travel, sci-fi graphic novel set in the ancient Jewish world. Moshe, at the moment of receiving the Torah on Mount Sinai, struggles to understand his own area of expertise–the Torah. And worse, the one who will create meaning way in the future is doing so in a way that Moshe can’t even recognize! What happened to his covenant, his beloved religion, in just a few thousand years?! And just when he thought the entire project was lost, a moment of relief and great comfort: Rabbi Akiva all the way in the future, with his new-fangled laws about fancy letters, connects his innovations directly back to Moshe himself. He sees himself as the next step in an honored millenia-old tradition.
One of the things I love so much about this story is that it praises innovation, change, and the development of Jewish law. Without saying it explicitly, the Talmud is acknowledging that Jewish life can’t actually stay stagnant over the course of time. Jewish life requires modernization. It demands new insights. It needs to expand to fit what Jews are doing in every generation and it needs to grow with the Jewish people. And it’s ok if Moshe can’t recognize the conversation in Rabbi Akiva’s classroom. The Jewish people can feel confident that Rabbi Akiva will treat the tradition with love and care, just as Moshe did.
In our day, and in our community, we see innovation happening all over the place, driven by our community’s younger generations. Some of it is taking place within our synagogue, and some of it is happening in places and at times most of us don’t see.
Anyone who comes to a synagogue–ours or any other synagogue–will observe what I noted earlier, that most attendees are older members. The younger members, which sometimes (but not always!) means the newer members, aren’t in the synagogue building as much. From a veteran member’s perspective, this can cause frustration, because why wouldn’t everyone love being at services like we do? But there’s something else going on here, something beautiful, something innovative, something Rabbi Akiva-like. The younger generation are doing plenty Jewish–but not necessarily in the spaces we’d expect or at the times others are gathered. A home-based Friday night dinner with babies and toddlers and their parents + grape juice and challah and some adult beverages = Shabbat. Torah on Tap at the local brewery = something Jewish for the week. Eating pizza at a local joint with fellow synagogue members to chat about engagement = investment in the future of the community! A young adult traveling for work seeks out a Friday night service in a new place and comes back to share a cool practice with us. And although this one isn’t limited to the younger generation, I love that a good chunk of folks who come here on Friday night for services choose a restaurant to go to afterwards to “eat Shabbat dinner” together.
Even our synagogue-based traditional prayer experiences have stretched and morphed over time, especially during the warmer months. Just this summer, we held Kabbalat Shabbat services on Friday evenings at Calf Pasture Beach, on a pre-sunset cruise on the Long Island Sound, and almost weekly in our parking lot. The idea is to bring Shabbat to where we want to be as the weekend kicks off. And just 2 weeks ago, we gathered for First Fridays–a relaxed Shabbat service followed by a nacho bar and outdoor games. All of these fun outdoor and off-site Shabbat experiences were attended by our incredibly reliable and wonderful long-time members; and they attracted younger Jews and families with children in ways that our regular Shabbat services don’t. We’re stretching. We’re morphing. And we’re learning that Jewish tradition can change with the times and still feel authentic.
None of these things would be recognizable to Moshe at Mount Sinai–and not to Rabbi Akiva in his futuristic classroom either. They may not feel like the Jewish practices many of us grew up with, but they are the present and likely the future of one version of Jewish life.
As a synagogue community, we are deeply invested in the welfare of the synagogue as an institution. We have given of our time, passion, and financial resources to maintain and grow this community. And as time marches forward and we learn more about the Jewish engagement patterns of millennials, we are presented with the opportunity to be more creative and more flexible. At a time when 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds are less likely to be joiners, we are changing to meet them where they are, and are happy for younger Jews and Jewish families to become part of our community.
The brachot flow in both directions. We need to be grounded in something that connects all the way back to halacha l’moshe mi’sinai, and to our founders here in Connecticut; but if we only stay in that space, then everything will rush ahead and leave our tradition behind. Innovation keeps us relevant to ourselves and others, and to those we haven’t met yet.
One reason this is so important is because so many of the people who will make up the future of Jewish community may not have grown up Jewish or may not be Jewish themselves. They may come to us with a Jewish partner, or they may come on their own. Each and every person who wants to participate in our community is in themselves a bracha.
Although many of these innovations and changes might indeed feel challenging to those of us who have been synagogue leaders and members for decades, this is one of the lessons of Rabbi Akiva.
We need both traditionalism and innovation. Each are brachot that rely on the other to become real. And that brings us right back to our ancestor Jacob, Yaakov, at the moment of blessing his grandsons Ephraim and Menashe. Yaakov offers them a bracha from himself–from grandfather to grandsons–looking toward the future. But he tacks on one extra blessing: “By you shall Israel invoke blessings, saying: May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.” It’s not just that the boys receive a bracha. It’s that this newest generation–a generation that will certainly innovate, creating new forms that are unrecognizable to the past–will shower blessings upon the entire Jewish people, those older than them, their peers, and all those who will come after them.
Yaakov here is entrusting to the future despite the uncertainty. What a marked difference from Moshe, who was initially so distressed in Rabbi Akiva’s classroom. Ephraim and Menashe, too, must know that there will be changes past their own. The same is true for us as well. There will be changes that none of us would recognize.
On this sacred day, each of us engages in cheshbon hanefesh–turning inward to take stock of where we have been over the last year, and what we need to do to set ourselves up for this new year. The same work happens all the time in our community–we take stock of our finances, our human resources, our programming, our outreach–and we tweak here and there. Today, we are taking a different kind of cheshbon hanefesh–we are looking at what’s working beautifully, and sometimes working in beautifully unexpected ways. And there is so much, all of it contributing to the long-standing foundation of our synagogue and the bright future ahead, even when that takes different forms.
And so, on this sacred occasion, I want to offer us some brachot.
To our long-time, older congregants, I offer you this bracha:
Yesimchem Elohim k’Yaakov Avinu u’ch’Moshe Rabeinu, May you be like Yaakov, proud of your legacy and confident in the next generation of Jewish leaders. May you be like Moshe our Teacher, who learned that future chidush, innovation, is the next link in the chain of our beautiful tradition.
To our newer and younger community members, I offer you this bracha:
Yesimchem Elohim k’Rabbi Akiva, May you be like Rabbi Akiva, creating new Jewish meaning for yourselves and your peers, while always rooting yourselves in tradition. Dream big. There are Jews looking to be inspired by you.
And to all of us, our beautiful multigenerational community, I offer us these brachot:
May we always be a community where every generation has a place and a voice.
May we always be open to the wisdom of experience and to ideas we’ve never tried.
And may we always remember that this is how Judaism has survived and flourished–not because every generation did things exactly as the generation before it did, but because each generation received the tradition, wrestled with it, added its own chidush, and then placed it lovingly into the hands of the next.
