The blessings and challenges of a Multigenerational Jewish Community
Words for Beth Israel Congregation and Colby Hillel, Erev Rosh HaShanah 5784
(Our newly renovated sanctuary, ready for its first High Holiday service. Our original ark with new adornments: on the sides, pinecones — celebrating Maine, and on top, the line “Ivdu et HaShem b’simcha,” serve God with joy. A new bimah built in the classic style, but accessible to all. A new Torah reading table and lectern built for one short rabbi and the kids she prepares for bnei mitzvah.)
I didn’t think Purim could be fun with social distancing and without beer, and I was worried. How could I expect the Hillel students to join us at Beth Israel if we couldn’t offer our usual enticements? I seriously questioned that the megillah reading, the traditional chanting of the Book of Esther, would be enough to bring them back this year. But then we came up with an idea that quickly became a tradition: our Colby Hillel regulars would wear matching costumes with our Beth Israel Hebrew school students, creating a quick bond across decades of difference.
One of our Beth Israel kids, we’ll call him Jay, was scared to come into the sanctuary without his mom. He hadn’t been in the synagogue building many times before, and having grown up during the Covid lockdowns, he was hesitant about being in large crowds. But then he saw Lila. He didn’t know her, but he did know that she was wearing a matching costume – a carbon copy of a comic book character he loved, and he went to her. We in the congregation sang the traditional song “havah narisha rash rash rash” Come on, let’s make some noise, rash rash rash together. Both Lila and Jay walked down the aisle between the pews with smiles on their faces, hand in hand, as we cheered. Out of the shadow of the anxieties and sadness that came out of the lost years of the pandemic, a five year old and a twenty two year old held hands and emerged together, as a pair. And it was in a 120 year-old synagogue celebrating a traditional Purim in central Maine.
Contrary to popular belief, the most important fault line in the American Jewish community is not denominational. Most of our denominations are collapsing into one another, and most of us are discontented and confused with the chaotic miasma we are all sorting through at the moment. Our greatest dividing line is actually far more ancient: between parents and children, the old and the young. In the Book of Malachi, it is prophesied that in the Messianic age when the laws of nature are subverted and the world is perfected:
וְהֵשִׁ֤יב לֵב־אָבוֹת֙ עַל־בָּנִ֔ים וְלֵ֥ב בָּנִ֖ים עַל־אֲבוֹתָ֑ם (Malachi 3:24) God will return the hearts of fathers to their sons, and the hearts of sons to their fathers – or more colloquially, God will unify and reconcile parents and their children.
The biggest problem on the prophet Malachi’s mind in the 5th Century BCE was intergenerational conflict, and its resolution was for him the ultimate sign of a redeemed and perfected world.
We in Waterville are not immune from the most basic and enduring conflict in human and Jewish history. While there are always notable exceptions to the rule – the old souls living young bodies and the free spirits living in older ones – there are familiar tensions.
The young – daring to reimagine the world radically with the hot vigor of youth – wonder why they should be tied to local institutions, synagogues included, that seem stale and tired. The weight of brick, mortar, and mortgages hardly seems the stuff of revitalized, mobilized, and uplifted souls. And they have so many songs, and so much passion, and vision that could actually be the basis of a redeemed world, or at the very least a world that feels a little better and is slightly more just. But – the sun of their youth is both generative and can scorch the earth if left alone. What happens when nothing inherited is passed on, when our present is defined as much by passing impulse as it is by dynamic creativity? How do you really build for the next generation without a firm foundation forged by the hard choices that come with power?
The elders remember the times that those institutions were there for them, even if they – to be perfectly honest – haven’t always enjoyed them that much either. They recall the moments when they lost a child or a parent, and the rabbi, or maybe a board member they barely knew – who they may or may not have liked so much – showed up at their door. And so, still grasping to the diminishing warmth of increasingly distant memories, they try to freeze the Jewish world to preserve a moment that at this point has mostly melted away, trying to hold onto an ice cube in an increasingly hot world. What happens if — in the service of holding onto an untenable, if precious past, you sacrifice the possibility of a viable future?
We all have a lot to learn and to teach, and much we must give up to keep moving forward together.
It is in balancing the gifts of each generation – and in giving them their moment – that we can find some way to function, creating a good enough present between a past that is not as glorious as we remember and a future that will probably fail to live up to its full promise.In Ecclesiastes 1:4, we learn:
דּ֤וֹר הֹלֵךְ֙ וְד֣וֹר בָּ֔א וְהָאָ֖רֶץ לְעוֹלָ֥ם עֹמָֽדֶת׃
One generation goes, another comes/ But the earth stands forever.
Rashi, our 11th century French commentator asks a crucial question, “But who are the ones who [cause the earth to] endure?”
He answers his own query: “The humble and low, who bring themselves down to the ground”
The earth remains due to the merits of those who are grounded, those who know and remember that they have come to learn and teach, to feed and feast in every season of their limited life.
Some in this sanctuary had the privilege of feasting at the home of Barbara Jolovitz z”l, may it was her classic salad Nicoise or her delectable chocolate chip cookies. She came to Waterville after she and her late husband, Lester, former Beth Israel President, met at a kosher function she was catering in Portland. When I first met Barbara, affectionately known as Bubbe by dozens, she took such joy in hosting Colby students at her home for Home Hospitality Shabbat. (A Waterville tradition where scores of Hillel students come down to Beth Israel to make minyan once it gets cold, and Beth Israel families host students at their homes for Shabbat dinners) One of the students she met, Anna, would come back to her home dozens of times after that first Shabbat dinner. When Anna needed to get off campus, she walked over to Barbara’s. When Anna needed a cookie, she showed up at Barbara’s. When Anna graduated, she brought her parents to Barbara’s home. Years later when she got engaged, she brought her fiance over to meet her one and only bubbe. Even though Barbara could not attend her wedding due to advanced age and illness, she still got invited.
When Barbara could no longer leave her home, I thought Anna would be her last Colby Hillel connection. But then a few of my Hebrew students heard about Barbara’s daily Yiddish email, her last public connection to the world outside her stately home off First Rangeway. Three of them signed up, and got Bubbe’s daily dose of Yiddish. They never physically met Barbara, but they were fed by her wisdom, and she told me during one of our last conversations, how touched she was that there were still Jewish kids on campus that desired to learn. Their appetite fed her neshama, her soul, even when her physical appetites had already mostly left her body. Her wisdom fed the part of them that wanted to discover who they were through connecting to a collective past, a past she shared with joy and humility. What fresh and fragrant fruit that relationship produced. Sun and snow, fire and ice, seed and soil. Growth. What a rare gift.
In this year to come, let us work toward that Messianic future on that rare, precious, intergenerational foundation we have laid for so many years in Waterville. The tensions (around our connection to Israel, what it means to be American, the changing face of the American Jewish family, and even the tunes we sing on Shabbat and holidays) will always remain, but so too will the fruits of cross-pollination across generational lines. In this year to come, I say to our new Hillel students – make sure to find your Barbara and your Jay! Find your bubbe and your little one, learn and teach in this fertile, special Waterville soil. To our new and veteran Beth Israel members, thank you for keeping your doors open to the full diversity of our mid-Maine Jewish community. Your hospitality is what gives this small, sweet community alive, along with the wisdom we carry from those who built and sustained this congregation for generations.
As we approach this fresh, new year, I not only wish you all a shanah tovah - a good year, but also want to deliver one of Barbara’s gifts from the grave: Words we should all know well, words that often came out of our bubbe’s mouth: Zie Gezunt min kinderlach - Go and live in health my beloved children. Und essen - And Eat!