Becoming a society that honors its children
After Moses, Aaron and Miriam lead their people to freedom, the Hebrew Bible describes their adventures in the wilderness and arrival at Mount Sinai. Moses ascends the mountain and receives Divine guidance, summarized in Aseret HaDibrot, the Ten Sayings, or Ten Commandments. Passover commemorates the exodus from Egypt and the holiday of Shavuot recalls Matan Torah, the Giving of the Torah, our Hebrew wisdom teachings.
We celebrate Passover at home with a ritual meal called a seder. Shavuot is celebrated in synagogue. We unroll the Torah scroll on which the first five books of the Hebrew Bible are written in beautiful calligraphy. We chant the Ten Sayings, discuss our interpretation of the ancient words and enjoy holiday blintzes.
Many years ago, I had the joy of singing those special verses at a service attended by my parents of blessed memory. Also present was a rabbinic teacher of mine who has since left this world. I was thrilled to sing, “Honor your father and your mother,” with my teacher and own father and mother right there.
My father was not a religious man. Born in 1922, he was raised when science and religion were thought to be adversarial camps. My father studied physics and worked on computer systems for reading images, something we take for granted today. He was an early member of the Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers with the stated mission: “SPIE partners with researchers, educators, and industry to advance light-based research and technologies for the betterment of the human condition.”
My father didn’t care much about God, but he cared deeply about humanity. Physicists had helped win World War II with the devastating atomic bomb, and in the post-war years, the jobs for young physicists were in defense work. So, that’s what my father did, working on equipment to read satellite imagery.
In the early ’90s, when I told my parents that I was serving as a student rabbi, my father replied, “I don’t believe in organized religion.” I said, “Don’t worry, Father. In Humboldt we have disorganized religion!”
But when my parents moved to Humboldt County in their senior years, my father eagerly stepped into the role of the rabbi’s father and took delight in our Jewish events. Many times I heard him remark on how different and special the Jewish community in Humboldt was, more engaging and personal than being part of a big congregation in a metropolitan area. I feel the same. The scale of things in Humboldt County is just more livable.
My father listened as I sang the Ten Great Sayings. After the service, he took my teacher and me aside with urgency and excitement and said, “Rabbis, all this is well and good, but what about the 11th commandment? Honor your children!”
This week we’ll be celebrating the holiday via Zoom. We’ll chant the beloved verses without a festive gathering at the synagogue. This is how it must be now to protect members and guests from COVID-19.
Every year I think of my father’s passionate question, and this year it really touches me. How can we become a society that honors our children? We fail far too often. We fail to honor our children when we provide inadequate childcare and parental leave. We fail to honor our children when they are crushed with student debt. We fail to honor our children when we send them to fight unwinnable wars over oil and power. We fail to honor our children when we cut funding for pandemic preparedness. We fail to honor our children when we bring the climate to the brink of irreversible disaster.
In the Hebrew Bible Moses and his generation are doomed to die in the wilderness; only the younger generation will make it to the Promised Land. I read this as follows: the future is a place of promise, fulfillment, fruition. We want to see younger generations moving toward a healthy and hopeful future. As the pandemic forces us to reflect on our mortality and the fragility of life, we hope we’ll leave this world knowing we’ve played our part in the great experiment of life on earth, embracing life’s gifts and opportunities, counting our blessings, and building a heritage of compassion and generosity to pass on to those who follow us.
In big life decisions and in everyday choices, may we remember to honor our children — all the children of our great, complicated human family.