L'Dor V'Dor

Dear Brandeis community,

 

In the genetically modified dystopia of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, one of my Passover reads, the titular Crake states the following:

 

All it takes is the elimination of one generation. One generation of anything. Beetles, trees, microbes, scientists, speakers of French, whatever. Break the link in time between one generation and the next, and it’s game over forever.

 

Oryx and Crake was the last book that I read during our break, spent in a small beach town in Mexico where there was little to do beyond read in the sun. I recommend it, if you have the stomach for a far-too-plausible and not-too-distant broken future.

 

Crake’s line about generations resonated with me, as it likely might with you, because of where our Pesach began, in a seder with our extended family. We’ve rewritten our Haggadah over the years, starting with the base of a Jewish/Black Baptist interfaith seder that Kehillah Community Synagogue organized in the mid-80s. It is a righteous, thoughtful, energizing ceremony; but with four kids under the age of eight, we’ve needed to tune it more to their attention spans, understanding the primary purpose being to tell the story of our liberation from Egypt to each new generation. So, we’ve tinkered with it, and we continue to tinker with it. We talk of spiritual renewal, of celebrating the birth of a people into political freedom. We add an orange to the seder plate, we linger over Nachshon’s courage, we sing old songs made new. We make sure the links stay strong.

 

My first read of the break, after the seder and ensconced on the plane, was Jonathan Safran Foer’s behemoth Here I Am. I’d begun it over winter break and fizzled—it’s neither a simple nor an emotionally light read, and I realized I needed uninterrupted attention for it, so I put it on my mental “vacation read” list. It dives deep into Jewish American identity, from the role of the intellect and learning to a relationship with cousins in Israel. Reviewers have called it messy and complicated, and that seems fair, but with bright blue sky above me and oceans of time ahead I found it riveting, an eyes-wide if unhappy accounting of our broken selves and broken world, and our aspirations for each.

 

One line in particular jumped out: “Our stories are so fundamental to us that it’s easy to forget that we choose them.” A young rabbi is addressing gathered mourners; he uses the occasion of a lost grandparent to consider what happens when we lose a generation, and also why we choose the story of Anne Frank as foundational, rather than the Torah itself. The Torah is not about survival, he claims, it is about righteousness—the Jewish story is a story not of merely living against all odds, it is about being a beacon of justice in an unjust world.

 

But then, it is not so simple as choosing new stories, or not only so simple as that. Anne Frank did hide, and for good reason; that the links were only partly broken in the middle of the last century is a miracle woven of thousands of just actions in a world gone so unjust as to have become dystopian. We have needed to shelter, to circle the wagons. We have needed to know who was with us.

 

The second book I read in sunny Mexico was John McWhorter’s Words on the Move (which I did not forget to pack this time!). McWhorter is one of my favorite linguists (I feel a creeping suspicion that I should be embarrassed for having typed that sentence), for his keen observational ear (he hears so much in our language!), and his sly wit. As I read the book I kept interrupting Kate’s reading to share quotes, which I’m sure was really irritating (but he’s so funny, I couldn’t help myself!). The first chapter concerned a branch of communication called “pragmatics,” which I understand to mean the pieces of language that don’t fit neatly into our noun/verb/adjective frameworks. Think of phrases like “well,” or “really,” or “even,” as in “He even interrupted me to read a quote about ‘gray-ass squirrels.’” (I did.) These pieces of language do various things—assert veracity, or communicate surprise. One of their primary functions though is to ease conversation—like laughter, or LOLs in text, they communicate comfort, and a shared experience.

 

What struck me in reading this fascinating book is that in many ways, this is the function of Yiddish in American Jewish life—when I say “oy,” instead of “oh no,” there is an identifying move being made. We’re members of a tribe—we’re in this language, this moment, this story, together.

 

When we landed back in San Francisco, I turned on my phone and saw an email from Howard Caro, sharing David Brooks’ column from this past week, “How to Leave a Mark on People.” He asserts that some institutions are “thick”—that they become part of a person’s identity and engage the whole person. Thick institutions call forth the best in their members; people share a sense of purpose. Important traditions and stories are shared. L’dor v’dor means “from generation to generation.” It is not a biblical phrase—it’s a more recent story of ours, and one we especially like to tell as American Jews. “Dor” comes from a Hebrew word that meant circle, or room—we mean to gather close. We try to make our institutions thick.

 

Returning to Brandeis yesterday, I walked with awe into the library, to see the middle school mural elective’s painting of San Francisco spread out like a paean to this beautiful creative city of ours. I stood gaping, and a group of first graders gathered to gape with me. One of them, Geffen, pointed up to the sky and said “I see my star!” Every lower school student made a star; every middle school advisory made a bird—we are all of us present in lines and colors on that wall. It makes me wonder how we will share this story, how the narrative of the mural’s making will pass from one generation to the next. However it does, I know we are stronger for the telling.  

 

Wishing you all weekends full of starry stories, my friends.

 

Warmly,

 

Dan