CO-STAR Blog - Sharing insights about synagogue life

Much of the work we do at STAR is future oriented. Based on the best available data, and discussions with synagogue and philanthropic leaders throughout the country, we try to anticipate the future shape of the Jewish community so that we can prepare for it. 

But periodically, I need to be reminded to pause and look backward so that the Jewish future will flow from past experience. That way, it is more likely to be authentic and lasting.

Immediately after Purim, I start to think about the next Jewish festival, Passover, in earnest. As a mental warm up exercise for preparing, I began leafing through a relatively new haggadah, entitled, A Night to Remember. The Haggadah of Contemporary Voices, by Mishael Zion and Noam Zion.

I came across a comment by the novelist, Rabbi Chaim Potok, of blessed memory, which provided this reminder to look back before thinking ahead. 

Potok wrote:

I don’t think you can be fully a member of the Jewish people and, creatively, a member of humanity, without knowing who you yourself are.The only way you achieve a deep sense of self is to know your own beginnings. That’s why Torah is important to the Jews. Torah is a Jew’s sense of self…the foundation stones of it. Then you can pick and choose, quarrel with it, discard this, accept that; but at least know where  the shoreline is before you begin to row away from it! If you are rowing and there is no shoreline at all, then you’re navigating blind; and to navigate blind is to live in dread.

The haggadah itself is a wonderful example of how that can be done. While it contains a basic script dating back to approximately 2000 years, the haggadah has morphed throughout the centuries to reflect the zeitgeist of each age.  In more recent times, haggadot set within the frameworks of environmentalism, feminism, vegetarianism and chemical dependency have been created.

Those efforts which seek to engage younger generations can take a page from the haggadah and its ability to serve as an old yet relevant educational framework. We have to speak to upcoming generations, who carry the Jewish future within them, in their idiom. But, we also have to guide and challenge them to find those connecting threads that are a part of our collective inheritance and weave them into the emerging Jewish narrative.

B’Shalom,
Hayim Herring