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| Me in front of my Grandfather's school, with picture of him at the age he would have been when he went there. |
A few years ago, I found myself standing in the courtyard of the
Jewish day school that my grandfather, Fred Marcus, attended in 1939. The generational
continuity was made all the more impressive by the fact that this day school
was in Berlin, Germany. You see, when Annie and I were living in Israel in
2013, we had the opportunity to go on a class trip to Berlin, led by one of my
professors, to learn about the Jewish community that had existed before the war
and the fledgling Jewish community that exists there now. For my classmates, it
was an exciting learning opportunity, but for me it was a special homecoming. My
grandfather and I were very close. His influence is a big part of the reason I
am in rabbinical school. My Jewish identity was shaped in so many ways by his
love and teaching. And he passed away when I was a senior in High School.
Some Holocaust survivors cannot ever go back, either mentally or
physically. The years of the Shoah become a chapter in a book that must remain
closed and hidden away on a high shelf, or under the bed. But my grandfather
was not one of them. My grandfather never compartmentalized his story, he never
hid it. As an educator, he saw it as his duty to tell it. He would travel to
schools all around Denver, where he lived, to testify to his experience in the Holocaust.
I’ll be telling his story tomorrow at our dinner, and I don’t want to spoil it.
If you want to know more, you’ll have to come back then. Tomorrow is for the
story, but tonight, I want to tell you now a little bit of what I learned from
him.
It wasn’t just that my grandfather was able to go back to his
childhood in his memory. He went there physically. Germany was the land of his
childhood, with many happy memories, not just painful ones. And he and my
grandmother visited there a number of times. He also visited Shanghai, where he
spent the war years, reconstructing in his mind a map of the ghetto that no
longer existed in reality. My grandfather was not afraid to re-visit those
places, though they had seen both the happiest and saddest moments of his young
life, because they were a part of him. In fact, when he died in 2002 of his
fourth heart-attack, it was in Germany, on a trip to see his homeland once
more.
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| Me and Annie at my great great grandparent's grave at the Weissensee Cemetery |
And all through my childhood, my grandfather would tell me that
someday it was his dream to take me to Berlin, to show me the land of his
fathers. It was a dream he never realized. So when the opportunity came to
visit Berlin two years ago, I jumped at the chance. Annie and I were school-trip
delinquents. We spent much of the trip sneaking away from the group to go find
sights that my grandmother suggested might still be around. She did her best to
remember places that had meant something to him, having not been there herself
in many years, and we followed her sparse directions, and used a lot of Googling
to find a few key sites for ourselves. We visited the Berlin Zoo, his favorite
place to hang out as a child (more on that tomorrow). We visited the grave of
my great, great grandparents at the Weissensee Cemetery. And that is how we
came to be outside Grosse Hamburger Schule (School), my grandfather’s school,
on a very cold day in March. As we huddled together, I tried to imagine the man
I remembered in his 70s as a 15 year-old boy, ascending those same steps. I tried
to imagine who he had been then, how he came to be the person I knew. How this
place had shaped him, and all the places from Belin, to Shanghai, to San Francisco,
to Denver, and back once more to Berlin, had shaped him. How all these places
added up to make him the man I knew and loved.
Our Torah portion this week seems appropriate for telling the story
of my grandfather - Parashat Toldot, which means “Generations.” It tells the
story of Jacob and Esau, two brothers who, from the time even before they were
born, were at war. They struggled against each other in the womb. And the
parasha is bookended by two parallel tales. At the beginning of Toldot, Jacob
tricks his brother Esau into selling him his birthright. At the end of the
parasha, Jacob tricks his father, Isaac, into giving him the blessing that was
intended for Esau. By the end of Toldot, Jacob has acquired both a birthright
and a blessing. As I was reading the portion this week, I wondered: What is the
difference between a birthright and a blessing? Why does Jacob need both? Once
he has the birthright, why would he need to steal the blessing, too?
A birthright in the biblical world is a property right. The eldest
son, in most cases, inherited the entirety of his father’s property. When Jacob
sets out to acquire the birthright, he is acquiring the land and goods and
services that his father had acquired in his lifetime or had inherited from his
father, Abraham. A birthright comes automatically, it is your heritage. It is
whatever is passed down.
But a blessing is something different. Rabbi Umberto Cassuto says
that a blessing is a prayer that one hopes God will make into a reality. It’s a
hope for the future. It cannot be held or touched or visited. It is the moment
when one generation lays its hands on the next and says, “These are my dreams
for you. This is the light I will share with you.” What Jacob wanted from Isaac
was more than a birthright; it was more than a house and some sheep. He wanted
light.
In our world, it is not only the first-born that receives a
birthright. Each of us inherits from the generations who came before. It is not
always property, but we get a heritage. A last name. A homeland. A story. A
sense of who we are and where we came from. When I stood in that courtyard in
Berlin, this was the sense that I had. I was experiencing my birthright. As I
visited the homeland of my grandfather, and his father and his grandfather, I
had a sense of the power of birthright. Looking up at that school, I knew: This
is where my people came from. Standing next to my great grandparents’ grave I
knew: This is our story. This is my inheritance. Not just the story of a war,
but the story of a man who survived. The love of a heritage of survival.
Many of us, if we are lucky, do not only receive a birthright, we
also receive a blessing. I would hope that most of us can think of the
blessings that our parents and grandparents bestowed on us. A blessing is
something altogether different. A birthright is a look backward, a foundation
on which to live. But when we are given a blessing it’s a goal to build
towards, a height for which to reach. The blessings are the lessons we learned
from our ancestors. The things they taught us, and the things we learned from
watching the ways they lived. A birthright is something we might hold in our
mind – to know from whence we came. A blessing is something we hold in our
heart – to feel who we might become.
Standing in that courtyard, I was aware not just of my birthright,
but also of my blessings, of the way of living my grandfather showed me. I
thought of his love of life. I thought of his love of learning. I thought of
his love of travel. I thought of the man who had survived horrors that had
annihilated the Jewish community of his birth and who maintained an abundant
faith in humanity. I thought about his bravery and his humility. These are the
blessings my grandfather gave to me. They are far too many to innumerate here
but there’s one in particular that I’m thinking of this week because of our Torah
portion, the portion of Toldot, Generations:
There is an odd story that happens in the middle of this week’s
portion, in between the birthright and the blessing. There is a famine, and
Isaac and Rebecca have wandered looking for food, and they end up in a
Philistine Kingdom called Gerar, in what now Gaza, well outside of the land of
his father Abraham. They prepare to head down to Egypt, where hear there is
abundant food. But God tells to Isaac to remain in Gerar, that good things will
come to him there. God says, “Stay in this land, and I will be with you, and
bless you.” In fact, it is the first time God speaks directly to Isaac. And Isaac
listens, and thus it says, “וַיֵּשֶׁב יִצְחָק בִּגְרָר”
– “Isaac stayed in Gerar.” A whole crazy comedy happens with the king of Gerar,
which reads like the mistaken identities in a Shakespeare play, the result of
which is that by staying there, Isaac and Rebeca end up acquired a lot of
wealth. God says, “Stay in this strange and foreign place, and some good will
come of it”. It is hard, and there are moments of terror, but in the end, good
does come of it.
There is a Hassidic commentary on the words “Isaac stayed in Gerar.”
It says that there are times in our lives where we do not know where we should
go, literally where we should dwell. The commentary says “אם בא למקום פלוני דרך מקרה,” “If you have come to some place or
another by chance, מן הסתם רמז הואמן השמים שעליו לגור שם,
this may be a little hint from heaven that you should dwell there.” The
commentator is saying, wherever you are, that is the place where you are meant
to be. When God tells Isaac to stay in Gerar, and that God will bless him, it
is a reminder that there are blessings to be derived from the place where he
is. Isaac’s uncertainty of where he should go next is replaced with a sense
that where he is, is probably where he is meant to.
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| In Shanghai: That's my grandfather and great-grandfather above the "T" in "Tiendong" |
This is how my grandfather lived, and it’s his blessing to me that
I am remembering most this week. Life in the Jewish ghetto in Shanghai was hard.
I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow, but for now suffice it to say that there
was sickness, and there was hunger. My grandfather often lived from one meal to
the next. And yet, he made a life for himself there. He joined a cultural club
and wrote a newspaper column. When the war ended, he stayed and found an
exciting job, and made friends, and met girls. When he and his father had fled
Berlin, there were very few places in the world open to them. And so they found
themselves in Shanghai. But having done so, my grandfather embraced the philosophy
of this Hassidic commentary. He took it as a sign from heaven and said, “Yes,
this is where I should be.” And when he got to California he did the same. Later,
when the synagogue where he was working part time as an educator asked him to
become the education director he said, “Yes, this is where I should be.” And
when he retired and my grandmother asked him to move back with her to Denver,
he said, “Yes, this is where I should be.” And whenever anyone would ask him to
come and teach a class, whether on his Holocaust experience or something else,
he would say, “Yes, this is where I should be.” And on his many travels with my
grandmother to over 100 countries, he always looked around and said, “Yes, at
this moment, this is where I should be.” When I travel, when I embrace the
possibility of the place that I am in, when I say “Yes, this is where I should
be,” I am living out the blessing of my grandfather.
On my first visit to High Point I told a story about Friday nights
at my grandparents’ house. I told you that we would begin each meal with him
giving me a blessing. I stood on a chair, and he put his hand on my head and
blessed me with the ancient words of our tradition. On one week, I put my hand
on his head, but the break with protocol did not faze him. In his head, he said,
“Yes, this is where I should be.” So, from that week on we blessed each other. We
said the words of the Priestly blessing, and in his memory, I share them with
you now. They are my birthright, and my blessing, my heritage and my future. Each
week, when we laid our hands on each other’s heads, this is what we said:
יְבָרֶכְךָ יהוה, וְיִשְׁמְרֶךָ
Yivarechecha Adonai viyishmirecha
May
God’s birthright be one of safety and benediction.
יָאֵר יהוה פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ, וִיחֻנֶּךָּ
Ya'er Adonai panav elecha veechuneka
And
may God’s blessings be one of light and grace.
יִשָּׂא יהוה פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ, וְיָשֵׂם לְךָ שָׁלוֹם
Yeesa Adonai panav elecha viyasem lecha shalom
As we
look each other face to face, my you see the face of God in others, and may it
bring you the abundant blessing of peace.
May we all be so lucky, to receive from the people we love, both a
birthright and a blessing.