Last Day of Pesach - Yizkor 5770 April 6 2010

There is a Mishna in the Ethics of the Fathers (Chapter 5)  which lists those things that Hashem created on the Friday afternoon of the week of Creation at twilight.  Some items on the list are famous, the ability for Bilaams donkey to speak, the power of Moshes staff, the manna etc.  Others seeingly more mundane  such as the first pair of tongs. How do you make tongs?  You heat a piece of iron in a furnace then take it out and hammer it to shape.  How do you take it out of the furncace? With tongs.    In essence the Mishna is teaching that even His creation is not immutabl only His will is immutable. One of the items on the list is haKsav / the writing.  Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik notes that this item seems out of place in the list.  What is so supernatural about writing that would place it on a list together with a talking donkey and manna?  (many offer that the writing reffered to here is the writing on the tablets that could miraculously be read when viewed from any direction.) Rabbi Soloveitchik offers that writing and by extension telling (the word sofer scribe and sippur story have the same root) has the ability to transport the listener or reader to another time and place and experice an event as thought they had personally been there.  He recalls how in his youth he was so absorbed in the naarative of the Torah that when reading of Jacobs tricking his father Issac for the blessing he almost blurted out "hurry Eisav is coming". This capacity is a great and miraculous gift of Hashem.

As we stand before Yizkor our thoughts turn to our parents and mine have also.  I was particularlly thinking about my father and what it was that he bequethed to me.  Of course he gave me life and I need not go further nonethelees he gave me much more.  The gift I appreciate most was how he related to me his lifes experiences. Listening to him describe vignettes of his youth I came to know people who had died before I was born and experienced events of worlds that no longer exist.  With this quality I was able to relate to many people in many different times and places.  Their experiences became mine.  How did my father do this?  Because he experienced the things that he saw.  They became him and he shared himself with me. 

In every genereation we are obligated to view ourselves as though we personally left Egypt.  Why not just tell over the story ?  It seems to me that if it is not my story I can't transmit it.  If it is me I can pass it on to you and it becomes yours. Some people can do this well others have much more difficulty.

I think that this may explain a phenomenon that I observe and in truth distresses me. Many people here have made life altering decisions.  Rejecting values that thye were raised with and embracing others.  Changing lifestyle has had unestimable impact of our financial and social lives and our very identities.  Yet I walk down the street on shabbos and see a child of this congregation not wearing a kippah dressed casually and i realize that he dosn't get it.  Do you know what your parents have done.  Do you understand the soul searching courage that it took them to come to this place.  Obviously you do not or you wouldn't so casually dismiss it.  So I ask you why don't they get it?
Perhaps it is because the parents are not telling their story.  Perhaps we need to share our experiences.  Not demand, harraunge, direct or thereaten.  Just share our story.  Our Exodus from Egypt. Share it to the point that they can feel it.  Share it as only the one who experiences it can share it.  Share it so that it will become their experience.  So that they were there and now it will be their experience and they can say I view myself as though I personally left my parents Egypt.