April 12, 2025
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Erev Pesach
Getting Generations Right
April 12, 2025 – 14 Nisan 5785
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
In 1992 Rabbi Joseph Telushkin published a book entitled Jewish Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say About Jews. While he dedicated the book to his three daughters, the first chapter is about how hard it is for generations in a Jewish family to understand one another; how easy it is for frictions and misunderstandings to grow. Chapter one is entitled “Oedipus, Shmedipus, as Long as He Loves His Mother.” This is the first joke in his book.
Three elderly Jewish women are seated on a bench in Miami Beach, each one bragging about how devoted her son is to her.
The first one says: “My son is so devoted that last year for my birthday he gave me an all-expense paid cruise around the world. First class.”
The second one says: “My son is more devoted. For my 75th birthday last year, he catered an affair for me. And even gave me money to fly down my good friends from New York.
The third one says: My son is the most devoted. Three times a week he goes to a psychiatrist. Hundreds of dollars an hour he pays him. And what does he speak about the whole time? Me.
You might think that parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, are natural allies. That the natural energy is for the generations to get along easily. We share so much. We share a past, present, and future. We share family history. We share values. We share genes. We share a home. We sleep under the same roof. We share dreams. Your success is my success. In fact, I am happier for your success than for my success. What is so complicated? What could go wrong?
And yet, it is complicated, and it often does go wrong. That is not only evidenced by the jokes in Telushkin book. The inevitability of generational tension is the backdrop for the climactic passage in the special Haftarah from the prophet Malakhi who imagines that someday, in the future, there will be a yom Adonai hagadol v’hanorah, a day of the Lord that is great and awesome—that is how today became Shabbat hagadol. What will happen on that great and awesome day of the Lord? God “shall reconcile parents with their children and children with their parents.”
This Haftarah teaches us a few things about the generations. Getting it right is rare and hard. Getting it wrong is commonplace and easy. That is why the prophet imagines it takes God intervening to create generational peace.
Now why is that? Why is generational harmony complicated? There are the usual reasons we all know. Generations can disagree about politics. About Israel. Generations obviously have vastly different experiences with technology. And then personal experiences are so different. Alec Baldwin’s character on Thirty Rock observed about one family that the grandfather grew up in poverty, worked night and day, started a business that prospered, and became very wealthy; his granddaughter grew up in affluence and is doing improv. Both are lovely. Business is lovely. Improv is lovely. But the different pasts of grandfather and granddaughter lead to different presents.
All these differences—politics, Israel, technology, economics, work history—are all relevant. Yet there is an even deeper factor at play in why it is so hard to get generations right.
My late father in love, Rabbi Arnold Goodman, used to tell a story that early one morning, 3:00 in the morning, he and his young bride Rae, in their mid-20s, were driving from New York to Chicago. Both my in laws had been born and raised in New York. And now, my father in love, having just been ordained at the Seminary, was taking his first job as a Chaplain in the US Army, and his posting was Chicago. They were young. They were healthy. They were in love. They could not wait to get out on the road. Their car was packed. They were ready to go. But they had spent that last night at the apartment of my father in love’s mother, who was widowed. He was an only child. And when they got up to start their drive, they learned that his mother had prepared a whole feast. Stay a while. Have some breakfast. You love lox and bagels. I got you lox and bagels. You love cream cheese. I got you cream cheese. You love eggs and omelets. I just cooked it up. Eat a good breakfast. The last thing they wanted was to eat that breakfast at 3:00 in the morning. But eat that breakfast they did.
Roll the film forward. At 86, my father in love was widowed. He was alone. He revisited that story. He shared that he had always looked at that moment from the point of view of 25-year-olds who could not wait to start their new adventure. He had never seen or focused on what it must have been like for his widowed mother to have her only child drive across the country. He had never thought about how it felt for her when they left, and she was all alone, again.
My father in love was deeply empathetic. He loved his mother. He was a devoted son. But we are all so immersed in our own present reality that it is often hard to summon true empathy even for loved ones at different ages and stages. There are no villains in this drama, just the all-powerful primacy of the recency bias. The reality we live in right now is the reality we see, and it obscures our ability to see other realities.
So in view of all these challenges, how do we possibly get generations right? It is no coincidence that we read the Haftarah from Malakhi right before the first seder. For the generations to come together, all it takes is an evocative question, a listening ear, and genuine curiosity.
At our seders, we are going to ask the question that was inspired by Mishael Zion’s sermon last week. His opening line was: I am alive today because of a story told in a sermon. He went on to share that his grandfather was a child in Holland in the 1930s. An itinerant Christian preacher rode his bike and went from church to church. He would offer a short and pointed sermon to each congregation. He would tell them the story of Pharaoh’s evil decree to drown the newborn Hebrew males in the Nile. He would tell them about the moral courage of the midwives, Shifra and Puah, who resisted the evil decree. And he would conclude with three questions. Who is Pharaoh today? Everybody answered: Hitler. Who are the endangered Hebrew newborns today? Everybody answered: Our Jewish neighbors. Who will be the midwives today? He left them with that question. He would go on to give that sermon in over 40 towns that day. One of the congregants who heard him saved the Jewish child who would grow up to become Mishael Zion’s grandfather.
At our seder, we are going to invite everyone there to share the story that is most responsible for making you the person you are.
And the magic of these conversations is that they don’t have to end at the seder. Years ago we had a teen who, for her mitzvah project for her Bat Mitzvah, wanted to connect with an elderly woman in our community. We found her a truly remarkable woman, Rhoda Nissenbaum, zichrona livracha. Rhoda was then in her 90s, her mobility was limited, her vision was limited, but her wisdom and her warmth were expansive and gorgeous. This teen started meeting with Rhoda for her mitzvah project. But they grew to love one another, and long after her Bat Mitzvah was over, she continued to meet regularly with Rhoda well into her later years of high school, until Rhoda passed away. When Rhoda passed away, this now high school student was there laying her to her rest, deeply connected.
Which brings us to now. There is a special blessing in Jewish tradition called dor revii, the fourth generation. That is when we are able to see our child’s child’s child. That is our blessing now. Iris sees Lisa and Matthew’s children, Jessica and David, and their new daughter Gabriella Rose and her older brothers Asher and Gideon. We are not just reading about yom Adonai, a day of the Lord, we are all living it right now.
Which brings us back to our Haftarah. There are a lot of prophets. There are a lot of prophetic passages. But on the eve of Passover, our ancient sages saw fit to pick this prophet, and to pick this Haftarah, and to pick this message. The last message we hear before the seder tonight is: get it right, generations. Parents and children, get it right. Grandparents and grandchildren, get it right.
Why? Why of all the messages is that the message we are meant to hear now? Because Malakhi knew, and the rabbis who picked him knew, what we all know: Nothing is guaranteed. How long do any of us have? All that we know we have is now. Tomorrow is promised to nobody. So, while we can, while we are here, while our living parents, grandparents, and great grandparents are here, let’s get it right. In a troubled world, at a troubled time, let’s start by making peace and harmony at home, and let’s start now, tonight. Shabbat shalom and chag sameakh.