It's two years ago today that I stood in a Jewish cemetery on a hilltop in southwestern Germany. I stood at the grave of my great-great-grandfather who was, like me, Yitzchak Keller. I am named for him, indirectly, through his grandson, my Grandpa Irwin. And he was named, I discovered that same day, for his grandfather, Rabbi Yitzchak. And so there we were, present in spirit, a series of Isaacs leapfrogging generations. Perhaps more than us four; perhaps leapfrogging all the way back to the original Isaac, who in Torah this week, is brought to a mountaintop to be sacrificed, and an angel saves him, yet the shadow of this disruptive moment follows him through his life, slowly and sadly casting a veil between him and the world, until in old age, he can't see the difference between his two sons.
I stood at Great-Great-Grandfather Isaak's grave, and at his father's grave, and at many others. I had gotten there not through careful research or exploration of family lore carefully passed on to me. Because no family lore had been passed on to me. The only clue I‘d ever heard was that the Kellers were from some part of Germany where they made cuckoo clocks.
No, I was not there out of a triumph of research. I was there because in dreams I kept being pushed toward this corner of the world, over and over for years, without having a clue why. I've told about those dreams elsewhere, and don't need to repeat them now. But I did receive guidance that led me to this woody hill.
And standing there in that forest cemetery that served 29 surrounding Jewish communities, I learned about my own history. There was still so much I would never and will never know. But where knowledge ends, imagination picks up, and I left the cemetery and the village with a visceral feeling for the life they had.
I was lucky. Most Jews don't get that. Other people in other places do. People whose cultures date back thousands of years in one place. You can't be Italian without constantly rolling past the artifacts of your past – the art and the architecture and the smells and tastes. If you were Native American before the European conquerors arrived, you also would be at one with long, long history.
But here in this America, in our America, as Jews in America, often our roots are shallow. Our people arrived in waves on these shores. First Sephardim fleeing the Inquisition, later Ashkenazim fleeing pogroms. My Kellers were somewhere in between, German Jews trying for success in a new world.
But in these later waves, there is such a discontinuity of memory! I hear people in this congregation complaining about it all the time. I wasn't taught the old language. They used it to keep secrets from the children. I don't know what town we were from. There are no records. I don't know my grandmother’s maiden name.
Really, a shameful amnesia when you think about it. That our ancestors, who dared to disrupt their own families' continuity in order to start a new lineage, a better life for children and grandchildren and generations beyond – that they were so occupied with the future that they would decline to transmit the past. Leaving us, in this late moment of the world, digging in records, searching on the internet, to find the continuity, the lineage, that should have been our inheritance.
And so here we are, doing that research, and imagining the ancestors. A hundred or 150 years later we are healing these disruptions. Why? Why now? Why does it matter?
Maybe because we are, like they were, on a precipice. Our future looks so uncertain. Our politics fill us with fear. As do rising temperatures and ocean levels and fire risks. We are on a precipice. So maybe we need it to be solid and firm behind us in order to be able to take a good running jump forward into the future.
So we repave that path. We do it because we need the ancestors with us right now. We need their endurance and their courage and their wisdom. Because we might also have to create discontinuity. We may have to let go of our old ways, our old language and habits. Our old comforts. Maybe our great-grandchildren will talk with aggravation about how they never learned about gas-fueled cars or air conditioners. Maybe they will gripe about not having the misplaced privileges that we take for granted.
But they will know, I think, that we were – we are – thinking about them. We are worrying and hoping and planning for them. Just as, when I stood at that cemetery on that rainy hilltop, I felt seen. Not that I in particular was foreseen, but that the possibility of me had been contemplated.
So let's continue our ongoing healing work. Healing the past in order to lunge forward into the future. Healing our wounded places, inherited from leapfrogging generations, back to Isaac on the rock, a knife held over him. Let that angel save him again and again. Let us be the angel that saves us again and again.
Perhaps this is our mission, our purpose, being born in this time. So I'd like to close with sharing a poem by Greg Kimura called "Cargo". He says:
You enter life a ship laden with meaning, purpose and gifts
sent to be delivered to a hungry world.
And as much as the world needs your cargo,
you need to give it away.
Everything depends on this.
But the world forgets its needs,
and you forget your mission,
and the ancestral maps used to guide you
have become faded scrawls on the parchment of dead Pharaohs.
The cargo weighs you heavy the longer it is held
and spoilage becomes a risk.
The ship sputters from port to port and at each you ask:
“Is this the way?”
But the way cannot be found without knowing the cargo,
and the cargo cannot be known without recognizing there is a way,
and it is simply this:
You have gifts.
The world needs your gifts.
You must deliver them.
The world may not know it is starving,
but the hungry know,
and they will find you
when you discover your cargo
and start to give it away.