I have been thinking a lot about family recently…
There is a bag of very old, not suitable for use, tefillin sitting on the top of one of the bookshelves in my office. They belonged to this man: 
He was my paternal great-grandfather Alexander Mitzmacher. I never met him and other than the very few anecdotes that have been shared with me over the years by my family, I know almost nothing about him other than the fact that he had a set of tefillin. I can’t even say for sure that he treasured them or that he ever in fact wore them. I only know that my grandfather of blessed memory had them in his possession and when I became the first person in my family since (at least) Alexander to put on tefillin they were given to me as just about the only masculine heirloom we have.
We talk often about “Jewish continuity” and “links in the chain” as if there was a natural and smooth transference from one generation to another. As a parent and educator, I need to believe that we have the ability to influence, guide and mentor the next generation to value and practice that which we consider important through education, experience and the making of memories. As the observant grandson of Morris Mitzmacher, who jumped out the cheder window in 1922 and never looked back…well, I know that life is a bit more mysterious and unpredictable.
A story:
During my sophomore year in college there was a huge fire burning in the hills of Oakland and Berkeley near my apartment. I was working on a paper, keeping one eye on the computer screen and the other out my window tracking the fire’s progress. My mother called to see if I was okay and to see what I was still doing in the apartment. Most of my neighbors had fled the area, but I was young, stubborn, and had a due date. She called twice more, my father called once, but still I remained. Then they called in the big guns. My phone rang, I heard my grandfather’s voice, and I was out of the apartment in a manner of minutes.
I am an only child (explains a lot, doesn’t it!) who only had one living grandfather and was that man’s only grandchild. Let’s just say that we were exceptionally close. He was equal parts proud and bemused by the Jewish journey that led me to a life of Jewish education and ritual observance. He lived long enough to dance the night away at our wedding. He died three years before our first daughter, Eliana, was born and six years before our second daughter – his namesake – Maytal joined the family.
I think of him often and marvel how the boy who escaped Judaism grandfathered the head of a Jewish Day School. I wonder all the time what he would have made of this:
This is Maytal last year “reading” from a siddur. Or this:
Eliana just a few weeks ago braiding challah for her Kindergarten Shabbat Dinner.
Morris Mitzmacher, Jimmy to his friends, was born in 1914. Having sat at his knee rapt with attention to hear the stories of his life (not to mention the stories of his imagination) since I was a child, I feel as if I knew him as the classically trained piano prodigy who decided it was much more fun to chase girls than to practice scales. I feel I knew him as the rebellious preteen who jumped out of that window during cheder and never looked back on his Jewish education. I knew him as the terrifically bright high school graduate too poor to go to college. Like many men who came of age during the Great Depression, college was a luxury, work was a necessity. I knew him as the man who courted my grandmother Esther. I knew him as the family man, the business man, and the father. I have heard the stories of his legendary temper, although I never witnessed it myself.
He took incredible joy in the simple things in life: a fresh cup of steaming hot coffee, warm apple pie, a tuna fish sandwich, a Broadway musical, bocce at the clubhouse on a hot summer’s day, a dip in the pool, poker games on Tuesday nights, a weekend in Atlantic City, a perfect meringue, the Sunday New York Times, books, conversation, gin rummy, shameless flirting, a Jersey tomato, his friends, and his family. Up until the time of my grandmother’s passing, my grandfather had never lifted a finger for a domestic task. He knew nothing of cooking, laundry, or housecleaning. He knew nothing about being alone or about starting over. Those were dark days, but they did not last too long. Already an “old man”, my grandfather reinvented himself. He learned how to cook – he was especially proud of his recipe for sweet potatoes – he took pride in the laundry and he kept a clean home. He learned how to take care of himself at an age where many men would have simply given up. He renewed his love affair with life and with people.
But he never again stepped foot inside a synagogue again save for my Bar Mitzvah and my wedding. And all the while he continued holding onto a frayed bag of ancient tefillin. For all those years, he neither threw them out nor gave them to his son (who would have found them equally unnecessary). Why?
I never got an answer the one time I asked and he was gone before I could ask again.
And so they sit on my bookshelf and watch me go about my work. They tell a cautionary tale – perhaps had my grandfather had a more meaningful Jewish education he would not have jumped out that window without so much as a regretful look back. They are humbling – we cannot ultimately control the choices our children make. They are inspiring – it is never too late to join a Jewish journey, begin a Jewish education or try on a new Jewish practice. The tefillin were present even when we were absent.
What are the artifacts sitting on your shelves telling silent stories? Write them down, or better yet, tell them to your children. For by doing so we can do our part to ensure that despite the links and loops life brings us, the chain can remain unbroken.
I loved reading about the loop in the chain and I think my life’s work is helping our youngest students make sure the chain isn’t broken. It’s a huge responsibility to keep it going! But I wonder with what “artifacts” our children and grandchildren will remember us.