When I was in college, there was a woman I knew who was Jewish, but who never participated in Jewish activities. She told me at one point that on Yom Kippur, her father would go into his study, close the door, and read, or whatever else it might be that he did. He never shared what he did, much less explained why he felt it was important to do it, or why it was relevant to Yom Kippur. She was left “in the dark,” and nothing of what he did, nor the importance of Yom Kippur (or any other holiday), was passed along to her.
Rabbi Akiva Males of Memphis shared a similar story that he found in Along the Maggid’s Journey by Rabbi Pesach Krohn, along with a thought tying these stories to our reading this week. Rabbi Yaakov Vann was invited into a minyan (service, quorum) for mourners in Jerusalem, following the custom to pray in the house of those mourning for one week following the burial. He quickly noticed, however, that the mourners and several of their friends were not used to wearing yarmulkes, though the house had many well-used sefarim (Jewish texts). One book he opened had comments written in the margins, indicating how seriously the owner had studied.
Afterwards, sitting with the mourners, R’ Yaakov asked about the texts and was told by the mourner that they had belonged to his father. Only the father, though, had studied them. “Only he was religious,” the mourner said. “When my father came home from work, he would lock himself in his room with his books and he wouldn’t come out for hours. We know that he studied in there, but we hardly ever saw him, and he never studied when we were around.”
Rabbi Vann, thinking about this conversation, remembered a thought from Rabbi Aaron Rokeach of Belz. The Torah says: “The secret things are Hashem our G-d’s, but the revealed things are for us and for our children for eternity” [Deut. 29:28].
The Rebbe gave this a Chassidic interpretation: “Secret things,” which we do but keep hidden from others, “are for Hashem,” meaning that only Hashem knows what we did. But “that which is revealed to us and to our children,” what we share with them, those things are with us “for eternity;” they will continue on.
Both the mourner, and the woman I met in college, were never introduced to their heritage. All they saw, as Rabbi Krohn put it, “was a closed door—and it separated them symbolically from their religious roots.”
The Torah gives us a Mitzvah to learn Torah, but not merely to study it ourselves. Rather, “you shall teach it to your children” [Deut. 6:7]. We must always focus on the next Jewish generation, to carry forward our great inheritance.
Image credit: Maurycy Trębacz
