(Delivered September 12, 2026)

Shabbat shalom! Shanah tovah! 

I want to start with a story from my life. Most of you know I have two sons, and once upon a time, they were quite little. The story I’m about to tell takes place in the sweet spot when they were big enough to think about תשובה—about return or repentance—but little enough that I was still tucking them in every night. It was a very sweet spot indeed.

One night at bedtime, during the month of Elul, I managed to get a quiet moment with each boy. Nobody else was listening, and I said privately to each son in his turn: “If I have done anything to hurt you or harm you in the past year, intentionally or unintentionally, I sincerely ask your forgiveness.” 

I’m a very lucky mom, because even though I had made plenty of mistakes with them over the year, they both accepted my תשובה and offered me their forgiveness. 

A few minutes later, as I was leaving the room, having tucked them both in, I heard a murmur from one bunk to the other one, as one boy said to his brother: “If I have done anything to hurt you or harm you in the past year…”

[…]

Dayeinu, that moment would be sufficient for its sweetness alone. But year by year, as I look back on it, I see new layers. Today, it speaks to me as more than just a teaching moment, but also as a moment that teaches.

At the pshat level, the level of basic, simple meaning, this is a story about תשובה, about the mechanics of asking and offering forgiveness. Going deeper, it reflects the strength that lies in vulnerability and the value of opening ourselves up to criticism or rejection, for the sake of getting closer. It reveals the ways that children can step up when given the tools to do so. And it suggests the ripple effect of not just telling but showing the people around us what’s most important.

We hear a lot these days about the generational transfer of wealth, the resources that one generation passes onto the next, and about how it extends and solidifies differences of advantage and disadvantage. In that context, we typically think of generational wealth as referring to material riches, financial resources like land ownership, money, family heirlooms. 

Yet when you use your grandmother’s silver at Pesach, it’s about much more than how much you might get for it if you put it on eBay, much more than just the ornate spoons and forks. Chances are, that silver traveled a distance, gathering stories as it went. Chances are, you’re using that silver to serve and eat recipes that came from generations past. Chances are, you’re enjoying your meal with people from different generations who share some of your history and likely some of your DNA. 

In Jewish tradition the generational transfer of wealth is not just material. It’s also cultural, religious, historical, and theological. It’s emotional and spiritual. Our Amidah says:

 לְדוֹר וָדוֹר נַגִּיד גָּדְלֶךָ וּלְנֵֽצַח נְצָחִים קְדֻשָּׁתְךָ נַקְדִּישׁ
From generation to generation, we will declare the greatness of God,
and for ever and ever we will amplify God’s holiness. 

From generation to generation לְדוֹר וָדוֹר, we will hold the objects and stories that are precious to us in trust, to transmit to the people we love. And although we have a history in Jewish tradition of revering our elders and our teachers, that’s not the whole story. Truly, the intergenerational sharing flows in all directions.

Take this teaching from the Talmud, on Taanit 7a:

אָמַר רַב נַחְמָן בַּר יִצְחָק: לָמָּה נִמְשְׁלוּ דִּבְרֵי תוֹרָה כְּעֵץ
שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: עֵץ חַיִּים הִיא לַמַּחֲזִיקִים בָּהּ
Rav Nachman bar Yitzhak said: Why do we compare words of Torah to a tree,
as in “It is a tree of life to those who hold on tight to it.”

In other words, how in the world did we get the image of the Torah being like a tree? 

If you stop and think about it, it’s a reasonable question.

The Gemara continues: Just as a small piece of wood can ignite a larger one, so too a lesser Torah scholar can sharpen a more experienced one. This is why Rabbi Chanina says: I have learned much from my teachers, and more from my friends, but it’s from my students that I’ve learned the most. 

And as the one person who gets to learn Torah with all the generations in our community—from the youngest students in our Sylvia Cohen Community School, to the Bnei Mitzvah students I work with in preparation for their Divrei Torah, to the folks in our congregation and around town who share Torah study and Backyard Mishnah, I can confirm. I often say I’m never so dim as when I study Torah by myself; but boy, do I learn from each and every person who comes to my classes!

Another story about intergenerational sharing of wisdom, from the very first mishnah of Pirkei Avot (Wisdom of the Ancestors), starts this way:

משֶׁה קִבֵּל תּוֹרָה מִסִּינַי, וּמְסָרָהּ לִיהוֹשֻׁעַ, וִיהוֹשֻׁעַ לִזְקֵנִים, וּזְקֵנִים לִנְבִיאִים,
וּנְבִיאִים מְסָרוּהָ לְאַנְשֵׁי כְנֶסֶת הַגְּדוֹלָה
Moses received Torah from Sinai, and passed it along to Joshua, and Joshua to the Elders, and the Elders to the Prophets,
and the Prophets passed it along to the men of the Great Assembly.

On the basic level, this is a concrete way of talking about just what I was saying before, about the generational transfer of intellectual and spiritual wealth. But notice the first line: משֶׁה קִבֵּל תּוֹרָה מִסִּינַי—Moses received Torah miSinai. Literally from Sinai, but is that mountain in Egypt really the source of our wisdom tradition? 

Sinai here is a metaphor representing the communal experience of receiving Torah, and not just at one moment in the Book of Exodus, but over the course of the forty years’ wandering, and over the course of the millennia since. Moses and the Israelites received the Torah step by step, and our tradition has been receiving and transmitting it ever since. The sages of the Rabbinic period, the architects of halacha, the midrashists, the women who made their voices heard and the women who couldn’t, the creatives who set it all to music and made images dance in our eyes. 

And always, that receiving and that giving, taking shape in the context of a community of fellow-travelers. More than a place, Sinai is a complex, ever-evolving culture.

Sinai is what we experience in intergenerational community, the way tradition cements itself and becomes a part of us. We see it taking root when we wrap a baby in a family tallit for naming, and when the baby grows up and wears that tallit at their B mitzvah. We see it when the tallit becomes a chuppah and eventually, with fringes torn, a shroud for burial. We receive our tradition from one another in these milestone moments and at other stops along the way.

We are at Sinai when we are in the company of other Jews, singing, or arguing, or studying, or contemplating life’s big questions and themes. We are at Sinai when we come into the synagogue and when we go to the woods. We are at Sinai when we share Jewish cultural events and when we wrestle with ancient teachings. We are at Sinai when we suddenly recognize that the “trust-fall” scene in Mean Girls is communal תשובה, and when we join the circle of kavod at religious school each week. We are at Sinai when we are locked in with the words of our prayer book and when our minds wander to the beauty of the sunlight filtering in through the windows of this holy space.

Sinai is with us and in us. 

And some of the most iconic words of our tradition—words that some of us say several times a day—teach us what to do and how, in order to access the Sinai that is our inheritance. 

שְׁמַע! Listen, as if you’ve never heard them before.

וְאָהַבְתָּ אֵת ה’ אֱלֹהֶיךָ
And you will love Adonai your God

Ours is a teaching rooted in love: love for our people, and for our ancestors, and for all the forces that gathered somehow to make us what we are. Forces that, when considered collectively, some people call God.

בְּכָל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכָל־נַפְשְׁךָ וּבְכָל־מְאֹדֶךָ
With all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your being

This is not a halfway project. The tradition that we pass from generation to generation depends on our wholehearted commitment. Whole soul too. Everything we are, and more.

וְהָיוּ הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם עַל־לְבָבֶךָ
And these things which I command you today should be on your heart

OK, but why ON? The Kotzker Rebbe, one of our ancestors in 18th century Poland, used to teach that we have to set things on our hearts because there are times when our hearts aren’t open. Making it a practice to place our most cherished teachings and ideas on our hearts is a way of making sure that at those moments when our hearts do open, the wisdom is right there, ready to drop in where it is needed the most. 

וְשִׁנַּנְתָּם לְבָנֶיךָ
And teach them to your children

Sometimes I think placing the teachings on your heart and sharing them with your children are actually the same action.

וְדִבַּרְתָּ בָּם בְּשִׁבְתְּךָ בְּבֵיתֶךָ וּבְלֶכְתְּךָ בַדֶּרֶךְ וּבְשָׁכְבְּךָ וּבְקוּמֶךָ
And talk about them when you sit in your house, and when you walk the path, when you lie down, and when you get up

This might be my favorite part, among favorite parts. This line speaks so deeply to the everyday practice of לְדוֹר וָדוֹר. The things we talk about all the time are the things that the people around us learn are important to us. And if they admire us, they begin to regard them as important too.

וּקְשַׁרְתָּם לְאוֹת עַל־יָדֶךָ וְהָיוּ לְטֹטָפֹת בֵּין עֵינֶיךָ
And bind them symbolically on your hands and between your eyes

Keep these cherished teachings where you can see them, keep them in the work of your hands and in the way you view the world. 

וּכְתַבְתָּם עַל־מְזֻזוֹת בֵּיתֶךָ וּבִשְׁעָרֶיךָ
And write them on your doorposts and on your gates.

Not just inside your house but outside too. The words of our tradition sustain us and guide us in the way we encounter the world around us. They are an inheritance we pass up and down the generations, so much so that we are devoting ourselves to intergenerational learning this year through a series of community-wide programs organized and co-planned by the Sylvia Cohen Community School and the Adult Learning Committee. You’ll hear much more about this as the year progresses, and I hope you’ll join and support these programs as yet one more way we engage with one another across time and space, joining in the immortal conversation of our people. 

On this Yom haZikaron—Day of Remembering—may we know the blessing of recalling our sacred past with reverence. On this Yom Harat Olam—Day of the World’s Birth—may we know the optimism of continual re-creation. And on this day of family togetherness, of gathering in beloved community, of apples and honey shared around a joyful table, may we know the sweetness of finding our place in the never ending flow of our beloved tradition. 

Shanah tovah!