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May 4, 2010
The historical Jewish dream
I was at a bris this morning and the baal simcha (the father, not the baby) said something very poignant. Afterwords, as I was saying mazel tov before leaving, someone else pointed out how that same line had struck him as very powerful, so I have decided to share it with you.
The father was explaining how they had chosen the name. He said, and I am not quoting precisely because I do not remember the exact words he used, that they looked back on all the branches of their family trees, and as far as they could figure out, this is the first baby born in their families in Israel in at least 1800 years.
That one line expresses everything about Jews, our desire to return to Zion, and our ability to return to Zion today. People have good reasons for not coming, there are delays, life gets in the way, and all that. But at the end of the day it is so much easier today to fulfill this dream, the dream that Jews for centuries have held and largely were unable to achieve, today it is possible.
After 1800 years, the children are finally able to return. The dream was kept alive, and the dream stays alive. It is upon us to seize the day, seize the opportunity, and finally fulfill the Jewish dream that stayed with us through the centuries of exile. We are able to, and we are doing it.
The father was explaining how they had chosen the name. He said, and I am not quoting precisely because I do not remember the exact words he used, that they looked back on all the branches of their family trees, and as far as they could figure out, this is the first baby born in their families in Israel in at least 1800 years.
That one line expresses everything about Jews, our desire to return to Zion, and our ability to return to Zion today. People have good reasons for not coming, there are delays, life gets in the way, and all that. But at the end of the day it is so much easier today to fulfill this dream, the dream that Jews for centuries have held and largely were unable to achieve, today it is possible.
After 1800 years, the children are finally able to return. The dream was kept alive, and the dream stays alive. It is upon us to seize the day, seize the opportunity, and finally fulfill the Jewish dream that stayed with us through the centuries of exile. We are able to, and we are doing it.
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"this is the first baby born in their families in at least 1800 years."
ReplyDeleteHow old are the parents?
Perhaps you meant born in Israel?
thanks for catching it. I fixed it now
ReplyDeleteWait a sec - do you mean to tell me that both father and mother of the baby can trace the location of ALL of their ancestors for the past 1800 years?! That's quite unbelievable, literally.
ReplyDeleteanon - I have no idea. I am just repeating what he said.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, as someone who has traced ancestry about 250 years back, and is always very interested in the field, I can tell you that if you find yourself related to somebody famous in Judaism (usually a famous rabbi), you can almost always then trace back very far, as the famous rabbis "back then" usually had ancestry that was well known. Perhaps he is in such a family.
What was the name?
ReplyDeleteobviously not much of a dream if generally people are not exercising the option to fulfill it.
ReplyDeleteRafi,
ReplyDeleteIf you are the child of such a rabbi, you can trace only half of your ancestry back like that (since it doesn't impact your mother's ancestry). If you are a grandchild, 3/4 is left untraceable through him. If you're the great-great-grandchild of such a rabbi (possibly early 1900's), only about 3% of your ancestry can be traced through this rabbi.
In order to trace back 1800, at 3 generations a century (conservative; the figure is probably more), you get over 18,000,000,000,000,000 lines to check. There will definitely be some overlap, but even if he managed to check 1000 genealogical lines back that far, it's not even going to come close. Just going back half that far necessitates checking over 100 million lines.
So while it's a nice idea, it's completely out of touch with reality to say that as far as we know, this is the first child born in Israel is 1800 years. Well, not really out of touch with reality, since it is, technically, as far as they know. But they're not really offering a lot in terms of how much they checked.
By the way, what's the name that they gave?
not that it matters, but the name is Shalom Yisrael.
ReplyDeleteTrue, all the problems are correct. But who cares? It was a nice thought.