Rabbi Freund: The Jewish future begins at home

The Jewish people of tomorrow are growing up in the homes 
and classrooms of today. 

The Torah reading for the first day of Rosh Hashanah begins with several particularly fitting words.

“V’Hashem pakad et Sarah" - “And the Lord remembered Sarah" (Bereishit 21:1).

After decades of waiting, Sarah finally gives birth to a son. She is 90 years old, Avraham is 100, and everything about it seems impossible.

Yet Yitzchak is born.

His birth is far more than the answer to the prayers of an elderly couple. Through Yitzchak, the covenant with Avraham will continue, the Jewish people will emerge, and the promise of Eretz Yisrael will be carried forward.

The opening verse twice emphasizes that G-d fulfilled His word. He remembered Sarah “as He had said" and acted “as He had spoken" (Bereishit 21:1).

These words deserve attention. The Torah could simply have told us that Sarah gave birth. Instead, it explicitly connects Yitzchak’s arrival to what G-d had promised. The years of waiting had not made His word any less certain.

The Jewish people know a thing or two about waiting.

For 1900 years, Jews prayed for a return to Zion. Generation after generation said, “Next year in Jerusalem," long after Jewish sovereignty had disappeared and its restoration seemed unimaginable.

Then, against extraordinary odds, the Jewish people returned to their ancient homeland.

Sarah waited decades. The Jewish people waited centuries. For us, reading about Yitzchak’s birth in a generation that has witnessed the return to Zion, the comparison is especially meaningful.

A few verses later, Hagar and Yishmael are sent away from Avraham’s home. Their water runs out in the wilderness, and Hagar fears that her son will die.

An angel tells her not to fear, “for G-d has heard the voice of the boy ba’asher hu sham" - “where he is" (Bereishit 21:17).

Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, 1040-1105), citing the Midrash in Bereishit Rabbah (53:14), describes the angels protesting that Yishmael’s descendants would one day cause suffering to the Jewish people. Nevertheless, G-d judged him according to his conduct at that moment.

We, too, stand before G-d ba’asher hu sham - where we are now.

None of us arrives to Rosh Hashanah without mistakes, regrets or missed opportunities. Our past matters, but so does our willingness to repent and change.

In the Mishneh Torah, the Rambam (Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, 1138-1204), writes in Hilchot Teshuvah 3:4 that a person should see himself and the entire world as evenly balanced between merit and guilt. One mitzvah can tip the scale toward merit and salvation.

The Rambam includes the entire world in that calculation. We are accustomed to thinking about our deeds in terms of our own judgment. He asks us to recognize that their significance extends beyond ourselves, a responsibility we can see in what we pass on to our children.

When we learn Torah with a child, we help ensure that Jewish knowledge survives us. When our children hear us pray for Jerusalem and learn why it matters, they inherit more than familiar words. They begin to understand where they belong.

That education also takes place outside the synagogue. A child who sees us helping a struggling family in Israel learns that fellow Jews are our responsibility, even when they live far away.

The Jewish people of tomorrow are growing up in the homes and classrooms of today.

Near the end of the reading, Avraham enters into a covenant with Avimelech, king of the Philistines, in Be’er Sheva, plants an eshel there, and “calls there in the name of the Lord, G-d of the universe" (Bereishit 21:33).

Rashi explains that Avraham fed travelers there and taught them to acknowledge G-d. He was putting down roots in Eretz Yisrael through a life of faith and hospitality.

Avraham had been promised that his descendants would become a great nation. There in Be’er Sheva, he had Yitzchak to raise and a household whose example would influence others. Preparing for the Jewish future meant attending to those responsibilities.

Nearly four thousand years later, Jewish parents are once again raising children in Be’er Sheva. The Jewish future is being shaped in their homes, and in ours.

On Rosh Hashanah, that is something worth remembering too

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/433047