Genesis. Really, Geneses

Aisle seat, 21 minutes into the flight. This trip has multiple beginnings. It begins with the cancellation of the Shalhevet 10th grade trip because not enough parents felt they could afford the cost, given the recent economic downturn. It begins with my need to visit Yad Vashem, in order to gain insight and inspiration from the grand daddy of all Holocaust Museums and its recent re-design.

A component of this beginning is the relative oddity that the Rothman family, extraordinarily for us, had been saving for Saul’s trip, so committed were we to sending him.

It could also begin with a powerful realization I had in the cab on the way to the airport. Several days ago, the NY Times published a man-on-the street report on the Egyptian and Jordanian mood towards Israel’s attack on Gaza. The report included virulent and incendiary anti-Jewish rhetoric from people inside a Cairo mosque. I don’t know what it was about the rhetoric, but I felt my back stiffen as I sat over my breakfast cereal. ‘They really do hate us, don’t they!’ I remarked to myself. And suddenly I understood there is a component to anti-Judaism and anti-Zionism in the Arabworld that as immutable a force as gravity or entropy.

This NY Times report forced upon me the knowledge that Jew hatred is not just misunderstanding or ignorance. Thus, it can not ever be eliminated. No amount of education or dialogue will eradicate it. At best, we may be able to reduce it.

This knowledge in turn lead me to see Jewish history as a waxing and waning of Jew hatred. When the immutable base level of hatred increased, Jews experienced similar increases in overt acts against them. As it decreased, perhaps because of the forces that can modulate it, Jews could exist more comfortably.

All this doom and gloom about the possible nature of hatred against Jews did not, however, lead me to despair. Instead, it lead me to intense gratitude. Gratitude at my good fortune to live in a golden era of Jewish history. An era not only where Jews could participate in, contribute to, and benefit from the larger society, as we can so significantly in America and so many other countries. But also a golden era in which we have a state of Israel. A state we can travel to. Not to mention a state that can combat forcefully and successfully the virulent, un-eradicable anti-Judaism.

I also saw myself less as an individual, and more as a link in a historical chain of Jewish experience. My personal experience as a Jew was suddenly less important than my role as a conduit between and amongst different periods of Jewish history.

And a last possible beginning of this father-son trip begins, of course, with my own father. As the cab cruised to the airport, I reviewed the conversation I had with my Dad last night. He commented on who meaningful it would be for me and Saul to spend this time together. “I wish we had taken more trips like that,” he said. And he reminisced about two minor adventures we did share. Once, we spent July 4th weekend in Big Bear. And in 1984 we ventured to Lake Castaic to watch some of the rowing events for the Olympics. I remember that trip well, for several reasons. We drove up the night before and simply bivouacked wherever we found an open area. We awoke the next morning to discover cars driving just passed our heads; the darkness the night before hid any signs indicating the open area was a parking lot for the competition. I also remember the excitement of seeing world-class rowing.

But I also remember my father saying as we drove up to the lake, ‘All day long I’ve had that feeling I used to have when I was a little boy the day before we were going to the country.’ (My father grew up in Brooklyn and his family owned a small cottage in the Catskills, which they called ‘the country.’ Ha-aretz of another name!) I was touched that he anticipated our brief excursion with such child-like anticipation.

As I write this I can’t help now being touched by the sense of loss in my father’s comment as well. The inevitable loss of opportunity, for one can never do enough when one has the chance, and the after-the-fact recognition, of this fundamental human vulnerability.

Yes, this trip is a phenomenal adventure for me as a father to my son, as a Jew in history, and as a Holocaust professional.