Finding Your Intergenerational Self ©

Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

Ki Tavo - 2026

This week, one of our children had a take-home assignment. Their homework was to interview their parents, so I sat down for my interview this week, and I was stumped on the very first question.

My daughter asked me, "First question: who were you named after, and why?" I was stumped.

I know vaguely who I am named after: my paternal grandmother’s brother, but I know nothing about him whatsoever.

Then she asked, "Well, who am I named after?" This one was easy. I could tell her who she was named after, details about the people, and why we gave her that name. 

Suddenly, I felt a tinge of envy. My daughter has something I don't have: a picture of my past.

In this week's parashah, Ki Tavo, we read about an interesting character: the farmer. Farming is a lonely profession. If you're in business, you talk to people; farmers talk to the land. All year, day after day, dawn to dusk, the farmer works his field, usually alone.

And so we read about an interesting mitzvah. The farmer is forced to leave his isolated plot of land, once a year, and come to Jerusalem to offer his first fruits. Along the way, the Mishnah describes how the farmers would gather together and come to Jerusalem in unison. Little by little, they realize they aren't so alone. The residents of Jerusalem would leave the city to greet them, standing in their honor, calling out, "Brothers, come in peace." Even the king would greet them. For one day a year, they were embraced by community.

This makes the lonely farmer, who produces so much that city dwellers enjoy without a second thought, feel part of something bigger than himself.

But bringing the first fruits does something else too. It connects the farmer to something greater than community: to history, and to God's relationship with his ancestors. When he brings his first fruits, he has to recite these verses:

My father was a wandering Aramean. He went down to Egypt few in number and sojourned there; but there he became a great and very populous nation. The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us; they imposed heavy labor upon us. We cried to the LORD, the God of our fathers, and the LORD heard our plea and saw our plight, our misery, and our oppression. The LORD freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power, and by signs and wonders. He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And I now bring the first fruits of the soil which You, O LORD, have given me. — Deuteronomy 26:5–10

You may be tasting a little matzah in your mouth as you hear these words, because they're the same ones we say at the Pesach seder.

It's a strange text for a farmer to recite. You'd think he'd give thanks for rain, for sun, for the crops themselves. Instead, he has to recall and retell the story of his people; the story of his ancestors. By speaking these words, the Israelite locates himself not only in the present moment, standing before the priest in Jerusalem, but also in the past, as a living link in a holy chain stretching back generations.

Sometimes that link is hard to see in daily life. Three years ago, I had lunch with a dear friend who had lost his mother that year, Rabbi David Seth Kirshner. He said to me, "I think when you lose a parent, you truly become an adult." Little did I know that I would lose my own mother just a month after our conversation.

When I stand under the chuppah with a couple, I tell them this is the beginning of their journey from descendant to ancestor. I used to think you became an ancestor when you had children. I feel differently now. Unfortunately, I've completed that journey.

Perhaps this is why we begin the Amidah by invoking the names of our ancestors — to remind us that we, too, are part of that list. Before my mother passed, I didn't have a picture in my head of the patriarchs and matriarchs when I said their names. But after she passed, every time I said the Amidah during my year of mourning and reached the name Rachel, my voice cracked, and I saw my mother as clear as day in front of me. What a gift, to see a prayer I'd said my whole life in a completely new way. The Amidah will never be the same for me. My mother is in me now. As I learned from Rabbi Jethro Berkman, I became an intergenerational self.

Rabbi Berkman writes:

"One example of the intergenerational self was explained by psychologists Marshall Duke and Robyn Fivush from Emory University, who asked children questions about their family histories. Do you know where your grandparents grew up? Do you know something terrible that happened in your family? The results were striking. The more children knew about their family history, the higher their self-esteem, and the more successfully they believed their families functioned. Duke called this a strong 'intergenerational self' — children who know they are part of something larger than themselves."

To be a Jew is to be an intergenerational self.

One of the acronyms for Elul is: God will circumcise your heart, and the heart of your children.

Then the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the hearts of your offspring, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and soul, in order that you may live.

Ibn Ezra, the medieval Spanish commentator, points out that this circumcision is different from brit milah. Brit milah is something we do. God performs this circumcision for us.

Maybe that opening of the heart isn't a one-time act. Maybe it's gradual; reinforced with every mitzvah we do together, every piece of Torah we hand down, every story we choose to tell instead of letting it die with us.

I couldn't stop thinking about my daughter's question. I called my father, and I asked him: Who was David? Who was I named after? What kind of life did he live? 

He told me David was his mother's little brother. My grandmother had many siblings, and as the Nazis began their march through Europe, she had a premonition that the Jews would be in danger. She went to her mother and said, "I'm going to Budapest to work. In Budapest, they won't know I'm a Jew. Can I bring my siblings with me?"

Her mother said, "You can take one. I can't give up all my other children."

David was one of the children she left behind. He was murdered at the age of ten. I am not just named after David. I am, apparently, one of the only places left where his name still lives out loud.

That's what it means to be an intergenerational self. It's not only the traditions we're lucky enough to inherit: the Shabbat table, the recipes, the melodies. It's also the names we carry without knowing why, until we finally ask. It's choosing, deliberately, not to let a person become a silence.

This Elul, I'm asking you to do what I did. Call your parents. Call your grandparents, if you still can. Ask who you're named after, and why. Ask what they survived, and what it cost them. And then, don’t just keep the answer. Tell it to your children, the way I plan to tell my daughter about David.

Because that's the mitzvah of the first fruits, in the end. It was never really about the fruit. It's about standing up, once a year, and saying out loud: I did not get here alone. Here is the story of the ones who carried me.