Today is the last day of Gan Izzy. What an amazing summer it’s been. Unbridled Jewish pride at full steam, in a safe and secure environment — with joy, fun and engagement to the max. The perfect blend to creating lasting memories.
I’ve long contemplated the delicate balance between living an experience that fast turns into a memory as time moves on.
Photo taking reflects a similar dilemma. Snap or experience? Of course one can blend both but you get the point. Oftentimes we can be so obsessed with capturing the moment that we trade it in for the present which does little for the future.
This Sat night / Sunday is Tisha B’av — the 9th day of Av. It’s the saddest day in the Jewish calendar and a fasting day that lasts almost 25 hours. Our Holy Temples were destroyed and with that the onset of what is called exile.
To fully explain what exile is, is too intricate for a short column and on a basic level one need only to pen all the challenges the Jewish nation faces onto a small post it note and you can quickly start to formulate the definition.
Yet what’s truly incredible is that we’ve been mourning the destruction for literally thousands of years as if it’s a recent occurrence.
Talk about memory.
You can count on one hand moments that are still remembered thousands of years later — unless you are Jewish that is. After all, our entire year experience revolves around experiences and revelations of our collective nation throughout the millennia — good and not so good.
Turns out, it’s not the camera photo that guarantees memory it’s the actions that the memory evokes that does. Sort of like living in the present as the past informs — creating the future.
As parents, we diligently and creatively work towards Dor L’dor to create not mere photo memories, rather, enduring and foundational experiences that will be there in perpetuity and that’s the secret sauce of our eternal nation Yisrael.
Am Yisrael Chai!!
Rabbi Yehuda & Dina Kantor