Judith Klau
Personal Prayer, Rosh HaShanah 2015
“Yehi Ratzon milfanecha- May it be your will that I don’t give up. I’m tempted to give up. I’ve been rebuffed so many times that a smart person would by now have lain down and let the world walk on in its own way.
I’m talking about Judaism, and my Jewish legacy in the world that isn’t working out at all the way I had anticipated. I have generous, healthy children, and the same adorable grandchildren that you have, but for me they harbor the evidence of my biggest defeat: my children and my grandchildren are not Jewish. Well, halakhically they are of course – I’m Jewish and by that measure they are too, but that’s where it ends.
So I don’t stop. I call them to wish them Good Shabbes, I bring the holidays to their attention, I send relevant articles and Hanukah presents, and I try to remind them that they are the recipients of an important, precious legacy. But they don’t give in. My son is not interested, and my daughter and her family are Christian. It’s over. So an intelligent person says, ok, it’s over. Get a life.
But I can’t. My Judaism is too rich and important to me to let me give up. And the weird thing is that it was the information of my daughter’s baptism that led me to recognize the value of what I had always taken for granted. The short version is that because of her, I became even more conscious of the importance of Jewish continuity and education. When I realized that there were Jewish students at the boarding school where I taught, I instituted Sabbath services. When I heard about Me’ah, I jumped in with both feet (and my head) and I haven’t stopped learning yet.
Of course there have been tremendous satisfactions in my own raised consciousness, and maybe even some pride when I talk to kids who attended those services and who remember them with pleasure and ownership.
But oh, dear God, zeeseh gottenu, sweet God, help my children to have some recognition of this wonder, this generations-old, incredibly complex, impossibly-filled-with-possibility, rich heritage that we celebrate at TBZ. Here’s what gives me hope, always hope: I was over fifty when my daughter announced her conversion and motivated me to act. She is now 54 and my son is 47. I’m only 80. If it be your will, “Yehi Ratzon milfanecha” - I won’t give up.