By Rabbi Elazar Mushkin
I never met my paternal grandfather, Rabbi Elazar Mushkin, after whom I was named. He died five years before I was born, and I was born on the anniversary date of his burial. But I felt from the earliest childhood that my grandfather was present, teaching me the values that helped shape my life.
My grandfather was an outstanding Torah scholar. He was ordained at the famous Slobodka Yeshiva in Lithuania from where he immigrated to the United States with his parents and siblings around 1910. He served as a rabbi in Chicago for forty years, where he was respected as one of the leading Torah scholars of the city. He was a prolific author who published widely in Torah journals, and he was one of the founders of the Chicago Yeshiva.
One of the most important aspects of my grandfather’s legacy was his commitment to Religious Zionism. This commitment affected my family and inspired my father and his siblings. So important was Israel in my grandfather’s life that, during the 1920’s, he purchased a parcel of land in N’Vai Yaakov, north of Jerusalem, at the behest of his good friend, Rabbi Meir Berlin. At that time the Mizrachi movement had built a synagogue in N’Vai Yaakov, and I guess my grandfather thought that if he would move to Israel, this would be a good place to settle. Although he never was able to realize this dream, when my parents attempted Aliyah in 1949, he gave them the deed to that parcel of land. Unfortunately, they soon found out that north Jerusalem was under Jordanian occupation, and at that point in time, their deed was worthless. After the Six-Day War, my grandmother, who was a lifetime leader in AMIT, tried to validate her deed, but this time the State of Israel itself intervened. Under the power of an eminent domain, it had claimed the land for an army base. My grandmother received a little compensation but not the ownership of my grandfather’s dream. But I inherited a copy of that deed that I cherish to this day.
This story kept reverting in my mind as I read my grandfather’s commentary on the Bible, Hadat V’Hachayim, in which he explains the biblical prayer, the Shema. My grandfather noted that the second portion of the Shema begins in the plural with the words, “And you (plural) are to teach them to your children.” But suddenly in mid-stream the verse turns to the singular tense and declares, “When you sit at home, and when you journey on the road, and when you go to sleep, and when you rise.”
Why the switch of tenses? My grandfather answered that the verse reflects the true reality of Jewish education. On the one hand the verse begins with the plural, representing the community’s responsibility to ensure that educational institutions exist in a community. So important is this aspect of communal life that the Talmud powerfully warns every community not to fail in this realm, “And Reish Lakish said to Rabbi Yehudah Nesiah, ‘I have received the following tradition from my fathers, any town in which there are no school children studying Torah is eventually destroyed.’ Ravina said: It is eventually annihilated (Shabbat 119b).”
But the community is only one partner in education. The Torah switches from plural to singular to tell us that the other partner must be the parent. Each Jew must be an educator. The community can build wonderful educational institutions, but it can’t by itself instill the love of our heritage and in particular the love of Israel. Parents must impart to their children the stories that will create the bond between them and the Land of Israel and they must encourage direct involvement in helping Israel.
It is such parental involvement that I believe has led to an increase of American orthodox students from our communities who, after a year of learning, are now remaining in Israel, volunteering in many organizations, and enlisting in the IDF. When we supplement the community’s job of instilling the love of the State of Israel with parental involvement, we impart the emotional connection that transforms our youth. My grandfather taught me that lesson many years before I was even born, and it still resonates with my family to this very day.
Rabbi Elazar Muskin is the senior rabbi of Young Israel of Century City, Los Angeles, California, and a national vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America.
