The bride and groom have just entered the wedding hall.
It is the height of glee.
One of the speechmakers at the wedding now reflects on the momentousness of the occasion. He says:
“When an enterprise is transferred from one generation to the next, there’s a lot to negotiate. There are tax issues and rivalries. Does the mission need to be redefined? Is there trust? Will we beat the odds against viable intergenerational transfer?”
What?
This is a wedding speech?
Indeed it is, and indeed it was, if the enterprise to be passed from one generation to the next is a house of Torah study.
Think about it.
Most intergenerational businesses fail.
In just a single generation.
The habits of mind, the strategies, the personal connections, the “feel” of the founding generation just aren’t transferrable to the next, in most cases.
A point well made by Rabbi Aaron Kotler last Sunday night at the most unusual community dinner I have attended in 50 years.
The “feel” wasn’t failure.
The mention of intergenerational transfer wasn’t sensitive.
Nobody was tiptoeing around the topic on eggshells.
For the reality was just the opposite.
Successful transfer.
Continuity.
The future — the next 50 years.
I might devise a rule: The extent of speeches about Jewish continuity is inversely proportional to the actual degree of continuity.
The longer the speeches, the lesser the continuity.
At the Yeshiva Toras Chaim 50th annual dinner last Sunday, there were not a lot of speeches.
Rabbi Kotler simply observed that if the Jewish people live with 3,800 years of continuity of Torah study, then 50 years is not a big surprise.
It all depends on the comparative context.
If the context is multigenerational business, or general culture, then yes, it becomes rare and in most cases excruciatingly difficult — and expensive — to pass a treasured entity from one generation to the next.
Take culture. It requires who knows how many expensive museums and other media, from college courses to memoirs to movies, to inculcate one generation’s culture into the next, or even into the next generation’s memory.
So here we are. Fifty years of Yeshiva Toras Chaim in Denver.
At a dinner so large that the entire BMH-BJ — the sanctuary space and the social hall together — was packed.
The Yeshiva has left a mark.
Among those attending the dinner were 150 of Yeshiva’s 1,000 alumni from Denver and around the world.
They came not only out of gratitude, but out of love.
I remember when the yeshiva was founded in Denver 50 years ago. The skepticism was sharp. The cynicism was rife. The going was uphill. But the “product” was timeless and on that score powerful.
I remember some years ago when founder Rabbi Isaac Wasserman recalled to me how difficult it was to secure loans from certain banks — banks that no longer exist.
I remember some years ago when founder Rabbi Israel M. Kagan wryly remarked to me that “every year, the ninth graders get younger and younger.”
And so, when the continuity is too clear to need elaboration, when the intergenerational transfer is obvious, what with two honorees over 80 and those doing the honoring aged 10 to 65 years younger, there is not a lot of need for speeches.
But there are other ways to talk.
Upon the completion of the Torah scroll in honor of Rabbis Wasserman and Kagan at the dinner, there were, yes, a couple of very short speeches.
Even then, the crowd was moving.
Rhythmically.
It was coming.
The last letters of the Torah scroll completed, the speeches done, the very considerable crowd burst out in dancing.
Spontaneous.
Circles.
Lines.
Singing.
Unstoppable.
Unplanned.
More, to my sense, than at a wedding.
Vigorous dancing? Hardly the word.
Elevated?
Beyond words.
Unity? Alumni who might never have seen each other before, supporters and current students who might also never have seen each other before, were linked by their graduation from, or identification with, or study in, Yeshiva Toras Chaim some time over the last 50 years.
Then Rabbis Wasserman and Kagan were placed on chairs, just like at a wedding.
Except that this time the dancing in front of them was with the new Torah scroll.
The joy was streaming.
The energy was moving in and out and around everyone.
You know how it is at many of these community dinners. After a certain amount of time, people start fidgeting. Can they leave yet? they ask themselves.
Here, it was the opposite: Can this just keep going?
The supporters, the founding families, the outreach leaders, the staff, the inimitable Reva Wasserman and the late, beloved Leah Kagan, the successor leaders, the alumni, the community leaders many of whom never enrolled in a yeshiva, the musicians, the current students in the yeshiva, and its future students: If ever there were a rainbow in our community, representing every imaginable hue, squeezed between four walls and five hours, it was last Sunday night.
It was more than a wedding.
It was forever.
A link in a 3,800 year-old-chain.
An artifact from the past, an omen for the future, an organic unity between the two.
What a partnership.
Between the Wassermans and the Kagans.
Between Torah study and joy.
Between bodies locked in dance.
With prayers soaring heavenward.
Rabbi Hillel Goldberg can be reached at [email protected]
Copyright © 2016 by the Intermountain Jewish News
