Herb Keinon

I’ve been interviewing politicians and diplomats for over four decades and have a confession: I take a particular shine to those who show any interest in me at all. I know that sounds egocentric. Why, after all, should the prime minister of Israel, the senior senator from Arizona or the ambassador from India care anything about my personal story?

“Kids these days,” goes the age-old lament of the elderly, “are not what they used to be — not as independent, not as disciplined, not as thoughtful.” That lament aligns with the age-old Jewish concept of yeridat hadorot: the idea that each generation is inferior to the one that came before.

Life is full of markers telling you that you are getting older. The Bar or Bat Mitzvah is one. High school graduation, another. Then college graduation, a full-time job, marriage, your first child, a mortgage. On and on it goes.

In most visitors, Alaska inspires wonder at its beauty, awe at its wildlife and admiration for the hardiness of those who make their lives in its vast backcountry, enduring some of the harshest conditions on earth. For Israelis, it can also inspire humility. Not because the Jewish state is smaller than Denali National Park, but because in Alaska one is reminded that the world neither revolves around Israel nor is obsessed with it.

The holidays we celebrate remain constant; what changes is how we experience them as life rolls on. Children, full of awe and excitement, do not experience the seder the same way their parents do. Nor do their parents, tired and focused on the children, experience it the way their own parents do, content to sit at their children’s table, watching it all unfold with quiet satisfaction.