What We Want Remembered

Rabbi Melanie Aron

S'lichot 5765 - Saturday, September 24, 2005

Alfred Nobel, very much alive, was shocked when he read his obituary in the morning newspaper. It was not just that the paper had confused him with his brother, Ludwig, who had recently died while visiting in France. It was also the headline that the French papers had chosen: “Le merchand de la mort est mort: The merchant of death is dead.” Though we don’t know for sure, some argue that it was his distress at seeing what it was he would be remembered for that led him to his change his will, leaving the bulk of his fortune in trust for the creation of the Nobel prizes for the advancement of learning and for peace. The inventor of dynamite, various detonators and other powerful explosives did not want to be remembered only for the increased destruction that humans were now able to unleash upon each other. A newspaper editor’s mistake allowed Nobel to reconsider his life, an unusual twist to the famous rabbinic teaching: repent one day before you die.

This evening some of us participated in an exercise in creating ethical wills. In doing so we were encouraged to think about what we want our legacy to be. What lessons have we learned in life and what values do we want to pass on to the next generation. How do we want to be remembered?

What we have written may be of more interest to our family than we might guess. A study done recently comparing baby boomers with the generation that went before them, made some surprising discoveries. For all that boomers were the 60’s generation, the generation gap, the “don’t trust anyone over 30” kids, boomers today report valuing highly the ethical and spiritual legacy of past generations. 30% of boomers as compared to 20% of elders felt that a sense of ethics and morality were the most important legacy between generations. 8% of boomers v 3% of elders felt that the most important legacy was family traditions and stories. These greatly exceeded any other single category including possessions of emotional value, wishes to be fulfilled, and even real estate.

A friend of mine, with children Jeremy and Shifrah’s age has her deceased father’s ethical will, written as letters to her and her siblings on their birth and other major occasions in their lives. These letters are an important part of her inheritance and allow her father to live on in her life and in the lives of his grandchildren in ways that otherwise would not be possible. We assume that our children understand what is important to us, but we should remember that much of our adult lives are invisible to them and that they are hearing and seeing from their own perspective. Every now and then I am caught off guard in Confirmation and B’nai Mitzvah family sessions by how kids can sometimes have misunderstood or mis-emphasized what their parents have taught them. A loving letter such as my friend has from her father, which can be read and reread at different ages, is another way of communicating what is really important.

In addition to allowing us to share something precious with our family, preparing our own ethical will, helps us come to a deeper understanding of our own values. Most of us walk around with unformed thoughts and feelings. It is hard to express clearly in words, what is important about one’s religious heritage, for example, or one’s spiritual longings. But the attempt to express these personal issues also helps sort out and deepen one’s own commitments. Putting it into words requires clarity of thought, and so it forces us to reach conclusions about values that might otherwise remain vague. (Its not easy, but after all, why shouldn’t each of you suffer, what we rabbis go through at this time of year.) Writing something down, as we have done this evening, is also a commitment in and of itself. Just seeing the words on paper gives them a reality that is not there for mere thoughts.

Selichot ushers in the Days of Awe, and so our interest in ethical wills is not just theoretical. Expressing our values makes us responsible also for living them out. We know that our children respond to our deeds more than our words. We know that integrity is acting on our expressed values. Remembering who we want to be, we confront the changes that are necessary for us to live up to that vision of ourselves. Alfred Nobel was 55 years old when he read about his own demise. He would only live another 7 years, yet during that time he built on a lifetime interest in physics and chemistry and a lifetime friendship with a prominent Austrian pacifist to make an enduring contribution to our world. Perhaps writing our legacy this evening has left us unsatisfied in some way. Selichot comes to remind us that there is still time to change or add to our legacy. As Bachya Ibn Pakuda, taught: our days are the pages in the book of our life: write on them what we want remembered.