Who Do You Think You Are?

NBC recently had a series called: “Who Do You Think You Are.” It wasn’t on at the most convenient time – Friday night. But DVR made it easy for us to watch after Shabbat.

The premise is that learning more about our ancestors will change how we view ourselves.

On one hand, we could easily say: I am who I am, it doesn’t matter what my ancestors were like. So what if I know the names of my great grandfather’s siblings?

Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski – a practicing psychiatrist -- points out that he is not a fan of psychoanalysis and lots of talking about a person’s roots. People wind up blaming their parents. He says – and I agree – that part ultimately doesn’t matter. You are who you are. We have to work on our own characters, no matter how our parents raised us!

And we have to remember; our parents are also human … and shaped by their own backgrounds.

Therefore, we must know who we are … if we are to improve our characters.
Rabbi Dr. Twerski makes it clear: we really can’t change others. We can only change ourselves … and paradoxically … hope others will respond to our own own changes.
That sure seems to conflict with the premise of the NBC show that knowing our past helps us know ourselves!

However, as the Talmud would say, lo kashyah – it is not a difficulty.
Rabbi Twerski is referring to the all too prevalent tendency to blame our parents for our character flaws.

If it’s our parents’ fault, we don’t have to take personal responsibility. It’s not our fault we drink, overeat, lie, or fill in the blank with any negative behavior.
Twerski is emphatic, that we must take personal responsibility for our own behavior.

NBC’s pitch for genealogy … coincidentally sponsored by a major online genealogical resource … is not talking about psychology and what your ancestors did wrong to mess you up.

Genealogy helps us see ourselves in a larger context. We think of our families in limited terms. We know a little about them, but don’t know their struggles, their triumphs.

Our family histories can shape – and re-shape -- the narrative of our lives.
Some examples from Jewish life:

• People who lost families in the Shoah, the Holocaust, will inevitably carry that knowledge in their hearts and souls.
• If we go beyond the Shoah and think back to Eastern Europe, many of our ancestors lived through – or were killed by – rampant pogroms. That history wasn’t so long ago, and almost gets swept aside by the Holocaust!
• Then we come to America. We picture the early Jews in America as pious, Yiddish speaking people who lived in New York – and we are so nostalgic for the romanticized life on the Lower East Side.

Maybe our memories – the stories we hear – are real. But maybe they’re entirely different from what really happened!

Let’s start with the Lower East Side. As a child, I read lots of great stories about Jews on the Lower East Side. I asked my grandmother about it. I assumed, they were Russian Jews, of course they moved there!

She insisted they never lived in that part of town!

For those of you who’ve heard tales of my grandmother’s version of her own history, it might not surprise you to hear: yes, the family did first live on the Lower East Side.

So why did she deny it?...

Shame. Grinding poverty. A grim family life while they struggled to get a foothold in a land that didn’t welcome immigrants.

Mama Flo certainly didn’t have fond memories of the Lower East Side! It was a memory she wanted to block.

However, realizing that she – all my family – overcame incredible obstacles – is awe-inspiring. Would I have such strength?

Another story from the Bacharach side: I grew up knowing that my great grandfather went from Bavaria to St. Louis at the tender age of 14.

I have just tapped into an incredible network of Bacharachs, who are all related. When my great grandfather came to this country, he moved in with close relatives. Just as they had done in Bavaria, the Bacharachs formed an amazing network, reaching from Cincinatti to St. Louis and places in between.

No longer do I picture Maximillian Bacharach as a scared kid trying to make it on his own. He probably was scared. But he had incredible support.

The more I learn, the more it does impact my sense of self.

More importantly, I’m part of a chain that reaches across Europe and America. I’m not a solitary unit. Nor is my nuclear family. We’re part of a vast network that forms and re-forms as new generations add to the complexity of family groupings.
And that’s just my personal family tree!

We all have stories just waiting to be uncovered – stories we add to our own personal narratives.

… Stories that help us understand how we got here … Stories that give us a fuller sense of self – and of a belonging that transcends the self.

Now, imagine going back thousands of years in our family histories.

We do that when we read the Bible.

Just as our family networks are extensive and complex, the Jewish world itself is extensive and complex. And we are part of it! That is who we are!

That is as much our personal history as our more immediate family trees.

We belong to a group. That group has adapted to new cultures, spread itself across the world, been through many changes and taken many forms … but it is still Judaism … it is still rooted in the Torah.

As the NBC series asks: who do you think you are?

We answer that question in many ways. I am a big fan of genealogical research.
I’m an even bigger fan of seeing ourselves through the lens of our Jewish family that first came on the scene in Torah.

It’s a heritage, it’s our story … and it IS … who we are…