Beyond this apologetic Midrash, I would like to take advantage of our parashah’s starting lines to discuss the importance that the Tradition of Israel has always given to the institution of the family. The fact that we find, in this parashah, not only the founder of our particular history (Abraham) and his son (Isaac), but also the one who continues the tradition (Jacob), speaks about the strong emphasis made throughout history in Judaism on preserving the continuity of its people, on a dialectic that continuously connects past and future. That is why our Hebrew names always refer to our ancestors, reminding us that we are not born in a vacuum, and that it is thanks to what was built by those who lived before us that we have the chance to keep on growing and aspiring to a better future. That is also why, in our Tradition, the value of the grandparents being able to see their grandchildren grow as committed and responsible Jews, embracing and taking on their double role, as heirs and as pioneers as well, has always been enhanced.

Nevertheless, and as often happens with many things, the marking of family as the basic and primordial nucleus of Jewish life can turn into challenges that deserve our attention. The main challenge started to develop on the face of our people’s dispersion through the different Diasporas of the earth, and the building of families of families with a particular identity. Thus we may find, up to the current days, Ashkenazim Jews, Sephardim Jews and Arab Jews. Among the Ashkenazim we find, to mention some examples, Russians and Polish; among the Sephardim, Turks and Greeks, and among the Arabs, those who come from Damascus and those who lived in Aleppo. Molding themselves as such strengthened ethnic groups, there were times in our history when the marriage between a Jew born Ashkenazi and a Jew with Sephardim origins was utterly disapproved. Believe it or not, this issue is still alive in some places.

Let alone, then, those who were not born Jewish according to Halachah. If we still meet people who do not willingly accept “inter-group” marriages, they are less willing to accept into the fold of our people those who do not have any connection whatsoever with Judaism. In this context, the idea of family and tribe (which are, in and by themselves, interesting and very important) can become counterproductive and blind us to central values that our Tradition has always tried to teach and sustain. In this sense, I would like to share with you Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman’s words, who in his book “ReThinking Synagogue” writes:

“Ethnicity” has a less positive connotation: [ethnicity denotes today] a nostalgic yearning for the Jewish folkways that once supported us as a people, but that can no longer do so. Ethnicity, in this sense, is to do what we believe Jews have always done, regardless if such things are really so, and if such are authentically Jewish. It is behaving on the basis of “social habits”, “doing what comes naturally” but with no transcendent purpose […] Ethnic Judaism is a psychological Judaism, the psychological inclination to be with other Jews who have the same ethnic memories but not, so to say, with Jews by election, who (according to the belief of ethnic Jews) “will never be able to be totally Jewish” – what, in truth, they could not be, if Judaism transforms into the residual consequence of having grown Jewish with no or few preoccupation for Jewish religion and culture. (p.5)