Like many other people, the Covid pandemic brought my extended family a bit closer. Like many Jewish families, that happened as a result of “Zoom kiddush,” a Friday afternoon gathering of first cousins, aunts and uncles, that included some catching up, some reminiscing, and a performance of a few Shabbat rituals.
Six years later, our family’s Zoom kiddush is still going. Every Friday afternoon I go over to my mom’s place and the two of us get on the call together. At this point in her Alzheimer’s journey, she doesn’t have all that much to say, but she’s very happy to be there. Yet when the time comes and she sings the Shabbat evening kiddush, it’s as though a light switch has flipped, and she is, for a moment, the same Happy we have long known and loved.
These days I also try to visit her on Sunday afternoons. While I usually bring a treat to snack on, the main event is when I get out my iPhone and call up a playlist entitled, “Happy’s Tunes:” Rogers and Hammerstein, Lerner & Loewe, Peter, Paul and Mary. Last Sunday my eldest son, a freshly minted college graduate as of this weekend, came with me. We put on Fiddler on the Roof. As Zero Mostel sang “Tradition” through the phone’s speaker, my mom’s face lit up in a smile: “This is such a good one,” she said.
Another metaphor I often hear to describe the effect of familiar music on dementia patients is a thirsty plant coming back to life after watering. The blank look disappears, the disorientation gives way to a sense that, for a moment, the patient knows, in the words of Tevye, “who they are and where they come from”—and, on an even deeper level, “what God expects them to do.” It’s like you’re witnessing the regrowth of roots that have been severed in mind, body, and soul, the momentary returning home of a being that, most of the time, is somewhere else these days.
The Book of Numbers, which we begin reading this week, is starkly different from its predecessors. From the get-go, it is concerned less with individuals than with the corporate identity of the Israelites. Hence its emphasis on counting—the men of fighting age in each tribe and the people as a whole and, later, the gifts brought by the head of each tribe for the dedication of the Tabernacle. The lives of individuals are, seemingly, a secondary concern for much of this book.
Yet the Jewish interpretive tradition has long understood this shift as an invitation to explore questions of individual and group identity. Or, put differently, the shared project of making a home together. In a teaching from 1872, the Sefat Emet offers a psycho-spiritual reading of the second verse of the book: “‘Take a census of the whole Israelite community according to their families, according to their ancestral houses” (Num. 1:2). “Even though the Children of Israel changed, increased, and spread out until they reached six hundred thousand,” he says, “they remained attached to the root of their birth—’And they established their genealogy according to their families.’
“This is the meaning of the verse (Psalms 131:2): ‘Surely I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with his mother.’ A person must be connected to their source, for that is their essential point, like an infant clinging to its mother.
“And so,” continues the Sefat Emet, “Rabbi Bunim [Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Peshischa (1765–1827)] explained the words of our Sages: ‘A person must always say: When will my actions reach the actions of my ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob [Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah]?’ Seemingly, who is foolish enough to seek to equate their own actions to the actions of the Patriarchs [and Matriarchs]? Rather, the intention is: When will my actions reach (touch) their actions? Meaning, that they should be a continuation of them. For surely the actions of the generations are not equal, but through the attachment to the root—meaning, to the Patriarchs [and Matriarchs]—we bring all of our actions close to their root: ‘to their ancestors’ houses.’”
I hear in the Sefat Emet’s reading an affirmation of a truth that psychologists have rediscovered in recent years: the fundamental importance of rootedness and connection. While a particular thrust in Western society came about through the assertion of our rugged individualism, Jewish life, like many other traditions, has long understood that we are profoundly connected and interconnected. Rootlessness is not really an option. Our bodies and spirits know it, even if our minds might try to think otherwise.
Reflecting on his novel Roots after it became a massive television event in 1977, Alex Haley observed, “In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage—to know who we are and where we have come from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness.”
I would only add to that the connection with roots is not only a matter of intellectual knowledge. The kind of knowledge Haley is talking about is, in my experience, one that lives in our bodies and hearts, as well as our minds. Our rootedness, and our desire for that rootedness, is something that lives deep inside, ever ready to be reawakened and reconnected through the songs and words, laughter and tears, we share with our spiritual ancestors.
For Reflection & Conversation
- How connected do you feel to your spiritual roots? If you feel connected, what has supported that connection? If you don’t, what has inhibited it?
- Is there anything you wish you knew that would help you feel more connected to your roots? If so, what? If not, why not?