Teaching your elders.

As the world turns…

When I was growing up, the thing was this: my parents’ generation decided to send their kids to Jewish day schools, to give them an education they never had as children of immigrants who wanted to forget being Jewish. So we went to school, came home, taught our parents kiddush on Friday nights, and reminded our grandparents of what they had before the world turned their backs on them in Germany and beyond.

And here we are today. My generation is moving to Israel to give their kids even more of what our parents didn’t have: that Israeli aspect of the education. Speaking Hebrew, the mother tongue of the mother land. Singing songs that are more than tinged with Zionism; they are Zionism.

And so it goes, the path continues. I have no idea where it will end up.

However, it sure is fascinating watching my two-year-old son teaching my parents Hebrew. Or rather, reminding them of the the minimal Hebrew they learned at Sunday school, way back when.

And it sure is gratifying seeing my parents, at this stage of life, taking on yet another new kind of education, taught by their progeny, a continuation of the road they started when they sent me to Jewish day school.


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