Links

Our religious congregation is blessed with two beautiful landmark buildings in Park Slope, but these structures are aging, and both of them require major repair. The sanctuary, for example, is now unusable, after its ceiling collapsed. We need to raise three and a half million dollars to make the repairs, to say nothing of what will be required for renovations within the restored structures.

I had seen in the sanctuary only once before, when I attended a general meeting of the congregation, but I was immediately struck by its majesty. We were the beneficiaries of those who long ago contributed to the building fund, benefactors who are no longer alive. We’re now being asked to take on the same role as our predecessors, so that future generations can worship in the same sacred space, just as my generation had been able to do until recently.

No building can stand without repair and renovation. Eventually a new capital campaign will be required, and when that’s inaugurated, members of the congregation who are yet unborn will look back to us as the benefactors who had helped preserve their sanctuary. I’d grown accustomed to seeing myself as a link in the generations, connected to both past and future, but the realms of continuity and connection that I had seen were limited to my family, my professional work, and my religious tradition.

As a family member, I have known five generations, from my grandparents to my grandchildren. I’m unlikely to meet the sixth, but as the grandfather of four, I’m reasonably certain that at least one of my grandchildren will make me a great grandfather, even if posthumously. As a researcher, I’ve built on the work of others, just as my successors have built on mine. And as a Jew, my observance of kashrut and avoidance of work on Shabbat, begun in Jerusalem and continued in Brooklyn, place me in a tradition that preceded me and will continue after me.

But until our congregation’s campaign was begun, I had never thought of myself as a link between past and future in other institutions. I now see, however, that all of us help form a chain linking past and future, within all of the groups, large or small, in which we participate, whether religious congregations, political parties, neighborhoods, work places, or entities as abstract as that of the nation. Those who preceded us have helped to shape them just as we are doing now. Our individual contributions may be small but added to that of others they help construct the frameworks within which future generations will live.

As my wife and I walked down a street in downtown Brooklyn recently, she looked over the fence surrounding an excavation for a new tower, enabling her to see buildings of various heights and ages for several blocks away. “There’s the history of New York,” she said, somewhat exaggerating the swath of time represented by this mélange of structures. It was comforting to reflect, as we walked down that street, a street others had trod for generations, that people as yet unborn will walk down the same street, that they will contribute to the city’s history and its life, just as our predecessors did, and just as we are doing now.