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September 15, 2021
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Yom Kippur 5782
September 15-16, 2021 — 10 Tishrei 5782
History Has Its Eyes On You
by Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
When I turned 60 this past summer, I developed an intense fascination with my grandfather, my mother’s father, Will Bloom.
It is not just that I am named for him. He was Will, I am Wes. We are both Yechiel Shneyer. The connection is deeper. My grandfather was, in the last season of his life, a traveling salesman. He would drive hundreds of miles a week making sales calls. He was Willy Loman. My mother could never watch Death of a Salesman because the pathos hit too close to home. One day, he died on the road, in a single car accident, suddenly, tragically, and in circumstances that were never explained. Did he fall asleep at the wheel? Did he intend to take his own life? We never knew. One day, out of the blue, my mother gets the call saying that her 60 year old father had died on the road. Her loss was shattering and unimaginable. And she decided to respond by bringing a child into the world to name after her father, that would turn out to be me.
It was an implausible choice, to bring another child into the world. My parents already had five children, one bathroom, and no money. The last thing they needed was another mouth to feed. But my mother was determined to name a child after her father.
Will Bloom’s death, and my life, are intertwined. If he had not died the way he had died, I would never have been born.
So, this summer, when turning 60, I was thinking a lot about Will Bloom, who died when he was about 60. What was going on with him in the final season of his life? How did it come to be that he died on the road in a single car accident? So I called his daughter, my aunt Evy, in her 80s, the last survivor of that generation. Evy, I said, tell me about your Dad.
She said: I have a treasure trove of letters he wrote your mother while he was on the road. Would you like me to send them to you? Of course!
She sent me these letters from my grandfather, all written by hand, in the last year or so of his life. All the letters are from 1959 and 1960. He would die on the road in the summer of 1960. I was born in the summer of 1961.
These letters speak of life on the road. My grandfather would drive hundreds of miles every week to call on customers. He would drive from North Dakota to Montana to Utah to Nevada. He was not driving a Lexus or a Tesla. He was driving a 1950s car. And he did not have GPS or any navigation technology. He had an old fashioned map.
These letters speak of winter weather. He often writes of snowstorms, and ice storms, and fog, and mist, and it is hard to see, and he has to pull over on the side of the road to compose himself as he drives alone these hundreds of miles in inclement weather.
These letters speak of loneliness. After driving all those miles, and calling on his customer, he would go to a random hotel in a random city where he knew nobody. All these letters are written on hotel stationery. There were no cell phones, texting, face time, email, zoom; no technology that could connect. All he could do was write a letter. There was nobody at the end of the day to say how was your day.
These letters speak of weariness. Another day. Another drive of hundreds of miles. Another customer to call on. Another hotel to stay at where he knows nobody.
Reading the letters of my 60-year old grandfather as I was turning 60, it was heartbreaking. The man I am named for, the man whose death resulted in my life, suffered, spending his last year of life far from home, far from hope, on the road.
Now why am I sharing this with you at all? And why am I sharing this with you on Yom Kippur? Everybody’s Yom Kippur is about them. How does any of this relate to you?
Here’s how. The line that comes to mind is the iconic line in Hamilton:
History has its eyes on you.
History has its eyes on you means that one fine day, years from now, if not today, some child or grandchild or great grandchild, or some spiritual descendant, a student, or a student of a student, is going to have a curiosity about you. When the chips were down, how were you? What challenges did you face, and how did you face them? Will the way you faced your challenges be an inspiration to future generations when they face theirs?
It is frequently said that we live in challenging times. And that is obviously true.
But it also true that everybody always lives in challenging times because that is the human condition. The human condition is challenge. There is no Olympics of suffering, and no reason to compare and contrast which generation had it harder. All generations have it hard, each in our own way. We know our own challenges. We know Covid. But check out your parents, grandparents or great grandparents’ lives. They had their own challenges too. My grandfather driving hundreds of miles in winter weather to call on customers and to sleep in random hotels, that is also challenging.
And it is what we do, how we comport ourselves, the resilience we show, or do not show, the determination we show, or do not show, the character we show or do not show, that will make our example inspiring, or not inspiring, to future generations. It is what we do now that will be our legacy to our descendants should they choose to claim it. When Lin Manuel Miranda says History has its eyes on you, he was not only talking about George Washington. He was talking about you.
Which means that our question on Yom Kippur is simply this: Will the life I am living now be an inspiration to my descendants?
Here is the good news. Either way you can win this one. If you are living the kind of life to date where your life would be such an inspiration, don’t stop. Keep on going. But if you are not living that kind of life, we are in the middle of our story. We can change. You could in fact be a double inspiration. That you grew. That you changed. That you evolved. That you deepened. And that you came to show the courage, resilience and character in a later chapter that you had not been able to summon originally.
Indeed, that trajectory is why my grandfather’s story speaks so very loudly to me now. Why was he on the road when he was 59 and 60 years old? Because he had no choice. Why did he have no choice? Because he had had a gambling addiction which caused him and his family real distress. In his younger years his gambling was a real problem for him and those he loved. He once had a stable and steady job in Denver where he lived, but he lost that job as a casualty of his addiction.
His time on the road, his Willy Loman chapter, was his tikkun, his repair, his attempt to fix what he had broken. All of us break things. That’s what we do. All of us let our loved ones down. That’s what we do. All of us sometimes hurt most the people we love most. That’s what we do. That is part of the human condition. The question is: when we break things, do we fix what what we have broken? In the tractate Berakhot, the Talmud teaches that the penitent, the person who sinned and is trying to repair the damage, stands in a higher place than the person who did not sin at all. Our tradition privileges growth, not perfection.
My grandfather was doing teshuvah. He was doing his best to mend what he had broken. He was doing his best to earn a living for the family he had let down. The last year of his life he role modeled how hard it is to take responsibility for our mistakes and to try to fix them. He didn’t make excuses. He didn’t deny what he had done. He didn’t try to blame somebody else. He got in his car and drove. Own what you broke. If you are a human being, there is a 100% chance you will break something. When you do, own it. A hard lesson to live. A crucial lesson to teach. I am proud to bear his name.
History has its eyes on you. Will the life you are living now be an inspiration to your descendants? If the answer to that question is yes, keep it up. If the answer to that question is no, change it up. Because one thing is clear, one thing is certain. As we live and breathe, we are all drafting a letter to posterity. The pen is in your hands. G’mar chatimah tovah.