Intergenerational trauma flows forward into our generation. We are aware of it at times, but more often, it creeps into our unconscious experience. We are on edge. We don’t know who to trust.  We want it to stop.  We want to do anything to make it stop. 

Around 200 years ago, every new student of the famous rabbi Simcha Bunam of Peshischa would gather around to hear him speak of Rabbi Itzik ben Yekel who lived in the Polish city of Cracow….

Many, many years ago the sun was setting on Yom Kippur eve and the holiday was just about to begin. A group of Hassidim, or fervent adherents of a particular rabbi, approached their spiritual leader, Reb Moshe Leib Sassover and essentially asked: “How do we do Yom Kippur right?” “What’s the ideal way to observe this holiday?” “If we are going to be really pious Jews, what should we do?”

To their surprise he looked up and said, “Leave here. There is a nearby shtetl on the outskirts of Lviv with a certain tailor named Hayyim-Shmerl. His house isn’t much to look at. Never mind this. Watch and learn. He will show you what it is to observe Yom Kippur the right way. He will show you what Kol Nidre, or the Erev Yom Kippur service, is all about.”

It took my wife and I over a month to sleep train Asher for the first time. Sleep training teaches children to self-soothe to sleep through the night by allowing them to cry for a predetermined amount of time before receiving external comfort. The goal is to train him to happily sleep through the night. In effect, the process involves Asher crying alone in his dark room. What he doesn’t know is that my wife and I are sitting right outside his door crying along with him.

It was a sweltering hot August morning when my wife, two dear friends, and I decided to spend the day at the Monterey California Aquarium. The Sea Lions were hooting. The gulls were calling. But we sought sanctuary from the heat indoors with the underwater fish. There I saw the most beautiful jellyfish of my entire life. Illuminated with red light against a blue screen, I watched these primordial predators swim. For a good part of an hour, we were transfixed, watched them ripple with perfect ease.

Yachatz is one essential steps of the Passover Seder that many of us speed through. During yachatz, we break the middle of our three matzahs, take the larger of the broken halves, and hide it as the afikoman. Many know the tradition of having children search for the afikoman at the end of the meal, for we cannot complete the Seder until the afikoman is found.