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TEXTing with Elana Stein Hain delves deeply into Jewish texts to guide and inspire us as we grapple with the concerns and meaning of this moment. Join Elana as she addresses the issues of our day through the lens of classical Jewish texts, in conversation with Hartman scholars Christine Hayes, Yonah Hain, and Leora Batnitzky.

TEXTing. Where ancient wisdom meets contemporary relevance.

A Foundation for Hope Transcript

Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Elana:Welcome to TEXTing, where we consider issues relevant to Jewish life through the lens of classical and modern Torah texts. I’m your host, Elana Stein Hain, and we’re recording on Friday, July 26th, 2024. If you’d like to follow along with today’s text, you can find the link to our source sheet in the episode description.

I was in Jerusalem for a month for Hartman’s summer, and up the block from the Machon, there was a hotel where evacuees from southern Kibbutzim were staying. Different volunteer organizations would run activities for them each week. One week, my children volunteered to run a carnival. And when I went to pick them up at the end of it, I was talking to one of the moms from the South, and I looked over at her toddler who was blowing bubbles with my 13-year-old son.

What I saw was a child who had inherited a world created by adults and whose future is deeply uncertain, and I saw a mother who’s trying to plan a future for him amidst that same uncertainty and crisis. And to be honest, I was pretty heartbroken.

This is the topic that I want to talk about today. How do we gird ourselves to create a future, to envision a future in the midst of current instability? And this is a transgenerational question. It’s a question for both the shapers of the current reality and for those who grow up into it. This question is especially relevant since we’re approaching Tisha B’Av, the date on the Jewish calendar that marks the destruction of two temples, and deep crisis for the Jewish people. It’s an annual experience that makes me reflect on cataclysmic events, living through them, And our ability to survive them. This week, we’re going to look at a biblical text from the prophet, Yirmeyahu, Jeremiah, who engages in these questions in chapter 32 of his book.

Joining me today is Leora Batnitzky to have this conversation. Welcome Leora.

Leora:Thank you Elana, great to be here.

Elana:So the world that we shape is inherited by our children. We know this. But what do philosophers have to say about that relationship and what children represent?

Leora:So it’s interesting, for the most part, I’d say, philosophers don’t talk much about this. And when they do, they talk about the parent’s obligation to the child. And what is that obligation to the child? It’s basically to allow the child to become an individual. So if we think about a modern philosopher like Immanuel Kant, what a parent should do is allow the child to develop, and this is very much in keeping with Kant’s philosophy, an internal moral compass, those are my terms, not his, to be an autonomous individual.

If we go back, though, to say someone like Aristotle, a parent should basically have what Aristotle calls a friendship with his child and I’m using his on purpose because philosophers tend to talk about the father-child relationship, because they think often that the mother’s too attached to really do something objective and that’s all obviously extraordinarily problematic.

But what’s, yeah, very, so I wouldn’t necessarily go to philosophers for thinking about this, but they don’t ever think about, for instance, what a child might inherit from the parent and what the child’s responsibility might be for what he or she has inherited from the past, usually.

Elana:Yeah, cause that’s really the big question here, to be honest, meaning it’s less what the parents can do for the kids, and it’s more what the kids are going to do with this world that they, that has been bequeathed to them in a way.

Leora:And what’s interesting, just as a side point, is it’s not usually philosophers who talk about that. It’s usually obviously what we call religion, right? Religious texts. And it’s also literature. So, there is, we do, this does pop up in Greek literature, for instance. But not so much in philosophy.

Elana:Wait, so give us one example from Greek literature.

Leora:Well, so one example would be something like Sophocles’s Antigone, in terms of burying the parents, if you recall, and the, you know, the tragedy of having to choose between what one owes to one’s parents, which is a burial, and what one owes to the city. That’s kind of the tragedy in Antigone.

Elana:Wow. That’s interesting. So is there, it’s sort of like, personal debt versus communal, maybe past debt versus present.

Leora:Exactly.

Elana:Yeah, so I guess what we’re going to see is, we really are going to see a religious text here that is very much about intergenerational issues and is, it’s both aware of what the earlier generations owe to the later generations, but also aware of the agency of later generations in being able to change the future and make things different.

Okay, so let’s get started looking at Yirmiyahu chapter 32, right? Jeremiah 32, Yirmiyahu Lamed Bet. And what we’re looking at here is starting with verse 4, the Babylonians have besieged Jerusalem. It’s the First Temple times. It’s very clear, and Yirmiyahu has been saying for 31 chapters, it’s very clear that the Babylonians are going to take over. This is going to be the end of the first Jewish Commonwealth, and yet look at what happens next.

Vayomer Yirmiyahu, hayah davar Adonai leimor, Jeremiah said, God’s word came to me, saying the following. Hinei chanamel ben shalum dodcha, Hanamel, who is the son of Shallum, who’s your uncle, bah elecha leimor, is going to come to you saying, kenei lecha tzadi asher ba’anatot, I want you to buy my field at a place called Anatot. Why? Ki lecha mishpat hage’ula liknot. Because you are the next of kin to me, who’s supposed to redeem it by purchasing it.

Meaning, if you know your, Vayikra or Leviticus 25, you’ll know that if a person falls into poverty and they have to sell their land in the land of Israel, their next of kin is supposed to quote unquote redeem it. They’re supposed to be the one to buy it, and kind of keep it in the family. So it seems like Hanamel had gotten to this situation where he was poor. He was going to have to sell off his land, and so he was asking Yirmiyahu, his kin, to buy the land from him. Now, this is a strange idea to buy the land, given that the Babylonians are besieging, and presumably they’re going to take the land any minute, right?

And that’s indeed what happens, says Jeremiah. Vayavo eilai Chanamel ben dodi kidvar Adonai, Hanamel, my cousin, came to me, as God said, el chatzar hamatarah, he came to me in the prison compound where I was. Vayomer eilai, and said to me, kenei na et sadi asher ba’anatot, please buy this field for me in Anatot, on my behalf, redeem it for me, asher ba’eretz Binyamin, it’s in the land of Benjamin. Ki lecha mishpat hayerusha, ulecha hageulah, kenei lach va’edah ki d’var Adoni hu. And he says, please, you’re the one who is supposed to be redeeming it. And what I realized says Jeremiah is like, oh, what God told me was going to happen actually does happen.

So let’s talk about this for a second. What is this moment, in your opinion, of, the Babylonians are besieging, Jeremiah is no stranger to the idea that this commonwealth is over, and yet he’s now supposed to buy a piece of land in Israel?

Leora:Right, so it’s definitely strange, and it’s also strange that somehow his relative is able to get into the jail to see him. But we can talk about that. But I think that it’s really about God saying to Jeremiah that you, Jeremiah, need to invest in the future and that this is God saying that just like I, God, I’m investing in the future, so I’m going to punish you. And that’s clear because the punishment from the text’s perspective is deserved. But that doesn’t mean that there’s not going to be a better future. And that’s what the covenant is. God’s promising the people that, and despite punishing them. And I think we have here Jeremiah being told that he also needs to invest in the future by purchasing this land.

Elana:Yeah, well it’s interesting because when you get to verses 13 to 15 in the same chapter, where He sort of announces to people and specifically to the scribe, who’s going to write up the contract, he announces what he’s doing. He does sound very confident in doing it, right? It goes like this and maybe we’ll just round out the picture a little bit as we continue to consider what this means to think about the future in this way that is so clearly not the immediate future, but it’s sort of a very far gone kind of future.

So it goes like this: Va’atzaveh et Baruch l’eineihem leimor. So it says, I charged Baruch who was a scribe, in front of everyone saying, koh amar Adoni tzevaot elohei Yisrael, this is what God, the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel has said, lakoach et hasefarim haeleh, I want you to take these documents, et sefer ha mikneh ha zeh, this deed of purchase, v’et hachatum v’et sefer hagalui hazeh, and that which is the sealed text and the open text, and the rabbis actually look at this and they use it to understand the way the documents are made, v’et hasefer hagalui hazeh unetatam b’kli cheres, lema’an ya’amdu yamim rabim, and I want you to put them into an earthenware jar so that they’ll be able to last for a very long time. I want you to put them in storage.

Why? Ki ko amar Adonai tzevaot elohei Yisrael, because so says that God the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, od yiknu batim vesadot vekarmim baaretz hazot, in the future, houses and fields and vineyards shall again be purchased in this land.

Right, so here Yirmiyahu comes out sounding very confident.

Leora:Very confident. And it’s important to note, right, that God doesn’t tell him to bury the deeds. He comes up with that himself. And this is where his agency comes through. And his confidence comes through.

Elana:Meaning he really believes it. Meaning, he says to these people, I want you to hold on to these documents for a very long time, which I think also it’s, it’s like a long-term vision. And I think when we’re talking about next generations, he, it doesn’t seem like he’s talking about their children will come back and get this land. It sounds like this is something way in the future generations into the future, right? It’s sort of like, you have kind of a Rip Van Winkle kind of vibe here.

You know, you’re gonna, I’m going to come back and the world is going to be different. Like Rip Van Winkle, you know, he falls asleep before the American Revolutionary war, and he wakes up, I mean, it’s only 20 years later, but he wakes up and he sees, and I think this is so dramatic, he sees that, you know, there used to be a portrait of King George on the wall and now it’s a portrait of George Washington, right? Like there’s been a complete change, like empire has been sloughed off, right?

What does it mean to be able to have a vision like that? Not because you went to sleep and didn’t see it, but actually because you’re preparing for it. Right? Yirmiyahu is saying, no, no, I want us to prepare for that change.

Leora:Right. I mean, I think it is optimism, but it’s also confidence or trust in God. I think in a way, it’s interesting, you translated “od” as again, it’ll again happen. And obviously one can translate it, but one could also think about the “od” as still, that the covenant is still there, despite, despite what’s going on right now in Yirmiyahu’s time.

Elana:Well, it’s interesting because when Jeremiah is the one who tells them to also build houses and vineyards and fields in Babylonia. I mean, he says them, you’re going to go to Babylonia. This is what’s going to happen. The Commonwealth is going to fall. You’re going to go to Babylonia. You got to go make yourselves comfortable there and eventually you’ll return.

So to be the same person who says for the immediate term, you’re going to go give into the Babylonians and go there and make yourselves comfortable. And then for the long term, to be able to say, but eventually you’re going to come back because this, because this covenant stands, I think it, it takes a certain degree of trust, certainly a trust in God. And I also think it takes the tolerance of a double vision, right? Meaning to be able to tolerate the vision of what you need to do now, to be honest, going to Babylonia and building houses there is not going to help you have houses back in the land of Israel. These are actually two separate and even in tension with each other kinds of moves. So to be a leader who can do both, I think it’s very, very challenging to be honest.

Leora:Yeah, I think it’s, yes, it’s very challenging and it’s very powerful. I mean, I think what he’s saying is that in the present or the near future, we still have to do things in the world that will enable us to continue on. I mean, that’s what building houses is, and having children, but nevertheless, right, there is still this vision of a return that’s still going to happen at the same time.

Elana:Now, this is a religious vision, right? Meaning this is a vision that he trusts in God. And I do think that it’s really interesting to think about today, whether it’s Israelis, whether it’s Americans, whether it’s Gazans. What is it that sustains a sense of hope and possibility, right? Meaning there’s pragmatism, which is something that Yirmiyahu shows when he says, go to Babylonia.

But what is it that sustains a more long-term vision and a belief that something better could happen, that something transformative could happen? I think it’s a really important question. Like as a religious person, literally the only thing that gives me a sense of hope, or even optimism is the sense that Jewish continuity is not about me or even just the next generation. It’s about a very long view. That’s a covenantal view, but I recognize that not everybody’s walking around with that, right? Like, what is it that gives people that sense of, it’s possible to transform the world and move from King George’s portrait to George Washington’s portrait?

Leora:Right. So I think what’s, what’s really interesting is that it’s about, it’s holding onto the past and the future simultaneously. And that can be really difficult. I mean, part of it is, it’s saying, I think in the biblical context and also in a more theological context, what allows us to trust in the future or have hope for the future? It’s the past. It’s the fact that we have this relationship, that God made this covenant with us, and we’ve had this relationship with God, and our forebearers have led us to this point. So it’s the past, well the past is really necessary here, in order to believe in the future. And I think that’s interesting.

Elana:So it’s a kind of, it’s a kind of foundation.

Leora:It’s a foundation. I mean, you can see it. I mean, some people would want to argue it. I’ll just mention, Biden’s speech this last week when, that he’s not going to run for president, he talked about how great the United States is that it has this vision of all people are created equal, everyone should be treated with dignity. I don’t think he put it in exactly those words. He said, we’ve never lived up to this promise, but we, but we’ve had this as a kind of foundational definition of America as an idea.

Elana:Ah, so one second, are you saying that it’s past experience that actually leads to a hope for the future, or are you saying it’s past commitment to ideals that leads to a hope for the future?

Leora:I think it’s both. I mean, I think it does have to be both at the same time. It’s past experience in the sense that, again, in the biblical or Jewish context, it is this covenantal relationship that does, that did happen in history. And similarly, in the American context, it is the American founding that happened in history, but it’s also, the aspiration for what it means to be either the Jewish people or the American people.

Elana:Yeah, it’s so interesting. I was talking to an Israeli the other day and we were talking about how lucky we were to grow up in the 90s. Which is like a funny thing. I was like, my kids don’t remember a normal time. They’re 13 and 9. They don’t remember pre-COVID. They don’t remember pre-Ukraine. They don’t remember pre-October 7th. Meaning, they don’t remember pre-that entire world, whereas for me, I feel like I lived in kind of boring nineties. Although if you were older than I was in that time, I was a teenager. If you were older than I was in that time, you might not have considered it so boring.

So she said to me, she said, yeah, it’s funny to think that there were just kind of normal, uninteresting times. And I said, yeah, and God willing, we’ll get back to those. So it’s funny to think what you’re saying about people, you know, being able to relate to the past as some sort of foundation for the future, whether it’s past commitments or past experience, there is something to that, right? There is something, there is something to that.

But it’s interesting because the place where Yirmiyahu goes, is he basically, after he’s done this very confident thing in front of people, he basically turns to God and said, why did you just have me do that? That makes no sense. We are losing everything right now. Why am I buying a field? And first of all, I love that he does that because he did what God said, he did the public thing, he gave people the confidence, and in his sort of private relationship with God, he’s like, I don’t have confidence about this. What is this? Right? Like, I don’t know how to do this.

And within that, he talks about children. And I think, meaning he talks about future generations. And I think that’s kind of the only place you’re going to be able to go when you’re talking about buying land. People who aren’t going to live on that land, buying a piece of land, right? Cause they know only a few generations in the future.

So would you like to read, Leora, do you want to pick up from, from verse 16, where Yirmiyahu praised to God, after he did this whole public ceremony of buying the land?

Leora:But after I’ve had given the deed to Baruch son of Neriah, I prayed to God. Ah, my sovereign God, you have made heaven and earth with your great might and outstretched arm. Nothing is too wondrous for you. Amen. You show kindness to the thousands of thousands, thousandth generation, but visit the guilt of the parents upon their children after them. Oh, great and mighty God, whose name is God of hosts.

Elana:And this is just his intro to praying to God and saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, you’ve taken us out of Egypt. You brought us here. We’re sinning against you. Now we’re going to have to leave. But why are you telling me to buy this land? It makes no sense. Right? Meaning, this is kind of his intro.

Leora:Right. And of course, the oseh chesed la’alafim is very familiar to us from the high holidays. And elsewhere, right? This idea that God shows kindness to the, you know, the thousandth of generations. So a thousand generations from now, God is going to show kindness. And what’s, what’s interesting is that it seems to me here that what he’s, Yirmiyahu’s very vague on what it means though for the children to suffer because of what their parents have done. He says that this just happens, you know, to the children as if it’s just one generation. But if you think about, for instance, the Ten Commandments, in Exodus 20, right after the Second Commandment, when God is saying who God is, that I am a jealous God, God describes God’s self as punishing to the third or fourth generation, not just one generation, but also says showing kindness to the thousandth generation.

Elana:So do we have here, essentially some sense of when things are good, it seems like they’re good for a very long time, right? Like, oh, you show kindness, God, to the thousandth generation. And then when things are bad, it feels like this, the next generation looks up and says, why was this thrown in our lap? We didn’t shape this. We didn’t do this.

And by the way, I want to be very careful. I clear, I see that Yirmiyahu is talking about sin and the consequence of sin. I think there’s also just the consequence of decisions, right? I started with this story about this woman who was from a kibbutz down South. The fact that she decided to live in a kibbutz down south literally changed her child’s life forever, right? Had she lived in Baka in Jerusalem, they wouldn’t be evacuated from their homes. She shouldn’t do anything wrong, God forbid. But the point is that the kids are going to live with the consequences, right? They’re going to live with the consequences of their parents.

And I love the language that Yirmiyahu used, that it’s God pays the sins of the parents, el cheik beneihem achareihem. Like into their lap, essentially, like just throws it into their lap and they’re, they’re kind of stuck. And I think Yirmiyahu recognizes that also it’s sort of like, God, you just told me to sell, to buy this land, but my kids are not even going to be on this land. My kids are also going to be in exile. So like, when is this even going to happen? We’re talking about 70 years from now?

So there’s something to be said here about continuity between one generation and the next, but also a promise that at some point there won’t be absolute continuity, that some generation is going to actually transform things at some point, right? This is actually a little bit lighter than Shemot, in Exodus 20.

Leora:Oh, much.

Elana:Exodus 20 is saying, three to four generations later, you’re still going to be wrestling with the effects of this, at least here,Yirmiyahu is saying, okay, their children will wrestle with the effects, but maybe a few generations into the future, they’re not anymore. They’re able to come back.

Leora:Right, and of course that’s the challenge, is to, you know, different kinds of historical events, or individual decisions, it’s both, will have shorter and, and more long term consequences. And maybe Yirmiyahu’s hoping that this will be shorter, rather than more long term, even while he recognizes by burying, the deed, and by really preserving it, that it may be longer.

Elana:Meaning he realizes it. Maybe look, he’s the one who says himself, we’re talking about a 70-year period, right? Like he’s giving them numbers. Well, it’s also interesting to consider Yirmiyahu’s sense here that the children are going to suffer for whatever the parents decisions were, in this case bad decisions. I would say in our case today, there’s probably bad decisions and there are also just regular normal life decisions that people make.

It’s interesting that in the previous chapter, one of the marks of redemption, right, in Yirmiyahu chapter 31, one of the marks of redemption that’s promised is that children won’t have to suffer for the consequences of their parents anymore, right? So if you look in Yirmiyahu chapter 31 verses 28 to 30, for example, right, it says, or even 29 and 30, we could just say, that in those days, meaning in the days of redemption, people won’t say anymore, avot achlu boser vesheoni habanim tikhenah, that parents ate sour grapes but their children’s teeth are the ones that feel it.

Instead, ki im ish baono yamit, everybody is going to die for their own sins, kol ha’adam haboser tikhena shinav, the person who eats the sour grapes are going to feel them, right? That’s like, actually a mark of redemption is the sense that you will no longer have to be suffering the consequences of your parents.

Leora:Yes, yes, but I, again, yes, and I mean, and this is, of course, I think Yirmiyahu’s famous for this, for the Chapter 31, for the, you know, the children won’t suffer. But I think what’s kind of remarkable is that he also is recognizing the reality that the children do suffer. And so I think, once again, we have a tension. And I think part of what he’s trying to suggest is we just have to hold that tension.

Elana:Right. So it’s a little bit like if we think about, I don’t know, Nazism in Germany, the next generations or the legacy of slavery in America, the next generations, right? So there’s no question that the generations following are impacted in some way. But it does seem like Yirmiyahu also wants there to be, at some point, a coming out from under that. And that, that brings me back to the first thing that you said, which is, so whose responsibility is it? Or whose ability is it to be able to come out from under that? Cause the parents aren’t gonna be able to do it. And maybe even the first generation isn’t gonna be able to do it. So who’s gonna be able to do it?

Leora:Right. It’s future generations down the road. Absolutely. I mean, I think what’s interesting about it is if we think about the strongest form of it, right, which is found in Exodus, chapter 20, I think, verses 3 and 4. I think what’s interesting about it is that we realize that of course children do suffer for the sins of their parents in many cases, and that’s a problem. But at the same time, children also greatly benefit from, hopefully, the gifts of their parents. And so we can’t just have the gifts without also taking on the responsibilities for what what was done wrong.

So in a way, I think what’s what’s going on in Shemot, but also in Yirmiyahu is a recognition that we aren’t actually just individuals. We, that basically the point, the point of having children isn’t that you have a child who grows up to just be an autonomous individual, but that we’re always going to be responsible for both the past and the future.

Elana:You would basically say a combination of, you get the chesed from the previous generations and you also get the negative consequences from the previous generations and you would basically say, let’s add an element of where does the responsibility of the children come in.

You had been telling me, we were talking about this, you had been telling me about a Hermann Cohen, discussion of Yirmeyahu versus Yechezkel on this score. Can you just share it with our listeners? I think people would really benefit from it.

Leora:Sure. So, Hermann Cohen, for those who aren’t familiar with him, was a late-19th, and early 20th century German Jewish philosopher. He was a very important philosopher in his day. But the book that he wrote that wasn’t actually published until right after he died is a book called Religion of Reason: Out of the Sources of Judaism. And there he really uses Ezekiel, Yechezkel, as the model for what he understands to be human responsibility.

So basically in, in Ezekiel, Ezekiel quotes Jeremiah 31. I think this is in chapter 18. He quotes Jeremiah to say that basically only the person who has committed a sin should be punished.

Elana:Which, by the way is also a quote of Devarim 24, right?

Leora:Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And so what Cohen does is he looks to Ezekiel rather than Jeremiah as an ideal, even though Ezekiel says the same thing that Jeremiah says in chapter 31. And there is a background to that, which has to do with Jewish Christian polemics and the fact that Ezekiel is both a prophet and a priest and not just a prophet, but let us bracket that, and instead see what Cohen wants to do with this.

Cohen says that this is about becoming, what he calls a unique eye, a real eye. Meeting as a person, a unique individual, what does it mean to be a unique individual? It means actually that I am truly an individual, but at the same time, I am responsible for my whole community. And for him, this is the paradigm of moral responsibility, which is that I’m responsible for more than the things that I have done. I’m not guilty, say, for more than what I have done, but I am responsible for more than I have done.

Elana:So Cohen sees that more in Yechezkel than in Yirmiyahu?

Leora:Yes, he does. He does because he sees in Yechezkal this emphasis on cult, on coming together as, even though Cohen is not interested in the sacrificial system, I should say, he’s very much not, but what he sees the transformation of Yechezkel into, say, rabbinic culture, in terms of the way in which and what he uses as the example is Yom Kippur liturgy, where when we do confess, we confess in the plural and not in the singular. But for him, that’s actually a mark of individual responsibility rather than passively receiving the guilt of what past generations have done.

Elana:Hmm. That’s interesting. So, I mean, we’re not learning Yechezkel here, but I do think it’s interesting to consider what does it look like to have the sins of the parents or the consequences of the parents fall into the laps of the children, right? One way of reading that is you’re equally culpable. Another way of reading that is let’s try to slough it off and ignore it.

And you’re basically saying in order to have agency, you have to be able to say, look, there’s a reality here. We’re not to blame for it, but we do have to take responsibility in order to change it.

Leora:Absolutely.

Elana:Something like that. All right. So I think that where that leaves me, like just thinking about Tisha B’Av and thinking about this little boy that I saw, and just thinking about this sort of hopelessness right now that I think a lot of people are feeling is I think there’s a promise here, a, there’s a covenantal promise of continuity.

Meaning that even when things seem like they’re falling apart, there is some underlying, there is some underlying thread that is going to remain. I think there’s also a sense of human agency and activity and participation of Yirmiyahu was saying, yeah, I don’t really understand this whole thing about buying the land, but I’m going to do it because I have trust and I have hope, and even if in sort of the privacy of my own conversation with God, I’m utterly confused as to how this can be, I’m still going to put down tracks to get somewhere.

I think it also tells us something about the inevitability of the next generation having to hold the burden of what this generation has shaped through their decisions and also through their errors. But I think it also promises that there can be a sense of responsibility and transformation on the part of future generations. And like, just to go back to this image, that the picture of King George can turn into the picture of George Washington, and I think to an extent like Tisha B’Av is a, it’s a depressing day, but to be honest, I think the end of the day is actually supposed to bring us to that understanding, right? The end of the day is actually supposed to bring us to the possibility of transformation, the possibility of return.

So I’m hoping that some of the things that people got from this is both like the reality of the pessimism of the moment, but also the mandate for the belief in transformation, into the future, God willing. Thank you so much. Any last words from you, Leora?

Leora:Yeah, the only thing I would add is to go back to the first question about what philosophers have had to say about this, is to say that the great philosophers of the past actually haven’t, for the most part, had children. And t’s really about the way in which future generations, despite the burden that they might have, the act of having children, which can take many forms, taking care of the younger generation, is actually the ultimate expression of hope for the future.

Elana:That’s beautiful. That’s really, really beautiful. I hope that people have a meaningful Tisha B’Av and that this has helped put it into some really, really, really long-range, Jewish context for people. Thanks so much, Leora.

Leora:Thank you, Elana.

Elana:Thanks for listening to our show, everyone. And special thanks to my chavruta this week, Leora Batnitzky.

TEXTing is produced by Tessa Zitter with production assistance from Sarina Shohet. Our senior producer is MGordoLouis n and our executive producer is Maital Friedman. This episode was mixed by Ben Azevedo at Bear Cave Audio with music provided by Luke Allen.

We’re always looking for ideas for what we should cover in future episodes, so if you have a topic you’d like to hear about or if you have comments about this episode, please write to us at [email protected]. For more ideas from the Shalom Hartman Institute, sign up for our newsletter in the show notes and subscribe to this podcast everywhere podcasts are available. See you next time. And thanks for listening.