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| -Land of the Free |
| For America at 250, Some Jewish Wisdom on How to Last 3,000 Years |
| 2026-03-28 |
| [Free Beacon] The scholar of Yiddish Ruth Wisse began her Jefferson Lecture last night at the Trump Kennedy Center in Washington with the observation that "There have been many far more distinguished speakers in this series, but I think none has been older, and no one more grateful." Wisse didn’t explicitly make the connection between her age—89—and her topic—"our anxieties about endurance"—but I’m old enough myself to begin to understand what she was talking about. So is America, in its 250th birthday year. Wisse introduced her talk as "a grateful Jewish message on staying power, in three parts." Part one focused on a Yiddish poem by Abraham Sutzkever that asks "Who will last? And what?" It concludes "Who lasts? God abides — isn’t that enough?" I took Sutzkever—and Wisse—to be suggesting that faith in God is one secret to endurance, and also that the anxiety about endurance is eased by the knowledge that only God is eternal. As Wisse put it, "To find lastingness, he insisted, you must look to its source. Trust in eternity can be sought only in the eternal." Or, as she concluded, "Sutzkever, who survived the sacrifice of his formative world—when that’s what it cost to remain a Jew—reminds us to acknowledge before whom we stand. If that secure knowledge could restore him and resurrect the Jewish people, so can it inspire this nation to reach its 2,500th anniversary." Part two focused on an essential Jewish prayer, the Shma, which begins, "Hear, O Israel. The Lord is our God, the Lord is One. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words which I command you today shall be upon your heart. You shall teach them thoroughly to your children, and you shall speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the road, when you lie down and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for a reminder between your eyes. And you shall write them upon the doorposts of your house and upon your gates." As she put it, the "ratio of content to transmission is about 1:7." |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #2 |
| Posted by: Woodrow 2026-03-28 21:00 |
| #1 |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2026-03-28 15:07 |