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Afterword WHILE WRITING this bookI often became conscious of the stream of personal history flowing through me onto these pages and thus into the future. My father grew up in the home of his maternal grandfather, Hershel Ahron-Yena's, who was a Slobodka musmakh, moreh boraah , ordained and certified to give others ordination. My greatgrandfather had served as Rav of Sokoly in Lomza gebemyeb and then had a small yeshivah of his own there. My father reported that Hershel hated Hasidim and would cross the street if he saw a Hasid approaching. Loving Hershel, my father steered me gently toward the rabbinate and claimed that, if he looked away when I spoke in a synagogue, he could hear Hershel. My mother met my father in the United States, having immigrated here from Koroscmezo, Hungary, a town she believed was somewhere near Jassy. Her father had died sometime after World War I, and when I got around to asking about him as I got older, she recalled very little. I was named after him, YelJ.iel, "God will live," a prophetic name for an American boy who would grow up wanting to be a Jewish theologian and would spend much of his life explaining that God was not dead. The only thing my mother remembered about Yehiel's Jewish practice was that each Shabos he would put on a zaydeneh kapoteb, a silk kaftan and, I think she added, a sbtraymel. I am, then, the product of an intermarriage between Litvak rationalism and Hungarian Hasidism. Perhaps that explains my determination to be as rational as I can about what I know to be my nonrational Jewish faith. In any case, from time to time as I wrote I would muse about what Hershel and Yehiel would make of the Judaism that I, who bear their influence, have given exposition here. But I was far more concerned about my grandchildren's generation. They may be as Jewishly different from me as I am from Hershel and Yehlel but I hope that I will help them move confidently into their Jewish identity even as my parents and their parents did for me. Zekber tzadik livrakbab, lithe memory of the righteous is for blessing./I 301 Afterword WHILE WRITING this bookI often became conscious of the stream of personal history flowing through me onto these pages and thus into the future. My father grew up in the home of his maternal grandfather, Hershel Ahron-Yena's, who was a Slobodka musmakh, moreh boraah , ordained and certified to give others ordination. My greatgrandfather had served as Rav of Sokoly in Lomza gebemyeb and then had a small yeshivah of his own there. My father reported that Hershel hated Hasidim and would cross the street if he saw a Hasid approaching. Loving Hershel, my father steered me gently toward the rabbinate and claimed that, if he looked away when I spoke in a synagogue, he could hear Hershel. My mother met my father in the United States, having immigrated here from Koroscmezo, Hungary, a town she believed was somewhere near Jassy. Her father had died sometime after World War I, and when I got around to asking about him as I got older, she recalled very little. I was named after him, YelJ.iel, "God will live," a prophetic name for an American boy who would grow up wanting to be a Jewish theologian and would spend much of his life explaining that God was not dead. The only thing my mother remembered about Yehiel's Jewish practice was that each Shabos he would put on a zaydeneh kapoteb, a silk kaftan and, I think she added, a sbtraymel. I am, then, the product of an intermarriage between Litvak rationalism and Hungarian Hasidism. Perhaps that explains my determination to be as rational as I can about what I know to be my nonrational Jewish faith. In any case, from time to time as I wrote I would muse about what Hershel and Yehiel would make of the Judaism that I, who bear their influence, have given exposition here. But I was far more concerned about my grandchildren's generation. They may be as Jewishly different from me as I am from Hershel and Yehlel but I hope that I will help them move confidently into their Jewish identity even as my parents and their parents did for me. Zekber tzadik livrakbab, lithe memory of the righteous is for blessing./I 301 ...

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