On December 2nd, I landed in Lisbon, Portugal to begin a five-day CCAR-led trip for rabbis. There we discovered the path of history that led our people into and out of and back again to this special country. On the first night, I had the privilege of introducing the Mayor of Lisbon, His Excellency Carlos Moedas. His biography, which includes education at the University of Lisbon and Harvard, led him to an extraordinary career in innovation in Europe and then at home in Portugal. In addition to his stellar career, his wife of 25 years has Jewish roots. Their family is raising three children and cherishes their Jewish heritage.

In his talk with us, he highlighted the advantages of diversity that he observes in Europe and in Lisbon. Among his insights into the advantages of diversity is a key to economic and human development for a nation, which he credits Jews and Judaism. Call it a gift of the Jews. Uniquely, he said, Jews tell and retell their stories, history, and journeys. The Haggadah is the ultimate retelling of the Jewish story. It grounds us and launches us on a shared journey. Despite the circuitous and disrupted paths we’ve taken and destinations we’ve reached, not always permanently, we cannot change or refute our experience in Egypt and our departure.

It’s precisely that unique quality that Mayor Moedes said that most Europeans lack. History is recorded on walls and celebrated in ceremonies, but without them or the lands that people have resided in, their stories would be lost, attested to by the many peoples and cultures that are no longer present. Jews, no matter their place of residence, traveled with and maintained their oral story as the essential source of who they are and who we continue to be. All the more reason to learn, to teach, and to educate ourselves and our children. When we fail to remember and to tell our story over and over again, we begin to fail and lose our way.

Repetition is our future. The story we know is the one we can transmit. It reminds me of the time when one of my sons, at age four, turned to me as Second Seder began and said, “We did this already!” With an emphasis on the meaning of why we were doing what we just did the night before, he was acting the wise child who noticed the redundancy. It was also an opening for me to explain the importance of retelling the story again and to know it well. Likewise, we pass the Torah from generation to generation for b’nei mitzvah families. It symbolizes the physical conveyance of our people’s teaching and also the promise to continue telling our people’s stories. They’re the source of our ethics, morals, peoplehood, and language. They’re all the ways that we’ve maintained and flourished as Jews.

To guarantee that our story thrives, and therefore our people thrives, we need to know our story well and tell it again and again. What are you prepared to tell? What more do you need to learn and explain? How will you be a narrator of our people’s Jewish story? L’dor Vador, from generation to generation, doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because we all know the story we are duty-bound to tell, again and again.

L’Shalom,