COMMENTARY
October 2020
Federation Star
27
The greatest legacy one can leave Rabbi Ammos Chorny
M
ost of us have given thought to estate planning, but what about legacy planning? We all want to leave a legacy. Much of the reason for our strong desire to accumulate wealth—and our sorrow at losing it—comes from our deep-seated need to be remembered once we depart this world. For some, a legacy is of utmost importance. Having died in 2005, billionaire Edward Reichman left his family two envelopes; one to be opened immediately after his death and one to be opened after shloshim. The first envelope contained a letter to his children. “Children, I have one simple request before I am buried. Please bury me in my socks.” The children told this to the Chevra
Kadisha, who refused to honor his request. The children were disappointed they couldn’t fulfill their father’s last request. After the shloshim, they opened the second envelope and there was the following letter. “My dear children, by now you must have buried me without my socks. I wanted you to truly understand that you can have $1 billion, but in the end, you can’t even bring your socks with you when you pass on. You only get to bring your good deeds.” In a Forbes article, Daniel Scott noted that, “Estate planning is dead,” pointing out that instead of worrying about where one’s assets go after death, there is a new focus on “legacy planning.” He writes, “Legacy planning recognizes that you are more than what you own; it recognizes that you are the sum total of your life experiences. It measures your wealth, not just in terms of financial capital, but in terms of your human capital— who you are in terms of your knowledge, values, relationships and spiritual beliefs, as
well as your contributions to society. More importantly, legacy planning is about life, not death... Legacy planning empowers you to choose the life you want to ultimately leave behind and write the story you want others to tell when you are gone.” On Sukkot, we read Kohelet, King Solomon’s legacy of wisdom. “Thus, I hated all my achievements laboring under the sun, for I must leave it to the one who succeeds me.” He wasn’t all that enthusiastic about his son, Rechovam. The famous commentator, Rav Saadiah Gaon, explains, “When a person leaves his fortune to righteous children, he does it with joy. But if his children are wicked, he weeps.” Your legacy are the children and grandchildren who speak at your funeral and cry for you as they remember you. Therefore, ask yourself, what would you rather leave to your children—Kodak stock or Kodak moments? Money is good, but memories live on and serve as reminders of our existence. As important
as the money you may want to leave your children is, how they see what you do with your money teaches them in the most profound way what is really important. You see, memories are created every moment. Some of the most important ones are even made when we’re totally unaware. And these, very often, are really the most valuable legacies we can leave to our children. Thus, here’s my suggestion about our legacy; save the menorahs your children make in Religious School and use them on Chanukah. Maybe they will save your Seder plates and use them after you are gone. In your lifetime, let them see that you appreciate what’s truly valuable. In your passing, let them see the institutions you made bequests to, so that they will treasure them as well. As Rav Saadiah teaches, what could be a greater legacy than having descendants who use their money to express our values? May we all be so fortunate! Rabbi Ammos Chorny serves at Beth Tikvah in Naples.
booth that sways gently with every passing breeze, beckoning us to enter. The sukkah whispers to us that life is fleeting, but sweet. “Come into me and rejoice,” it murmurs. “Take delight in the world and its pleasures, which are all the richer when they are shared.”
Make the most of your sukkah at this sacred season. And be sure, as you sit basking in the peace and the fragrance and the silvery moonlight, to rejoice as well in the music of the crickets chirping. Rabbi Mark Wm. Gross serves at Jewish Congregation of Marco Island.
A matter of timing Rabbi Mark Wm. Gross
W
hat if they gave a party, and nobody came? That’s the question rabbis ask this time of year. Our kinfolk of the Household of Israel converge on our synagogues to hear the shofar blown on Rosh haShanah, and 10 days later, to hear its final plaintive blast to mark the conclusion of the Yom Kippur fast. But, after the sound and the drama, five days later, when Sukkot comes, it’s pretty much crickets chirping, which is too bad. For our long-ago forebearers in the land of Israel, the jubilant Autumn harvest, Feast of Booths, was part Oktoberfest, part Mardi Gras—an occasion so joyous that, in the Bible, it is never called by name but simply referred to as החגheChag, “The Feast,” with a capital “F.” It was the occasion for Jews from all over Israel to gather for parties, feasting and catching up with friends. The Talmud describes this pilgrimage festival as a time when acrobats and musicians roamed the streets, turning all of Jerusalem into a carnival, and the torchlight made night as bright as day. Even if we, as what Mel Brooks would call “dazzling urbanites,” may not be able to relate to a harvest festival, Sukkot is still
an occasion that reconnects us with the Earth, its bounties, and above all, its fragility. In modernity, the Jewish community has made Sukkot into a contemporary festival of environmental awareness. Spending time away from conditioned air; basking in the quietude of the outdoors; smelling the fragrance of grass, trees, the fresh foliage forming the roof the sukkah and the fresh produce with which it is decorated; and watching the movement of the stars and the full harvest moon twinkling through the branches overhead—these all reconnect us to the peaceful orderliness of Creation, and to a renewed awe for the One who formed it. They also speak to us of our own frailty. During the eight days of the festival, we watch the green thatching of the sukkah roof turn sere and yellow, as the fruits and vegetables hanging overhead shrivel and fade. At this poignant turning point of the year, when the days grow pointedly shorter and summer has faded into winter, it is a metaphor for our own transience— a fitting theme, hard on the heels of the introspective Ten Days of Repentance. It is no accident that the m’gillah (festival scroll) assigned to Sukkot is Ecclesiastes, the thoughtful and very grown-up book of the Bible that confronts the ultimate question, “What’s it all about, anyway?” Look how far we have come in just a couple of paragraphs together: from “party hearty” to “nothing lasts forever.” What unifies those diametrical opposites is a fragile, but beautiful, little harvest
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h s i w nt e J e a d u u ? t o 1 S y 2 Are School ay 20 M h g g i H uatin d a r G OF GREATER NAPLES
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