“. . . every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a head of a household, who brings out of his treasure things new and old.” Matthew 13:52

Tradition! Just saying the word makes me think of Tevye and Fiddler on the Roof. The movie is set in the mythical Russian town of Anatevka, where life is a poor, hard grind, the Russians can’t be trusted not to kill you one day, and—however hard he tries to stop it—Tevye is watching his tradition disintegrate day by day. At the end of the movie, the whole village packs up and leaves for America.

My grandparents did not live very far from the villages that inspired Sholom Aleichem, author of the Tevye stories. And they came to the United States in the same tide of immigration that Tevye would have, intent on finding a new life.

When I was growing up, I was often exhorted by my grandmother, with a twinkle in her eye: “Boychick—you’re a link in the chain,” she would say with her heavy Yiddish accent. “Just make sure you don’t break the chain!” The message was clear and my generation heard it often, especially from the lips of relatives from the “old country.” The message was, If you don’t keep Jewish customs, our tradition will die—and it will be your fault! Even when said with a smile in her voice, the message was somber. Here I was, little Carl Kinbar, a link in a great and mighty chain stretching from the past and—if I did the right thing—into the future as well. No pressure there!