Part of what I do in my cardiology practice is read echocardiograms. An echocardiogram is an ultrasound picture of the heart. The ultrasound beam comes out from the ultrasound probe in a flat beam, sort of shaped like a backwards pie or pizza slice. You can move the beam around the heart to get a sense of how it looks, but at any given moment you’re only seeing a 2-dimensional slice of the heart. So you have be able to view all the 2D slices and put them back together in your mind to re-create a 3D image of what you’re seeing. In other word, you’re using a 2D imaging technology to view a 3D structure. It seems to me that time is like that. We only live in this time – the present. When we see events around us we see them as a narrow ultrasound beam, in 2D, only in the context of our present time. But if we are able to widen our view to take into account the past and possibly even future not-yet-unfolded events, we are able to see events in a much larger context. This wider view allows for a much greater understanding of what is happening, why it is happening, what the significance is, and where things may lead in the future. You may think this just boils down to something like a history teacher harping on his or her students on the importance of history despite their obvious boredom. Indeed, I used to hate history myself in school. But I see this as more than just knowing a buch of historical dates, places and names. Here is an example:
My mom said something to me in Yiddish the other day. i don’t speak Yiddish but know a few words, enough to know what she was saying (sort of). There are two ways to see this, 2D and 3D. The perhaps more familiar 2D way is as follows: There’s always a general nostalgia for the past. This may be interesting on a Sunday afternoon with a warm cup of tea, but otherwise isn’t relevant to what we do today. Its nostalgic that my parents sometimes talk in Yiddish. Grandma used to speak it a lot, and mom picked it up from her. But that was just a holdover from the “old country” and so we don’t need it anymore. It might be historically interesting, even sort of sad to lose it, but what can you do? Times change.
The 3D way to see it may be as follows: Part of the way we Jews have kept our identity alive through the ages since our dispersion two thousand years ago is by retaining our own language, separate from that of the surrounding culture. The two best known examples are Yiddish and Ladino. My generation in the US is the first generation to have almost no functional knowldege whatsoever of an alternative Jewish language. My parents, and every generation going back from there, can converse both in the secular vernacular and in Yiddish. I can’t. And none of my friends can. Which brings me to our journey here in Israel. Because if you believe that language is an important mechanism by which to retain a culture, then what’s up with that? How will any sort of separate Jewish culture persist in the US today if everyone only speaks English? Maybe it will be just fine, after all, the US is very good for the Jews. Its just that its never happened before that the Jews have lived in a place and had no other language of their own. So its in this light when my Mom spoke to me in Yiddish the other day that I turned around and looked at myself and my family, struggling to learn modern Hebrew. And indeed, at the whole country of Israel, all of whom know Hebrew and most of whom know at least basic English. There is an entire community of Jews here, who speak their own language, Hebrew, but can also converse in the current world vernacular – English. So maybe my kids won’t be able to speak Yiddish. But they’ll be able to speak Hebrew. And thus will our culture continue.