We are familiar with old-fashioned paper or digital manual for telescopes and toasters. We are not as familiar with a tradition that provides operating instructions for living. The tradition of ethical wills is not well known. But it’s emerging now as a powerful tool for people who want to share something of their essence with future generations, distilled wisdom from ordinary life.
The Jewish letters I will be sharing here are sometimes called ethical wills, but I prefer the name I created: wisdom letters. These letters are not legal documents. They have no legal authority. They are letters from the heart and soul. The power they possess lies in the voices of the folks who have written them. To that end, L’chaim: The Jewish Letters Project aims to provide the feeling of being part of a conversation about how to create a purpose-filled life. What makes such letters radical is big talk, like questions about how you have coped with catastrophe, failure, and loss; what has created joy; what has sustained you in difficult times; what you take from regret; and how to build a good Jewish life. These letters are not a platform for small talk. And yet L'chaim: The Jewish Letters Project is for anyone with a case of curiosity. This newsletter is the home to listen to the voices of ordinary Jews doing something extraordinary. And the ideas here are not just for Jews. According to the concept here, the most valuable things we transmit are not material.
We will be sharing some letters that will be published here for the first time. If the words of these letters function like Lego, with sentences as the building blocks, each author creates their own structure. Some make lists. Some tell stories. Some share previously unknown family history. Voices range in tone, length, content, and focus. We will include the letters from pre-modern, modern and contemporary parents from around the world. Sometimes we look in the historical rear-view mirror to hear what previous generations have observed: Take, for example, Gluckel of Hameln, a 17th century German widow and business woman, who writes “the kernel of the Torah is Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, but in our days we seldom find it so, and few are they who love their fellow men with all their heart-on the contrary, if a man can contrive to ruin his neighbour, nothing pleases him more.”
You will hear from folks you will likely never meet but nevertheless get to know, like the American mother who wanted to give her daughter something of significance when she left her home for university, the Polish born Nazi resister who wrote about her history for her six Canadian born grandchildren, and the naval chaplain who wrote a wisdom letter for a Jerusalem newspaper as a public work in progress to argue that perfection is an illusion. There is a Mexican-born father who shares folks sayings, an Israeli high-school principal who privileges the power of language, and a Texan who tucked her letter into an office desk drawer but did not tell her family about it. The letter writers featured here may be young or old, religious or secular, pre-modern or contemporary, dead or alive.
I am dreaming this project evolves into a collective conversation where I hear from you as well as we read these extraordinary letters and, in so doing, I hope to uncover some new voices. If you have written a letter or you have received a wisdom letter I would love to read it. Submission is not a guarantee of publication but I promise to read all submissions. I am reachable through my substack e-mail: jewishlettersproject@substack.com
L’chaim: The Jewish Letters Project will publish twice a month. One post will feature a noteworthy letter, some published here for the first time. The second monthly post will explore how people go about creating these letters, why they bother in the first place, and what their impact may be. I am looking forward to sharing this “L'chaim” with you.