I think one of the biggest challenges in childraising is to help a second son. The difficulties of living in the shade of a first-born of the same sex seem to be hardest with sons. Here is our modest offering.

Yacdav Nesher

(As a brit mila is the entrance of a Jew into the community, we asked people to pass the baby from hand to hand to everyone present on his journey from Chaia to Ncoom to begin the brit.)

We don't seem to be able to avoid the story of the the Jews leaving Egypt. Yibaneh was born immediately after Pesach, and our second child is born in parsha Yitro, which is the end of the story of leaving Egypt. In fact, Yitro seems to represent us in a number of ways. Yitro was a representative of a foreign culture He had a daughter, named Tzipora, who married Moshe. Tzipora is the Hebrew name of an aunt of mine (Fanya Freydburg, z"l who lived in New York, a foreign culture, and never had any children. Moshe's Tzipora had two children. One of them is named Gershom, which means "I was a stranger there" and refers to Moshe being a stranger in Egypt. Just so Chaia and I were strangers in a foreign culture. And one of them is named Eliezer, "God helps me," In fact Go helped us by sending us Rabbi Eliezer Berkovitz who began teaching my father, the eventual results of which are my and Chaia's being here in Israel today. God helped save us from that place where we were strangers.

But what is so special about Yitro? Why does he have a parsha named after him, he's not Jewish, he appears in the shadow of Moshe; what's special about him? Yitro is the first one, after leaving Egypt, to say baruch hashem, praised be God. He is the first one to recognise and express the greatness of what has happened, and to offer a blessing to God for the present he has given the Jewish people in saving them from their fate. In fact, the word lhatzil, to save, is repeated over and over throughout the story of Yitro, as if to emphasise his great awareness of what has happened. The word lhatzil is reminiscent of Celie z"l, Chaia's aunt who, like my aunt, was born in Europe, died in America, and never really found what to save her. On the memory of these two women, we recognise our fate had we not been saved.

But how does Yitro recognise what has happened when none of the Jews who have actually experienced the going out of Egypt are able to? He has the advantage of being outside, and by virtue of that has a viewpoint that is maybe estranged, but has more perspective. So too today in Israel, many people who live here lack the perspective to see that we have been saved. Though there is much to improve in our society, anyone who remembers what the diaspora was like instantly realised that a great thing has happened to us. Yes we still serve in the army, but it is our army, you are not kidnapped for 25 years and the officers can be yelled at and you know that no one is going to shoot you. We still have police and a government, but it is ours, and not a threatening force that must be pacified and avoided. We have a home, and Yitro comes to tell us to wake up and realise it.

The next question is why were the people of Israel saved? Why does one save someone? Not so that they can continue with the same existence, but you pull someone out of their world in order to help them to a better one. As today Jews are saved from Russia not so that they can go assimilate in America, hardly an improvement, but rather so that they can help build the Jewish home. For what higher purpose were the Jews saved from Egypt? To go to Sinai and receive the Tora. And how did Am Yisrael qualify for this? When Moshe cam down from Sinai to tell the people what God demanded of the, is says that the whole people answered yacdav. Yacdav comes from yachad, together, but means more than that. It means united, one unit, wholly together. By virtue of this spiritual state of unity, the Jewish people then were able to receive the Tora, and in fact the state is always one of enormous potential.

The idea of unifying, lyached , is maybe the central Jewish characteristic. What does it mean to unify the Jewish people today? For two thousand years the Jews have been in exile, building an enormous spiritual world. By virtue of being disconnected from the land they had no opportunity to build anything physical, and so the spiritual is where they concentrated. Symbolic perhaps is that in most of the Diaspora it was forbidden to Jews to own land. Without connection to the land, the Jews perforce went to the spirit. Though the building was great, it was by necessity also twisted. The spirit cannot be built without connection to the physical world without certain distortions being built in. When we got to the point that again we were allowed to reenter the physical world, dealing with he spirit alone had become so ingrained, habit, that it demanded a revolt to change tack. That became the kibbutz, the Field School and the prominence of hiking in Israel today. But what was formed was not a better world, but the other side. Today we have part of the Jewish world that deals only with the spirit, and part that deals only with he physical. The greatness of Judaism is what it forms when it unites. And the task today is to unite the two halves of the Jewish people to form what is really Jewish, a whole.

And essentially that is why we are in the Land of Israel, because here we have the possibility of reuniting the two halves. What I saw in America was that the world of the spirit, which is the only world one can live in there as a Jew because e the environs are foreign, non-Jewish, without the strengthening force of learning, dies out within three generations. What I hope is that the same is true here, and that without roots, the fractured Jewish communities will not be able to hold on to their principles, and will be irrevocably drawn toward each other. There is a crisis in the diaspora today, which is leading to the end of Judaism there, as I see it. There is a crisis in Israel today, and I hope, as a few signs indicate, it is leading towards a new growth, something no one yet recognises. Will the professed spiritual world, which today denies the state of Israel, that great potential of the spirit, and the profess physical world, which today yearns to imitate the West and its debasement of the physical, succeed in joining and gaining from each other? That is our hope and work.

To play for a moment,t the yood and chet of Yacdav is chai, which means life. The numerical value of the other two letters is 10, which is a minyan, the definition of the smallest possible Jewish community. Life begins with community, and as the community grows, so does life. We hope our son will know how to create broader and broader Jewish communities, to create life.

Our son's second name, Nesher, means eagle. In our parsha God says that he will save us on the wings of eagles. Why eagles? The eagle is the only bird that carries its young not in its talons, but on its back because it has no fear of other birds. to be saved takes courage. Rambam was called the Great Eagle because of his broad view of the whole of the world and understanding of Judaism. The eagle is part of the world of nature, but moves in the heavens, the world of the physical under the influence of the spiritual.

Lastly, the numerical value of all the letters of Yachdav is 28, or coah , which means strength. We're wishing our son that he will have the strength to participate in and be a part of this great building which is happening to the Jewish people, and therefore the world.