This week, in anticipation of the 4th of July and America's 250th, I picked up David McCullough's masterful 1776.
There's something both humbling and urgent, especially now, about returning to our origin story. To remember the battles for America’s independence is also to remember how precarious and scary things must have felt when people were literally fighting for their survival, unsure how things would turn out. This country has been built and sustained by the service, sacrifice, resilience, and hope of leaders and ordinary citizens of every generation.
In a 1995 speech at a National Book Foundation awards ceremony, McCullough expanded on the value of knowing our history:
[H]istory shows that times of change are the times when we are most likely to learn. This nation was founded on change. We should embrace the possibilities in these exciting times and hold to a steady course, because we have a sense of navigation, a sense of what we’ve been through in times past and who we are.
There is a paradox in these few short sentences that is as true about America as it is about Jewish history and tradition. Continuity with the past empowers us in the present. We can navigate the times we’re in because we know where we’ve been and what we’ve been through.
At the same time, both America and the Jewish People were founded on change and revolutionary thinking — politically, socially, morally, theologically. Abraham, the first Jew, had to leave behind his birthplace, his family, the frameworks of thinking and living in which he was raised, to go forth (lech lecha) and create a new People in a new Land. The Founders of this country also embarked on a lech lecha of their own: to create a new nation, governed by the people, for the people.
As American Jews, these are our origin stories. What better time to return to them than right now? Russian author and dissident, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, said: “A people which no longer remembers has lost its history and its soul.”
A healthy relationship with the past embraces both continuity and change. Remembering the past should not mean retelling overly simplified or romanticized narratives. Nor should it mean reducing history to equally overly simplified, relentlessly critical narratives. Neither of these honors the complexity of where we come from nor the rich experiences and the humanity of the people on whose shoulders we stand.
We can approach history and those who’ve come before us with humility and curiosity, with a combination of reverence and loving critique.
Theologian and activist William Sloane Coffin said something similar about how citizens should approach their countries. “There are three kinds of patriots, two bad, one good,” he said. “The bad ones are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover’s quarrel with their country.”
As I reflect on the state of our community and America on this 250th Independence Day, I worry that too many of us are pulled toward one of these “bad” poles: uncritical love or loveless criticism. Somehow, we need to expand our intellectual, emotional, and spiritual capacities to engage differently — with our stories, with our countries, and with one another.
I know we can find new ways to work and build together, across our differences, for the sake of our shared future. Parker Palmer puts it beautifully in Healing the Heart of Democracy: “It is in the common good to hold our political (and, I would add, moral and ideological) differences and the conflicts they create in a way that does not unravel the civic community on which democracy depends.”
I can think of no better way to celebrate this 250th than by recommitting to learning our history and staying in this sacred work.
Happy 4th of July and Shabbat Shalom.