Friends,

This Shabbat, we celebrate not only our weekly day of rest, but also a special milestone in our community: Edythe Lichtenstein’s 100th birthday.

Her century of life stands as a living bridge between generations, connecting us to the deep roots of Jewish life here in Newport News while pointing us toward the future.

Edythe recently shared treasured memories of her years in our community. Her grandfather served as what she proudly calls “the first Jewish leader of Newport News,” conducting services in a synagogue above Rosenbaum’s hardware store. Washington Avenue bustled with businesses owned by her uncles and cousins, creating a vibrant commercial district that anchored community life. She recalls hiding behind doors to listen to her brother Mayer’s Hebrew lessons, and tells stories of Passover seders hosting 43 guests, complete with her sister’s famous chopped liver and Gary’s memorable silver dollars. These family gatherings became sacred theater where ancient liberation transformed into present celebration.

Edythe’s stories resonate with this week’s Torah reading, where Moses teaches the Israelites a ritual that would transform them from a collection of individuals into a nation of storytellers. When entering the Promised Land, each farmer must bring first fruits to the Temple, but the gift alone isn’t enough. Each person must also recite a declaration beginning with those famous words: “My father was a wandering Aramean.”

What follows is the entire sweep of Jewish history compressed into just a few sentences: Abraham’s journey, the descent into Egypt, slavery and oppression, divine deliverance and finally the gift of the land itself. This declaration, known as the vidui bikkurim, became so central to Jewish consciousness that we recite it every year at our Passover seders.

Moses was doing something revolutionary. He wasn’t asking for a history lesson; he was commanding that every individual take the collective story and make it personally their own.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks teaches that there is a fundamental difference between history and memory. History is “his story,” something that happened to someone else, somewhere else. Memory is “my story,” the past internalized and made part of one's identity.

Moses insisted that storytelling wouldn’t be the exclusive province of priests or kings. Every farmer would become a narrator of the national story. Every citizen would be transformed into a guardian of collective memory.

Edythe represents what happens when ordinary people embrace this sacred responsibility across generations. Seven generations of her family have not merely lived Jewish lives in our community, they have become storytellers, each adding their own chapter while preserving the essential narrative.

From her grandfather’s pioneering leadership to her great-granddaughter’s recent graduation from our Sarfan Early Childhood Center, we witness the fulfillment of Moses’s commandment: that the story be passed not just from leader to leader, but from parent to child, from grandparent to grandchild, creating an unbroken chain of living memory.

Edythe’s hundred years remind us that we are not merely individuals, but rather we are links in an unbroken chain of memory, guardians of a story that began with our ancestors and continues through every child who takes their first steps. Her life demonstrates what Moses understood: that the greatest leaders are not those who tell the story of the group, but those who teach the group to become storytellers themselves.

Shabbat Shalom and mazal tov to Edythe!  May her story continue to inspire us all to tell our own.

Eric Maurer
CEO
emaurer@jewishpeninsula.org