I just finished looking through a book called The Redemptive Self: stories Americans live by, by Dan McAdams. It is an effort to understand a bit of Americana, what makes us tick, through the stories we tell ourselves.

McAdams speaks in one section of the book about Erik Erikson’s concept of generativity. While I have not studied Erikson and had not heard this term before, it is somewhat intuitive to the Jewish spirit (once it is explained). In short, generativity is defined as “the concern for and commitment to promoting the well-being and development of future generations.” But more than a concept, it is, according to Erikson and McAdams, an altruistic way of framing the meaning of one’s life. In the context of the theme of the book, McAdams writes: “When they take stock of their own lives, highly generative American adults tend to narrate them around the theme of redemption.” Jews might call it a sacred way of framing our historic narrative. Summed up, that narrative says life is a gift and a challenge. Despite all the pains and troubles, life can get better, and it is up to us make it so.

Our sacred narrative speaks of generativity in at least two ways: (1)dor va’dor, for all generations, and (2) our inter-generational covenant at Sinai and renewed on the eastern shore of the Jordan River.

(1) The very way we refer to ourselves and God, the very way we open our central prayer, the Amidah, conjures up this inter-generational tie: our God and God of our ancestors, Abraham (and Sarah), Isaac (and Rebecca), Jacob (and Leah and Rachel). We are the children of Israel. Our covenant with God, the land and each other is made through and across the generations. It is almost impossible to speak in the first person singular as a Jew. We are situated, each of us, in the vast presence of each other.

(2) Deuteronomy 29: 6-14 lays out the covenant that binds one generation to the next:

“You stand this day,” Moses calls to the Jewish people, in his final speech before his death, “all of you, before the Lord your God - your tribal heads, your elders and your officials, all the men of Israel, your children, your wives, even the stranger within your camp, from woodchopper to waterdrawer - to enter into the covenant of the Lord your God, which the Lord your God is concluding with you this day, with its sanctions; to the end that He may establish you this day as His people and be your God, as He promised you and as He swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I make this covenant, with its sanctions, not with you alone, but both with those who are standing here with us this day before the Lord our God and with those who are not with us here this day.”

We know that our covenant with God is not with us alone. We have inherited it from the earliest days of our ancestors, and we are the transmitters and caretakers of it to our children. But what the poetry of this text teaches us is that the covenant is not to be seen as a holding that passes sequentially, and temporarily, from this generation to the next; but rather that at all times, in all places, all Jews are members of this covenant. Simultaneously. We were, as the midrash says, all present at Sinai. And we all make claims on the covenant today.

This has grand implications for what we do to the earth on our watch. Our children, and those of all others, can make a claim against us if we damage the resources they need to live, for they are co-beneficiaries right now no less than we are.

What if we were to imagine, then, as we make our way through our daily lives, that our unborn grandchildren, as adults, are by our side? What if they were witness to our deeds today, and could see how our deeds affected them tomorrow? And what if they could, at the moment we made our choices, at the moment of our actions, show us the impact of our deeds, and how they judge us? In their presence, looking into their eyes, how would we choose to act now?