Thoughts of a New Grandfather on the Day of His Grandson's Bris

May 29, 2025

Gabriel Kahn lived in Russia when he learned that he was about to be drafted into the Czarist army. Conscription often meant 25 years of active duty, and was seen by the Russian government as a means of acculturation or, in its ideal scenario, as a way to convert Jews to Orthodox Christianity. To avoid this fate, Gabriel ran away from his hometown, with the Russian police on his heels. He found a farmhouse, hid in a haystack, and waited until the officials pursuing him had moved on. He managed to escape to Canada, and from there to the United States. He built a family that included his wife, a daughter, and four sons.

Todros Solomont also lived in Russia, where he was arrested for agitating against the government. He was imprisoned in Siberia for twenty years, and his parents, assuming that they would never see him again, emigrated to the United States. To everyone’s surprise, Todros was released during a general amnesty, after which he married, moved to the U.S., and had three sons who helped him run a modest kosher butcher shop.

“I will increase your numbers very, very much, and I will make you become nations; kings will be your descendants. I will keep My covenant between Me and you, and your offspring after you through their generations as an eternal covenant - that I will be your God, and the God of your offspring after you. I will give you and your offspring after you the land where you live - the entire Land of Canaan - as an eternal inheritance; and I will be their God.” God said to Abraham, “You shall keep My covenant - you and your offspring after you through their generations. This is My covenant which you must keep between Me and you and your offspring after you: circumcise every male.”

Bereshit 17:6-10

For many, many years, Jews dwelled far away from their homeland, living a bare-bones existence in countries that, at best, tolerated their existence and, at worst, actively tried to slay them. Yet they still kept the covenant, believed in the covenant, trusted the covenant - even when, in their own words, it seemed that God may have abandoned that same covenant:

Glance down from heaven and see how we have become an object of scorn and derision among the nations. We are considered like sheep brought to the slaughter, to be killed, destroyed, hit, and disgraced. And throughout all of this, we have not forgotten Your name; please do not forget us… Hear our voices and be gracious, and do not leave us in the hands of our enemies to erase our names. Remember what you promised to our ancestors - “Like the stars of heaven I will increase your offspring” - yet now we are left as a few out of many. And throughout all of this, we have not forgotten Your name; please do not forget us. (Tachanun prayer for Mondays and Thursdays)

We never forgot Your name; we continued observing the covenant, trusting that somehow, despite being imprisoned for twenty years in Siberia and facing a cruel and pitiless Russian army, one day our confidence would be rewarded. Perhaps not in our lifetimes, but in the lifetimes of our descendants, You will again reveal Your loving countenance, return us to our home, and remind us that Your love, while hidden behind impenetrable clouds of darkness, never wavered. The covenant continues throught all generations - and You will never forget us.

Gabriel Kahn had a son named Bill; Todros had a son named Meyer. Bill had a son named Robert, and Meyer had a daughter named Harriet.

Robert and Harriet are my parents. And like all Jewish parents for almost four thousand years, they entered me into God’s eternal covenant when I was eight days old - in my case, in my grandparents’ home in Lowell, Massachusetts.

(Me at eight days old: from left to right, Gabriel Kahn, my father, and my grandfather)

I grew up and married Aliza; we were blessed with seven children. The oldest, Ephraim, married Shira, and today, the day before their second anniversary, they added a link to the chain when they entered their son - Gabriel and Todros’s great-great-great-grandson - into the Jewish people’s covenant with God. This beautiful, tiny baby was born in Israel, in the holy city of Jerusalem, when God’s love is far more apparent than his great-great-great grandparents would have dared to dream.

Shira and Ephraim named him Yakir Yisrael, after my father. As Ephraim explained, Yisrael was my father’s Hebrew name, and Yakir means “precious” - because the values my dad embodied will always, with God’s help, be precious to little Yakir, and because the time we spent with my father - especially when we thought we would lose him two years earlier than we did - will always remain precious to his children and grandchildren.

Shira also mentioned a second meaning of the name Yakir Yisrael: that the People of Israel and the Land of Israel should never be taken for granted, that we must always appreciate the precious divine gifts symbolized by our survival and ultimate return to our home. Indeed, Yakir Yisrael has uncles on both sides of his family who, far from running away from those who want to destroy the People of Israel, courageously defend their people and homeland with their heads held high, and their hearts full of faith, love and pride.

Yakir Yisrael. Our first grandchild. The embodiment of the sweetest dreams of countless generations. A symbol of how we never forgot You - and now we see that You didn’t forget us, either.