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“An eighteenth-century Hasidic rabbi, Nachman of Braslav had many thoughts about absences, abysses, and dilemmas. He also know a thing or two about bridges. He once made a statement about a bridge that his followers remmebered and set to music. Generations later, the song was sung by Jewish prisoners in the death camps at Auschwitz. He taught that “Life is a very narrow bridge between two eternities - do not be afraid.” I am not sure what Nackman meant by his statement. But I can tell you what occurs to me when I listen to it. Many years ago, when I first heard this song, I imagined that Nackman was alluding to what he believed to be a heavenly eternity before and after death. Never being particularly interested in heaven, I didn’t think to much about it at the time. But more recently, I had a new idea. I though tabout our countless ancestores, who stretch out behind us in into the eternity of the past. And I thought of the countless number of our yet unknown offspring, our children’s children’s children, who stretch out in front of us into the eternity of the future. And I thought perhaps Reb Nachman was helping us to see that we, then living, are the only link, the only bridge between those who have come before us and those who will come after us. One of our main tasks is to keep the connection alive by respecting the past, studying it, being challenged by it, rejecting some of it, seeing the possiblities in it, reshaping it, situating ourselves and our practices within it, making meaning from it.”

from Constructing the Self, Constructing America by Philip Cushman.

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