Your Forefathers and You. How Important is Heredity? Extract from a Rabbinical Source (4th March, 2013, Nissan 24, 5773)
Why Knowing Your Ancestry is Important!
Each and every family has its own unique purpose. Every single person is a link in the chain of generations with responsibilities extending back to the past and reaching to the future.
We in Hebrew Nations are occupied with matters concerning the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel. We reveal to people that there is a good chance that their ancestors were Hebrews but lost consciousness of their ancestry. Nevertheless, according to the Bible, we as their descendants have inherited both blessings and obligations. In the near future we may well be required to do something drastic in consequence. We cannot remain apathetic like all other Gentiles. Eventually something must change. For the moment we should become aware of this reality and even help spread awareness to others who are likewise in the same boat as ourselves. Thןs brings us to the question of heredity and the connection between one generation and another, as well as our linkage to the founders of the Israelite Nations, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel), and the Twelve Tribal heads, sons of Israel.
It should be noted that in a Biblical sense our ancestry begins from Abraham the first Hebrew. Before that it is as if we had no other forefathers. This issue will be discussed another time.
For the moment let us consider an excerpt from a work of Rabbinical Commentary. This is a recent publication but it is based on ancient sources. Regardless of how we may consider the religious affiliation of the authors this source reflects a matter-of-fact reality that we were all somehow aware of but probably would not have been able to give expression to. We are part of our ancestors just as they are part of us. Each of us has an obligation to those who went before and they who will come after.
Source:
"Shayalat HaShaylot" (The Question of Questions)
by Avraham Weinberg & Enoch Gebhard
5758, Bnei Brak, Israel
Chapter Five, pp. 111-112
Thus is revealed the love and mercy of God: Even when a person does not succeed in applying the sole special purpose for which he was sent into this world, he still is not lost to hope. His role is passed on to his sons and their sons. Since the grace of God is great there was intended a special individualized role for every family amongst the People of Israel. It follows that members of the same family serve as continuous links in the chain of generations. We find that the individual personality of each of the fathers and sons is not personal and separate, but all of them together constitute a unit of mutual interaction and interchange. God considers the children of a man as if they were a long arm of their father. Therefore the consequences of all their actions, both good and bad, may be considered as belonging to each other. Accordingly, just as the son is bequeathed material acquisitions from his father, so shall he inherit spiritual assets. It follows that in the general account of Creation, God adds the reckoning of the fathers to their sons and that of the sons to their fathers...
... This is a depth of grace and truth from God - To enable people to repair what they have blemished, and even to raise them up, and bring all mankind to the desired perfect goal for which the world and man were created.....