When I cannot sleep at night, I stare at the ceiling, and my mind turns over the questions that do not let me rest. They are not about the next board meeting, or whether the kiddush menu will be well received, or even the number of chairs to set out for High Holiday services. What keeps me awake are questions that cut to the heart of Jewish continuity, questions about whether I am doing enough — and whether we as a community are doing enough — to ensure there will be Jews in Omaha in fifty years. Not just Jewish buildings, not just Jewish institutions, but Jews: Jews who pray, Jews who learn, Jews who act in the world out of a profound sense of covenantal responsibility.
The first, hardest question is always directed inward: Where am I falling short? It is easy, even for rabbis, to confuse activity with achievement, to measure output in programs and attendance rather than in souls transformed. Yet the ultimate measure is not the number of people who pass through our doors, but whether their encounter with Torah, prayer, and community makes them more deeply Jewish. Our sages remind us that “the day is short, the task is great” (Pirkei Avot 2:20). I cannot accomplish everything. But am I choosing wisely what to prioritize? Do I sometimes confuse what I know how to do with what must actually be done? These questions gnaw at me long after the lights are out.
The Talmud imagines every generation as a link in a chain reaching back to Sinai. Each link must be forged anew. But are we birthing Jewish identity with our youth — and our adults — in ways that are lasting? The prevailing model of Jewish identity in America for decades has leaned heavily on the three B’s: bagels, bar mitzvahs, and Birthright. These can be entry points, but by themselves they are insufficient. To birth identity is to instill something deeper: a covenantal consciousness, an awareness that being Jewish is not an extracurricular activity but an inheritance and a mission. Micah Goodman has warned that too much of Jewish life in the Diaspora has become “thin” — culture without covenant, memory without mitzvah. We are producing Jews who may feel warmly about being Jewish but lack the tools to anchor that warmth in knowledge and practice. If identity is to endure, it must be thickened with learning, ritual, and moral seriousness.
Ignorance, after all, is the great enemy. Rabbi Akiva taught that “an ignorant person cannot be truly pious” (Avot 2:5). If Jewish identity rests only on vague sentiment or cultural nostalgia, it cannot withstand the intellectual and moral challenges of modern life. We must educate against ignorance — against the half-knowledge that mistakes Judaism for little more than ethics, or that regards Jewish ritual as archaic relics rather than vessels of meaning. Jewish education must not be only for children. Too many adults sit in pews repeating prayers they do not understand, or defending a Jewish state they cannot explain. To educate against ignorance means creating pathways for lifelong learning, so that adults grow in fluency even as they guide their children.
This leads to another worry: Are we creating literate Jews? Literacy is not only the ability to read Hebrew or recognize a few holidays. It is the capacity to enter into the Jewish conversation, to know how to learn, to know enough to wrestle with the texts and traditions of our people. Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote that “the surest way to suppress our ability to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is to take things for granted.” Literacy prevents taking things for granted. It trains us to notice, to ask, to probe. And yet I fear that much of what passes for Jewish education today is thin gruel, designed not to overwhelm, but also incapable of nourishing. If we graduate young people who can parse Shakespeare or calculus but not the Amidah or the Book of Ruth, we have failed.
The same applies to Zionism. Are we creating literate Zionists? For decades, Zionism could be assumed to be self-evident in American Jewish life: Israel was the underdog, the miracle, the redemption. But now, as Israel finds itself judged in the harshest moral terms, it is no longer enough to say “we support Israel” without substance. Einat Wilf has argued powerfully that the central challenge of our time is teaching Jews to understand Zionism as the liberation movement of the Jewish people — not as a colonial project, but as the restoration of a nation to its homeland. Without that literacy, young Jews will be swept away by simplistic narratives — often narratives hostile to Jewish survival. Zionist literacy does not mean blind defense of every policy. It means equipping Jews to hold the complexity, to argue from love, to recognize Israel as central to Jewish identity while also debating her flaws.
This is what I mean when I ask: How do we ensure that there will be Jews in Omaha in fifty years, not just beautiful buildings? Bricks and mortar are important. But synagogues and schools are not ends in themselves; they are means. They exist to build Jews, not just structures. We can pour millions into renovations, but if we fail to invest in souls, those buildings will stand empty, museum pieces of a once-vibrant community. The prophet Isaiah warned of those who “draw near with their mouth and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me” (Isaiah 29:13). The danger today is not hypocrisy but hollowing out, mistaking infrastructure for vitality. A synagogue with leaky roofs but passionate learners is healthier than one with perfect facilities and anemic Judaism.
Another question that keeps me awake is whether we are transmitting not only Jewish obligation but Jewish joy. Too often, Judaism is presented as heavy: a list of commandments, a ledger of obligations, a call to endure. But the Psalmist teaches, ivdu et Hashem b’simcha — “serve God with joy” (Psalm 100:2). If the next generation comes to see Judaism as a burden rather than a blessing, as a source of guilt rather than gratitude, they will walk away. Do our children see laughter at the Shabbat table? Do our learners taste the sweetness of Torah? Joy is not an ornament to Jewish life; it is the fuel that makes Jewish continuity possible.
I also wonder whether we are giving our people the spiritual depth they need to withstand the distractions of modern life. We are raising Jews in an era of endless scrolling, in which silence is frightening and constant noise is the default. Are we equipping them to pray — not only to mouth words, but to experience awe? Heschel wrote that “prayer begins where self-sufficiency ends.” In a culture that prizes self-sufficiency, this is countercultural wisdom. To pray is to allow oneself to be vulnerable before God, to be filled with wonder, to stand in awe. Without such anchors, even the best Jewish education risks floating untethered.
Finally, I lie awake at night wondering whether there will be one Jewish people in fifty years — or many fractured tribes, speaking past one another. The divides in our community are real: denominational divides, political divides, divides between those who feel anchored in Israel and those who feel estranged. Deborah Lipstadt has warned that antisemitism thrives not only when Jews are attacked from without, but also when they are divided from within. Am I, in my own rabbinate, helping to bridge divides, or am I reinforcing them? If Jews in Omaha cannot find a way to stand together, what hope is there for Jews in the wider world? Continuity requires not only Jews who are literate and proud, but Jews who still see themselves as part of klal Yisrael.
And yet, in all of this, humility must temper urgency. I must remind myself: I think I know what is best, but maybe I am wrong. Humility is not paralysis — it does not mean refraining from acting until certainty comes, for certainty never comes. Rather, humility means acting with the awareness that I may err, that I must listen to others, that God alone sees the whole picture. Moses himself, the greatest of prophets, faltered under the burden of leadership, crying out, “I cannot carry this people alone” (Numbers 11:14). His greatness was not in perfection but in openness — to counsel, to correction, to God’s voice. Likewise, my task is not to solve Jewish continuity by myself, but to be a faithful servant in the work, listening deeply and adjusting course when needed.
So yes, these are the questions that rob me of sleep: Where am I falling short? Are we birthing identity, or just nostalgia? Are we educating against ignorance? Are we creating Jews and Zionists who can think, learn, and live proudly? Are we transmitting joy, depth, and unity? Will Omaha’s Jewish future be a story of living communities or empty buildings? But perhaps the very fact that these questions haunt me is itself hopeful. Our tradition teaches that Jacob, in his darkest night, wrestled until dawn. Out of that sleepless night came blessing. Out of my sleepless nights, may there come not only worry, but also renewed resolve: to build Jews, to build literacy, to build joy, to build unity, and above all, to ensure that when the next generation lies awake at night, they will do so as Jews still bound to Sinai, still dreaming of Zion, still awake to God.