Filling up the Canvas, America 250

Situated right next to a McDonald's in Albany, New York, is the old Temple Israel Cemetery. I recently visited it for the first time. I saw my great-grandfather Morris's grave and my great-great-grandfather Many Koffsky's grave. I don't know much about Many Koffsky except what the headstone says. He was born in 1876 and died in 1938. What I do know is that he was the first Koffsky to come to America. I know that last month his great-great-great-grandson was born in America. It is because of his choices that we have been allowed to grow in peace as a family for almost 150 years.

When you see your last name plastered on a headstone belonging to someone you never met, it sometimes gets you thinking – thinking about what the nation your family has called home has gained and seen. When Many Koffsky was born, the United States had 46 million people; by 1938, the population had tripled to 129 million. In the life of his son, Morris, while he was serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he witnessed his Jewish brothers and sisters being decimated in the Holocaust.

Though Morris died at the age of 49, he had two sons, Edward, my grandfather, and David, for whom I am named. The story of the Koffskys in America is just one side of a four-sided coin that explains how I got here. My grandparents were born in Albany, Rochester, Chicago, and Baltimore. But it is a story many of us share, just with different names and places. America was built by courageous individuals who wanted a better world and sought to discover a new one.

When Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark on their expedition to be the first to see the nation from coast to coast, he had no idea what they would find. The stated goal of the journey was to find a navigable riverway that connected East to West, which would greatly enhance the United States' ability to ship goods. This Northwest Passage, as it turns out, does not exist. But Meriwether Lewis and William Clark found other things. They found tall Rocky Mountains, lush meadows, and great plains. Being the first to see the nation coast to coast, they could see the potential of a vast, new nation brimming with possibility. Writing on the mission, Jefferson defined its goals:

"We shall delineate with correctness the great arteries of this great country: those who come after us will fill up the canvas we begin."

Over the last 250 years, Jewish Americans like the Koffskys before me have filled up the canvas, from New York to Chicago, Florida, and California. We have raised families and built communities free of the fear and persecution of the Old World.

And as we reflect on this semiquincentennial, we do face challenges. There has been a significant rise in antisemitism in America and around the world. But when struck with a crisis, I turn to the writings of America's greatest crisis manager, Abraham Lincoln. At the onset of the Civil War, both the North and the South thought the war might last at most three months. But by March 1865, the war was entering its fifth year, and over 500,000 American men lay dead. Lincoln concluded his second inaugural address with a guidepost to an American crisis – but really to all crises:

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

As we celebrate this anniversary year, let us hope that the words of our Founding Father, George Washington, when replying to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island, remain true:

"May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants – while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid."

My ancestors Many, Morris, and Ed did not always have easy lives. But I hope that in the end they did all get their own vine and fig tree. And if they did not, I hope that wherever they are, they take pride in the fact that because of their work, because of their choice of country, their descendants are some of the luckiest people in the history of the world.

May G-d continue to bless the United States of America.

Here's to another 250.