Isaiah Levin
To our friends, family, but most importantly Isaiah,
We want to tell you a little bit about your name. We chose both
names impulsively (one of them may or may not have been drunkenly selected in a
hot tub), but the more we’ve reflected, the more we’ve realized they reflect
our deepest hopes for what kind of person you will be.
Let us you tell a little bit about the Prophet Isaiah. Isaiah
lived in the 8th century BC during the Assyrian destruction of Jerusalem, and
the Babylonian captivity which followed.. The book of Isaiah is filled with
much of the best poetry in the Bible, such a beating swords into plowshares,
the radical statement of monotheism “I am the first and I am the last” and the
voice in the wilderness. But our favorite verses, which were always your
mother’s favorite part of Yom Kippur and your father discovered in a book
by Will Durant is Isaiah 58:5-7:
Is
it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it
to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?
wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD?
Is
not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo
the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every
yoke?
Is
it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are
cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that
thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?
In the first line, Isaiah rejects empty ritual and self-centered
acts of pseudo-asceticism as guides towards living an authentic, ethically
meaningful life. Holiness will not come by sticking rigidly to the dictates of
tradition. Isaiah does not grope towards an imaginary past.
But Isaiah does not reject the idea of a fast. Rather than
focusing on the damn Babylonians, he focuses his critique on what his people
can control - their own complicity in the highly marketized, deeply stratified
Eastern Mediterranean economy. Like any good prophet, Isaiah is furious at the
hypocrisy and injustice of the world around him, and demands something better.
Isaiah turns the power of God into something beyond idolatry and dreams of
national vengeance, into an instrument for criticizing the social order. He’s
angry about inequality, poverty, debt-peonage, and slavery. I hope that when
you see these things in the word around you, your heart burns with anger, and
the that your lip curls with disgust. To quote our late, beloved Professor
Silberman (zichrono livracha) I hope you’re always ready to fight the bastards.
But Isaiah also articulates a vision of holiness grounded in
community and our ethical obligations to one another. When he says “hide not
thyself from thine own flesh” he’s describing a radical act of empathy in which
my fate is bound up in yours and acts of justice involve physical connections
between people. Bring poor people into your home. Cover the naked. Feed the
hungry. It’s easy to believe in the principles of a just world. But what’s more
difficult is actually living the way Isaiah describes. Getting your hands dirty,
and not being afraid to touch your brothers and sisters. “Thine own flesh” is
an expansive definition of family. He could of said kin, but he instead he
encompasses all humanity (and maybe not just humanity) in shared physical
connection that demands empathy.
I know that’s a lot for a little baby. Or 8 year old watching this
video waiting for the good part, of moody adolescent trying to engage in some
futile voyage of self-discovery. Living this life of radical empathy, really
seeing and not being afraid to touch the people around you. It’s something
that’s hard for all of us, every day, and that’s why it’s our hope for you.
Now, Isaiah’s a prophet. He like, lives in a cave and yells at
people all day. What would it look like to actually live by his principles? For
that, we wanted to name you after a weirdo who could have been one of your
college uncles, Konstantin Levin.
Your mother finished Anna Karenina in a feverish daze over a week
in DC the summer after our first year of college. She stayed up all night
reading while we schemed bus trips to come visit each other. Most people think
of Anna Karenina as the story of a tragic love affair, which is crazy, because
that’s only half the book, and it’s missing the best part! Levin, who forms the
other half of the book’s narrative, is a young country aristocrat struggling to
be a good person in a rapidly modernizing late 19th century Russian society
that he knows is unjust.
Levin’s far from perfect. He’s awkward, temperamental,
argumentative, and impulsive. But he’s also thoughtful and sincere. He spends
the book arguing, studying, passionately engaging in agricultural modernization
projects - . It’s a great book. Seriously, we’re not selling it well. There’s
an awesome part where Levin cuts wheat with some peasants then drinks some
vodka, and it made us both cry.
But the book ends with Levin’s epiphany, which both acknowledges
its difficulty and echoes Isaiah’s embodied vision of love. He says:
I shall continue to be vexed with Ivan the
coachman, and get into useless discussions and express my thoughts
blunderingly. I shall always be blaming my wife for what annoys me, and
repenting at once. I shall always feel a certain barrier between the holy of
holies, of my inmost soul and the souls of others.”
But:
“I and millions of men, men who lived ages ago
and men living now—peasants, the poor in spirit and the learned, who have
thought and written about it, in their obscure words saying the same thing—we
are all agreed about this one thing: what we must live for and what is good.”
While acknowledging that authentic connection with others is
difficult and temporary, he realizes that these brief, shining moments are what
gives life its meaning. Levin accepts that there is a barrier between him and
his fellow man, but sees his duty in life as poking through that barrier
whenever he can. The world is broken and unjust; we’re not perfect, and neither
are our brothers and sisters. But that shouldn’t stop us from loving each
other.
Isaiah Levin, in Jewish tradition the Bris is meant to be a
covenant between God and the people of Israel. But today you’re entering into a
covenant with all people, surrounded by wisdom that echoes across centuries and
millennia, and so many people who love you. Feed your brothers and sisters,
cloth them, see them, love them.
We love you so much already, and we can’t wait to see the person
you become.
Ima and Dad (Aviva and Colin)
Isaiah was born March 27, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois
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