Looking to the Future

Our Parasha opens with a covenant between God and Israel. When explaining this covenant, Moses emphasized that all of Israel were present (men, women, children, newcomers, leaders, dignitaries and labourers), and that the covenant applied equally to each of them. No one was excluded.

Moses goes on to mention that the covenant even involves future generations. We need to be future-oriented and ensure the survival of our mission long after we ourselves are gone.

As partners in the covenant, we must view every person as an equal, making no distinction between the overprivileged and the underprivileged. We must internalize that our own standing in the covenant would be hurt if another member wasn’t able to fully participate in it.

Moses’s inspirational, far-reaching caring is what allows us to be here today, thousands of years later, still reading his book and applying his lessons to our lives. It should be encouraging and comforting thinking how caring for future generations grants us all a form of immortality.

Our responsibility to future generations obliges us to take drastic steps to protect the environment. By ignoring the situation, we will be actively making our descendants’ lives untenable. By being bold and brave in making difficult decisions we gift them with the gift of a beautiful life. And that’s what being a link in the chain of humanity is about.