Frieda Schweky
Our culture is so rich. But after two or three generations in America, there is a real fear of our culture being eroded over time. We want our children to hold the flame we hand them: not only our religion, but our specific, nuanced traditions, the ones that make our community ours. And we want those traditions to be so deeply ingrained that one day they will wholeheartedly pass them on to their own children. Here are some suggestions for how we can make that happen.
Community: You Can’t Inherit What You Don’t Show Up For
A feeling of belonging is not automatic. A child can be born into a community and still feel like a visitor. What turns “our community” into their community is participation.
Our kids watch us closely. They notice whether we show up. Do we go to the shiva house, even when we’re tired? Do we bring a meal to the new mother, visit the sick, and stay to help clean up after the simha? Do we invite the person who has nowhere to go for yom tov?
When children see that community is something we do, not just something we live in, it stops being an abstract idea and becomes part of who they are. And here’s the quiet danger: if kids only see community as a list of expectations, like what to wear, who to marry, and worrying about what people will say, they’ll treat our community as something to escape. If they see community as the place that catches you when you fall and celebrates with you when you rise, they’ll want to stay and build it.
So, bring them along. Let them carry the cake to the neighbor, sit in the room at the simha, shake the hand of the elderly man at shul who knew their great-grandfather. Small things, done together, build a sense of “this is who we are.”
Pizmonim: The Tunes That Carry Us
Ask anyone in our community what Shabbat sounds like, and they won’t describe a speech or a lesson. They’ll hum something. A pizmon, a melody from the Shabbat table, a tune from shul that somehow lives in your body before you know all the words.
That’s not an accident. Our style of song in prayer and zimirot is one of the most distinctive things we have. The melodies are ours, and they carry our history in a way no textbook can. A child who grows up surrounded by these pizmonim absorbs a whole world without ever being “taught” it.
And that’s the point. Nobody inherits a tune from a lecture. They inherit it by hearing it again and again until it becomes theirs. So, practically:
Make Them the Soundtrack: Play pizmonim in the car, in the kitchen on Friday afternoon, and while the kids are getting dressed for Shabbat. Repetition does the teaching.
Let the Kids Lead: Ask your five-year-old to choose the pizmon at the table. It doesn’t matter if it’s off-key. It matters that they feel it belongs to them, too.
Hand the Mic to the Grandparents: The ones who know the old tunes and the stories behind them won’t be here forever. Record them. Sit with them. Ask them to teach the kids.
The Table: What We Taste and Smell
Ask any adult what they miss most about their grandmother’s house, and the answer is rarely a lesson. It’s a smell: the food, the spices, the Friday afternoon cooking aromas that filled every room.
Our food is one of the strongest threads of our identity. The dishes we make for Shabbat and yom tov are our history on a plate. Children who grow up in the kitchen, rolling, stuffing, stirring, and tasting, are quietly learning that this is ours.
You don’t need a perfect recipe or a gourmet spread. You just need them there.
Cook one traditional dish with your kids each week, even if it’s messy and takes twice as long with them creating along with you. Write the recipes down, in your family’s handwriting, with the “a little of this” notes. Those pages become treasures. Label whose recipe it was. “This was Nona’s.” The food is the vehicle, and the family is the cargo.
Stories: Who Came Before Them
Every family has a story of how they got here. Someone left something behind, started over, worked hard, and held on to who they were while building something new. Children who know these stories understand that they’re part of a long chain, and they feel responsible for not being the one who drops it.
The trouble is that these stories can disappear quietly. They’re rarely written down, and they often live in the memory of one aging relative.
I’ve been inspiring myself as I write this. I think it’s time I start telling my children how the generation before us came to this country, and why. Two of their great-uncles escaped Iran on horseback, with Muslim extremists chasing them on horseback. I want my children to know what it cost to get them here, and the courage it took.
I also want them to know my Nona Frieda, the woman I’m proudly named after. She lived a beautiful life in Egypt, both before and after she was forced out of her hometown. She carried on through that upheaval and through a lifelong, on-and-off battle with cancer, and I never once heard her complain. Everything that came out of her mouth was praise for Hashem and gratitude for His goodness and blessings. That is a legacy worth passing down.
And of course, I want them to know about her Friday night meals, and the big tin on her counter, always filled to the brim with sambusak and kaak (sometimes both!). I was fortunate enough to inherit one of those decorative, useful tins, and I plan to fill it the way she did, baking her recipes with my girls and keeping it on my counter. Something homemade and delicious, always within reach: that’s a tradition I’m happy to keep going.
So, tell the stories, at the Shabbat table, in the car, at bedtime. Tell the funny ones too: the surprising moments, the family legends everyone loves to retell. Humor makes things stick. You don’t have to polish them. A child who hears, “Your great-grandfather used to do it this way,” feels something shift. They aren’t just a kid at a table. They belong to a story that started long before they came along.
Let Them See Us Live It
Here’s the hard part: our children inherit what we do far more than what we say.
We can give all the speeches we want about the importance of tradition, but if the kids see us rushing through Shabbat, scrolling through the meal, or treating our heritage as a chore, that’s the message that lands. On the other hand, when they see us light up at a pizmon, get a little emotional at a family simha, or pause before a meal with real gratitude, they learn that tradition matters.
That doesn’t mean being perfect. Kids can handle imperfect parents. What they can’t ignore is whether we care. Our enthusiasm is contagious, and so is our indifference.
One of the most powerful things we can do is let them see us learning, too. Ask the older generation questions. Admit what you don’t know. Show them that tradition is something we keep growing into, not something we’ve “finished.”
Make It Theirs
Finally, if we want our kids to carry the flame forward, we have to let them hold it now, not just someday.
Give them real roles. Let them run part of the Shabbat table, plan a yom tov menu, or teach a younger cousin a song. Let them ask questions, even hard ones, and meet those questions with curiosity instead of defensiveness. A child who’s allowed to wrestle with why we do things will own the answer far more than one who’s just told to comply.
Traditions survive when children feel like partners in them, not just spectators in the audience.
So, What Will They Inherit?
Not our money, though we hope to leave them some. Not even our rules. What we really want to hand them is a feeling: that they come from something beautiful, that they’re held by people who love them, and that the songs, tastes, stories, and customs of our community are theirs to treasure and to pass on.
None of this happens overnight. It happens in ordinary moments: a pizmon in the car, a casserole delivered to a neighbor, a story told at the table. If we keep showing up, one Friday at a time, the flame will be in good hands.
Give It a Shot
This week, try one thing: pick a pizmon your family loves and sing it together on Friday night. Start there. The rest will follow.
Until next time,
Frieda Schweky
Frieda Schweky is a community photographer, videographer, and writer. For photography & video inquiries or article topic suggestions, email her at [email protected] or follow her on Instagram @friedaschwekyphoto.