When the Smoke Clears: A Future Worth Building Reflections on America's 250th Anniversary

Inspired by the life and legacy of Claire Umansky 

As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, I have found myself returning again and again to one unforgettable night in our nation's history.

Imagine standing in darkness, unable to see the thing you love most.

It was September 13, 1814. America was still a fragile young nation. Only weeks earlier, British troops had marched into Washington, burning the White House, the Capitol, and many of the nation's most important buildings. It must have seemed to many that the American experiment itself might not survive.

Now the British fleet had turned toward Baltimore.

A young attorney named Francis Scott Key stood aboard a small ship in the Chesapeake Bay. He was not a soldier. He carried no weapon. All he could do was watch.

For twenty-five relentless hours, British warships pounded Fort McHenry. Shell after shell. Rocket after rocket. The sky itself seemed to be on fire. Key later wrote that it appeared as though "Mother Earth had opened and was vomiting shot and shell in a sheet of fire and brimstone."

Then darkness came.

The smoke became so thick that he could no longer see the fort. Every few moments another rocket lit up the sky. Another explosion. Another flash. Then darkness again.

Hour after hour he waited.

One question echoed through his heart.

Was the flag still there?

Finally, the longest night gave way to dawn.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the smoke began to lift. Francis Scott Key strained his eyes toward the horizon. He wasn't looking for certainty. He wasn't looking for victory.

He was looking for one thing. The flag. And then, through the smoke, in the dawn's early light, he saw it.

Tattered. Scarred. Weathered by battle. But still flying. That was all he needed to know. The night had not won.

Sometimes hope is not the absence of darkness. It is discovering that what matters most is still standing when morning comes.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of paper, and wrote words Americans have sung ever since:

And the rockets' red glare,
The bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there.

We sing those words every year, but perhaps we sing them too quickly. They are not merely patriotic lyrics. They are the testimony of a man who spent an entire night wondering whether the things he loved most would survive.

Every generation, in one way or another, has its own Fort McHenry. Not every generation faces bombs, but every generation faces uncertainty.

Every generation eventually asks the same question Francis Scott Key asked that morning:  Will the things that matter most still be there? The Torah's answer to uncertainty is not prediction—it is memory. Again and again, the Torah commands us, Zachor—remember. Remember Egypt, so we never take freedom for granted. Remember Sinai, so we continue to hear God's voice. Remember Shabbat, so we never forget that our lives are about more than work and achievement. Remember Jerusalem, so we never stop believing in tomorrow. Judaism does not ask us to remember so that we can live in yesterday. We remember because yesterday teaches us how to build tomorrow.

As I reflected on America's 250th anniversary, my thoughts kept returning to my grandmother, Claire Umansky. Providentially, this week also marks the yahrzeit of her mother, my great-grandmother, Etta Glass.

A few years ago, our family marked the one-hundredth anniversary of their arrival on the shores of America. I pulled my grandmother's memoir off the shelf and read once again her description of catching her first glimpse of America:

"We arrived in New York Harbor to the beckoning arms of 'my lady,' the magnificent Statue of Liberty."

"My lady."

Every time I read those words, I can still see her.

A young Jewish girl standing on the deck of a ship after fleeing the pogroms and hardships of Russia. I imagine her hand resting on the railing as she catches her first glimpse of Lady Liberty. Behind her lay fear. Before her stood hope.

Years later, on the centennial of the Statue of Liberty, she wrote to her grandchildren:

"This beautiful lady, standing so majestically in the Harbor of New York, welcomed me to the United States. She has been to me a symbol of hope, freedom, and boundless opportunity. Although cast in stone, she symbolizes the living essence of this wonderful country."

Every time I read those words, I think and pray. God bless America. Thank You for the extraordinary blessings America has bestowed upon the Jewish people. 

My grandmother knew what it meant to live without freedom, and she knew what it meant to receive freedom as a gift.

She didn't come to America chasing wealth. She came searching for a different future. Standing on the deck of that ship, she couldn't possibly have imagined what God had in store. She couldn't see the thriving Jewish communities that would one day flourish across America, the synagogues and day schools that would be built, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren who would follow, or a little girl in Jerusalem who would one day bear her name.

She simply stepped off the boat, trusting that God was opening a new chapter.

She would later call America the goldene medina—the Golden Land. Not because America was perfect, but because it gave her the freedom to live openly as a Jew, to raise a family, and to dream dreams that had once seemed impossible.

In 1986, my grandparents sent each of their grandchildren a silver dollar to commemorate the centennial of the Statue of Liberty. Enclosed was a letter I have treasured ever since. As I reread it this week, one sentence captured my heart:

"The future is yours. The opportunities are vast, and each of you can be the very best you want to be."

She wasn't simply celebrating America.

She was entrusting the next generation with a calling.

Receive these blessings. Cherish them. Build with them. Hand them forward.

As I closed my grandmother's memoir that evening, something struck me that I had never noticed before. Francis Scott Key spent the night looking toward a flag. My grandmother spent her journey looking toward the Statue of Liberty. Different centuries. Different stories. Yet both were searching for the same thing: a future beyond fear, beyond uncertainty, beyond the smoke. Both believed that God was preparing a future worth building.

Neither of them could see very far. Francis Scott Key could not see beyond the smoke. My grandmother could not see beyond New York Harbor. Neither could see the next century. They simply took the next faithful step.

Isn't that the way God has always worked? Abraham could not see the Jewish people. He simply left home. Moses could not see the Promised Land. He simply kept walking. My grandmother could not see the life that awaited her. She simply stepped off the boat.

Faith has never meant seeing the whole journey. It means taking the next faithful step and trusting God with the rest.

And then they responded the way Jews have always responded to uncertainty. They built.

They welcomed families into their homes for Shabbat. They donated Torah scrolls. They opened Hebrew schools. They dreamed of synagogues and communities where Jewish life could flourish.

Nobody built everything. Everybody built something.

Today we worship in the synagogues they built, learn in the schools they established, and raise our families in communities they dreamed were possible. Every generation receives blessings it did not earn, faces challenges it did not choose, and decides what it will hand forward.

For two hundred and fifty years, America gave the Jewish people something history had rarely offered—not merely a place to survive, but the freedom to build. And what did our parents and grandparents do with that gift? They didn't simply enjoy it. They sanctified it. They transformed freedom into responsibility by building homes where Shabbat was cherished, families where children learned not only how to make a living but how to make a life, and communities where strangers became family.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks captured this beautifully when he wrote that a contract asks, "What do I get?" A covenant asks, "What are we building together?" Laws create a nation. Shared responsibility creates a society. At her best, America has always been built by ordinary people who believed they were responsible for something larger than themselves—parents, teachers, neighbors, volunteers, congregations, and families. Quiet builders whose names may never appear in history books, yet whose lives quietly shape history.

Perhaps that is why this week's Haftarah speaks so powerfully to our moment.

God calls Jeremiah to lead during one of the darkest chapters in Jewish history. Jeremiah's response is immediate—and profoundly human.

"I can't."

"I'm too young."

"I'm not the right person."

Can you blame him?

His nation is divided. The future is uncertain. The challenges seem overwhelming.

Perhaps we've all stood in that place. We look at Israel, at America, at the Jewish people, at our own families, and quietly ask ourselves, "What difference can one person really make?"

God's answer to Jeremiah is as remarkable today as it was then. He does not begin by telling Jeremiah what to do. He begins by reminding Jeremiah who he is.

"Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you."

Those words have never spoken to me more deeply than they have this year.

Before you ever doubted yourself, I knew you.

Before you ever questioned your purpose, I had already entrusted you with one.

Long before Jeremiah believed in himself, God believed in him. Long before I fully believed in myself, my grandmother believed in me. Perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts we can ever give another person: to help them see the possibilities that God already sees within them.

God never promised Jeremiah an easy generation.

He entrusted him with an important one.

Perhaps He has done the same with us.

He knows you.

He knows the gifts He has placed within you.

He knows the people He has entrusted to your care.

And perhaps, even today, He whispers:

"Now go...build."

Francis Scott Key didn't choose his moment. My grandmother didn't choose hers. Jeremiah certainly didn't choose his. None of them asked to live in uncertain times. What distinguished them was not the generation into which they were born, but the way they answered the moment God placed before them.

Perhaps that is the story of the Jewish people. Every generation receives a different assignment. Our ancestors rebuilt Jewish life after the Holocaust. They didn't wait for someone else. They built synagogues, schools, camps, and communities because they understood that no generation is asked to finish the work, but every generation is called to continue it.

Now that calling belongs to us.

To me, that is the deeper meaning of America's 250th anniversary. It is not simply a time to celebrate what we have inherited, but to decide what we will hand forward. Every generation receives blessings it did not earn, faces challenges it did not choose, and ultimately decides what kind of inheritance it will leave to those who follow.

One day our children and grandchildren will tell the story of our generation. They will ask whether we merely admired what others built or became builders ourselves; whether fear shaped our decisions or courage shaped our response; whether we simply received God's blessings with gratitude or strengthened them before placing them into the hands of the next generation.

Three years ago, Diane and I stood in a hospital room in Jerusalem holding our granddaughter, Miriam Chaya, who bears my grandmother's name. As I looked into her tiny face, I could not stop thinking about my grandmother. One hundred years separated those two moments. One young Jewish girl stood on the deck of a ship looking toward Lady Liberty. One little Jewish girl opened her eyes in Jerusalem. My grandmother never met her namesake, yet somehow they belong to the same story—a story of a God who has never stopped guiding His people, and a story in which every generation receives blessings, answers God's call, and then hands those blessings forward.

Francis Scott Key wrote his chapter. Claire Umansky wrote hers. The builders of American Jewish life wrote theirs. Every generation has been entrusted with its own chapter. Now it is our turn to write ours.

One day our children and grandchildren will inherit the world we leave them. My prayer is that they will say of our generation that when God called, we answered; when we were blessed, we gave thanks; and when we inherited freedom, we built—homes filled with Torah, families rooted in love, communities strengthened by kindness, and a Jewish future stronger than the one we ourselves inherited.

One hundred years ago, my grandmother looked toward a harbor. More than two hundred years ago, Francis Scott Key looked through the smoke toward a flag. Nearly three thousand years ago, Jeremiah looked toward Heaven and heard God say, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you." Today we stand on our own horizon. Like Francis Scott Key, my grandmother, and Jeremiah, we cannot see everything that lies ahead. But each of them trusted God enough to take the next faithful step.

If my grandmother could speak to us today, I think she would simply repeat the words she wrote to her grandchildren nearly forty years ago: "The future is yours. The opportunities are vast, and each of you can be the very best you want to be." Long before we fully believed in ourselves, my grandmother believed in us. Isn't that, in many ways, what God was saying to Jeremiah? "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you."

Grandma—Chaya bat Elyakim—thank you for believing in us. Thank you for teaching us to love America, to cherish its blessings, and never to take its freedoms for granted. Thank you for showing us that gratitude is measured not only by what we receive, but by what we build. Your generation helped write one of the great chapters of American Jewish history. Now, by God's grace, another chapter is being written—in Jerusalem, throughout Israel, here in Stamford, and wherever Jews continue to build lives of Torah, faith, kindness, and hope.

That chapter now belongs to us.

May God bless America. May He continue to bless and protect the State of Israel. And may He grant us the faith to walk into tomorrow with confidence, courage, and hope, trusting that when the smoke clears, the things that matter most will still be standing not by accident, but because we answered His call to build them.