This week's Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, is bookended with funerals. Sarah dies and is buried; then Abraham sends his servant to find a wife for Isaac, and Eliezer brings Rebecca back for Isaac; and then Abraham dies and is buried. This moment in our ancestral story is about generational change. It's about the first patriarch and matriarch being laid to rest, and the next generation picking up the mantle and carrying on our people's story.

Torah doesn't say anything about how Sarah felt at the end of her life, but Abraham was "old and contented." I like to think that he was contented because he saw that the next generation was ready to take ownership of the Jewish story. Every generation inherits stories and practices and values from those that came before. And every generation chooses what to lift up and what to let go, out of all of the things they inherit from their forebears.

The Judaism we practice now is not the same as what Abraham and Sarah knew. Honestly it's not the same as what our ancestors knew even a few centuries ago! Our ancestors might be startled to see a female rabbi on the bimah. Or a synagogue where people of all genders sit and pray together. Or a guitar in my hands.

And yet our Judaism is still rooted in the Judaism that our ancestors practiced, the Judaism that our Torah forebears began. We live our Jewish values as our Torah ancestors did: making our "tent" open and welcoming to all, like Abraham. Speaking directly to God, like Rebecca. Dreaming big dreams, like Joseph, even when life takes us into tough places.

It's natural for one generation to give way to the next. And it's natural for Judaism to evolve and grow as we human beings evolve and grow. Every generation has the sacred responsibility, and the joyous opportunity, of keeping our Jewish story alive. Every generation has the sacred responsibility, and the joyous opportunity, of building anew on the foundations laid by those who came before us.

I can't wait to see the Judaism that my son will practice as he grows up -- how it's just like mine, and also how it becomes his own and is different from mine. The Judaism we're building now at CBI is rooted in what came before, and it also needs to be our own, reflecting today's values in balance with the ancient values of gratitude and welcome and seeing each other through generous eyes. This interplay of constancy and change is core to what Judaism is, what Judaism has always been.

I love the fact that this week as we elected new directors and officers to take the helm of CBI, we're reading in Torah about generational change. The page turns and it's time for new figures to take center stage and carry our story forward -- in Torah, and in the lived Torah of our human experience.

May our new directors and officers be blessed with Abraham's spirit of inclusion, with Sarah's capacity for laughter, with Isaac's willingness to tread new ground, with Rebecca's willingness to ask big questions. And may we all be blessed with a Shabbat of wholeness and peace, so that when we make havdalah tomorrow night, we're restored and rejuvenated and ready to continue co-creating this community and writing the next chapter of our people's story, together.

This is the d'varling that I offered at my shul at Kabbalat Shabbat services (cross-posted to my From the Rabbi blog.)