One of my fondest childhood memories is my parents singing out loud to “Teach Your Children” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in the car on long summer drives to visit my grandparents. Those road trips were filled with music from my parents’ youth, but there was something about that song that stayed with me. Maybe I was finally old enough to listen to the words instead of just the melody. Maybe I sensed that the song was saying something truer than it sounded at first.
Years later, I came across a line Graham Nash once used to explain the song. “I began to realize it was a two-way street. Not only do we have to teach our children well, but we must learn from them also.” As a child, that idea mattered to me. It meant my voice counted. It suggested that wisdom does not only flow in one direction. Parents teach their children, yes. But there are moments when children teach their parents something essential that the parents could not have learned any other way.
That idea sits at the heart of one of the most striking biblical patterns unfolding in our time.
The question is simple and unsettling. What if the generation meant to lead us forward is not the one in power, but the one coming of age?
The Hebrew Bible ends not with comfort, but with a challenge. The prophet Malachi describes the moment before redemption arrives, and his words overturn every normal assumption about leadership and spiritual authority:
At first glance, this sounds backwards. History teaches that elders carry wisdom, experience, and moral authority. If redemption is coming, logic suggests that children should return to their parents, not the other way around. Yet Malachi insists on the opposite order. The hearts of parents must turn toward their children first.
Why?
Because Malachi is describing a generation that possesses something their parents lost.
Rabbi Tuly Weisz, in his new book Universal Zionism, identifies this reversal as one of the defining spiritual dynamics emerging from Israel after October 7th. Without reducing it to slogans or sentimentality, he points to a reality many Israelis have quietly recognized. The youngest generation demonstrated moral clarity, unity, and courage that their elders struggled to sustain.
This was not naïveté. It was conviction.
Young Israelis, dismissed for years as distracted, indulgent, and disconnected, abandoned comfort without hesitation. They showed up. They volunteered in numbers exceeding all expectations. They fought not out of despair, but out of devotion to their people and their land. In doing so, they exposed how deeply the older generation had been paralyzed by internal division.
This is not a political observation. It is a biblical one.
The Torah repeatedly describes moments when renewal does not come from institutional leadership, but from those unburdened by fear of failure. Abraham is told to leave everything familiar. Joshua and Caleb stand alone against a majority. David is chosen while his older brothers are passed over. In every case, redemption begins with those willing to act rather than calculate.
That is what Malachi is pointing to. And that is what Rabbi Weisz identifies as the spiritual engine behind the next phase of Zionism.
Universal Zionism argues that Israel has already passed through two historic stages. Political Zionism restored Jewish sovereignty. Religious Zionism reignited the spiritual connection to the land and to God. Universal Zionism is the next step. Israel steps into its biblical role as a “light unto the nations”, not by conquest, but by moral leadership and shared mission.
This stage cannot be built on survival alone. Survival creates unity only under threat. Mission creates unity with purpose.
The younger generation understands this instinctively. Having proven their willingness to sacrifice, they now demand meaning. They are no longer satisfied with asking what Israel must defend against. They are asking what Israel is meant to build for.
That question reaches beyond Israel’s borders.
Universal Zionism insists that Israel’s destiny has always been tied to the nations. God’s promise to Abraham was never narrow. “Through you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” The re-emergence of a deep, unapologetic Jewish-Christian partnership after October 7th is not an accident of history. It is the restoration of a biblical alignment interrupted for centuries.
Rabbi Weisz does not gloss over the challenges of reconciliation. He names the wounds honestly. But he also insists that the messianic future both Jews and Christians await cannot arrive through isolation or parallel tracks. Redemption advances when shared faith leads to shared responsibility.
That is why the image of children leading their parents matters so much.
Children are not invested in preserving old resentments. They are invested in building something that works. They are willing to imagine a future not constrained by the failures of the past. When parents turn their hearts toward their children, they are not surrendering authority. They are choosing humility. Humility is the prerequisite for national renewal.
The Talmud teaches that the Second Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam, baseless hatred. Rabbi Weisz reminds his readers that rebuilding can only happen through ahavat chinam, baseless love. Not sentimental love. Covenantal love. Love that demands action, sacrifice, and unity around a shared mission.
That mission now stands before us.
Universal Zionism is not a theory. It is a call. A demand that Israel, and those who stand with her, stop thinking small. Stop waiting passively. Stop outsourcing responsibility to history or heaven.
Redemption does not arrive because we are ready. It arrives because we choose to act.
Sometimes, the ones who show us how are not the ones we expected. Sometimes, the song our parents sang to us comes back decades later with a deeper meaning.
Teach your children well.
And then have the courage to follow them.
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Redemption
Vaetchanan – The Chosen People: Chosen for what?
By: Rabbi Pesach Wolicki