This is not estate planning. It is the reimagination of the ancient ethical will — a way to hand on what you actually know.

As parents, we are teachers. The wisdom of our experience and our values are gifts we share with our children. Judaism has embraced this from early in Genesis and all through our history — from the patriarchs to the ordinary Jew, we have gleaned wisdom and passed it to those who would come after.

What it makes possible

The Ethical Legacy Will lets us teach and nurture our children, reflect and take honest account of ourselves, deepen the relationships we already have, and connect to generations we may never meet. It becomes a cheshbon hanefesh — an accounting of the soul, a chance to ask whether we are on our proper path and, if not, how to find our way back.

It is not only a look back once everything is complete. It is an ongoing life project, shared with those we love. When a mother tells her daughter the story of her own childbirth on the eve of her daughter’s, generations bind together. That is the work.