Meditations on The Great Alaskan Salmon Run

It’s one of the most remarkable experiences I have ever witnessed—the Great Alaskan Salmon Run. On our recent visit to beautiful Juneau, Alaska, we encountered the extraordinary phenomenon of thousands of fully grown salmon swimming upstream to reach the very same spot where they were hatched!

Each summer, salmon from around the Pacific Ocean swim thousands of miles in order to return home—to the precise location of their birth. Since “all rivers flow into the sea,” this becomes a grueling odyssey as the salmon will swim upstream against powerful currents, mustering unusual strength to jump out of the water to climb up waterfalls and over rocks—anything that blocks their determined path to their destination.

It’s a bittersweet emotional experience to observe. Once they reach the location of their own individual birth, they spawn their eggs, giving rise to the next generation. But the freshwater of the rivers slowly kills these seawater fish as you can see their scales falling off as they prepare to die after three to five years of life.

The amount of salmon that participate in this annual ritual is staggering. Countless millions will flood the streams, rivers, inlets and canals of Alaska in this solemn march to the next generation. The brown grizzly bears and the black bears of the area love it. Life couldn’t be easier for them as they wade knee-deep in the water, needing just to reach in and grab their takeaway dinners. Bald eagles and killer whales also feast on this fantastic phenomenon.

We came across a salmon hatchery, where baby salmon were being raised and released to the wild. It was from this exact same spot that the returning salmon were released to the ocean several years ago. The hatchery tracks their fish throughout their lives. A staggering 99% of the fish released have returned back home. And like a laser-guided missile, they have returned to the very inch of their birth!

I was mesmerized.

We watched them swim up a “fish ladder,” a miniature “Panama Canal” where the fish swim through locks of water, each one higher than the previous one. The only way up the ladder is by swimming through a tiny hole against the strong current, or by jumping a foot out of the water and over the wall. It was stunning to see how the fish fought with everything they could muster to reach their target.

Scientists posit that when they are born, the fish have a unique magnetic imprint in their brain that marks the location of their birth. It’s a lot like GPS, or how your phone marks your parking spot the moment you leave your car. When they come close to their birthplace, the fresh water of the river streams triggers an impulse within them that will make them fight for their lives in order to reach their birthplace against impossible odds, overcoming all obstacles in their path.

I found it providential that we encountered this jaw-dropping phenomenon, when the Torah focuses on the miraculous water supply of the Jewish people during their forty years of wandering through the desert. This water was known as the well of Miriam, because it was only in the merit of Miriam, Moses’ older sister, that the nation’s thirst was quenched.

As I was meditating over these awesome aquatic antics, I suddenly realized the depth of an ancient blessing bestowed upon all future generations of Jews 3500 years ago. It’s a blessing with which we bless our children each Friday night, directly quoting the blessing that our Patriarch Jacob blessed his grandchildren Efraim and Menashe (Genesis 48:16):

“May the Almighty make you like Efraim and Menashe….

May the angel who redeemed me from all harm bless the youths;
May they be called by my name and the name of my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, May they multiply abundantly like fish, in the midst of the land.”

Efraim and Menashe were the sons of Joseph, the Egyptian Prime Minister. Whereas all the patriarchs were born and bred in the Holy Land, these two boys were the first Jews that were born and raised in the diaspora. The blessing that Jacob blessed them was that they should be like fish, because fish have the uncanny and extraordinary ability to not only know where they come from, but they will stop at nothing to actually return there.

Jacob was a visionary. He understood that life would bring his descendants to the furthest corners of the Earth. The blessing he endowed us with was the ability to always remember that we are Jews before anything else. And that despite the harshest odds, we would somehow make our way back home.

Though we are a tiny minority of the world’s population—less than 20 million Jews in a world of 8 billion people— we have managed to reach every country and office available to mankind. In many cases, we have forgotten that we are Jews, preferring to identify with our most recent nationalities or temporary ideologies. Jews are like trees. Our leaves might change color but our roots are all the same.

When Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir desperately needed arms from America during the Yom Kippur War, she appealed to America’s Jewish Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, for sympathy for his own Jewish People. 

Dispassionately, he wrote to her that: “ he considers himself ‘an American first, Secretary of State second, and a Jew third”

Sharply, she responded: 

“Henry, you forget that in Israel we read from right to left.”

It’s understandable for Alex Rodriguez, the great Yankees hitter, to strike out a few times, here and there. But it would be absurd for him to be identified by his short-term batting score instead of his astonishing career history. Yet, despite our 4,000 year old Jewish identity, many Jews confuse vocation with identity as they sadly see no problem with replacing their timeless Judaism with their current ideology.

Jacob’s magnificent blessing is that no Jew will ever be lost. Ultimately, like fish, each and every Jew will ultimately find his way back to his birthplace. Indeed, the prophet Isaiah (27:12) declares:

“And you shall return home—each and every one of you—all the members of Israel.”

In “The Godfather,” Don Vito Corleone says “A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man”. In much the same way, a Jew who is disconnected from his faith feels empty and unfulfilled. He will try to anesthetize or mask it through hobbies, luxuries and distractions, but it will never fill the void. Problems are more likely to be solved when digging at the roots rather than hacking at the leaves. Remember your roots and you’ll never need to fear the wind.

After three generations in America, most Jews today have been blessed with some degree of prosperity. No longer are we struggling to make ends meet like our grandparents did in the early twentieth century. It’s time to come home.

Rabbi Dovid Vigler
Chabad of Palm Beach Gardens
6100 PGA Blvd, Palm Beach Gardens, FL 33418
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