Our High Holy Days theme in Pirkei Avot 2:16* is quite relevant for me personally. I, too, have a task from which I should not desist, though I am not sure I will be able to finish it.
Following my retirement in 2022, among my goals was to complete a project I had little time to pursue while working.
My father was a prominent leader of the Jewish community in pre-Holocaust Berlin. He and his colleagues worked tirelessly to educate and motivate the assimilated and complacent German Jewry of that time to recognize and act upon the rising threat they saw approaching. The story of what they did, and of the Jews they saved, has been lost to history. Based on what I now know, it could even be the stuff of a dramatic book or movie.
Over the last years of his life, I persuaded my father to videotape several interviews, totaling some three hours in all. In these, he related a fascinating story, chronologically, including names, places, and events. In the ensuing years, with the help of scholars in Germany, Israel, and the United States, I began to locate documentation to substantiate and flesh out the story. That search became dramatic in ways I could never have imagined. Now my challenge is to sift through those documents, many in German, winnow out the less relevant, and see where I go from here.
Although my retirement should have meant lots of free time, unexpected family health challenges intervened. Thus, I often doubt whether I will be able to complete the task during my remaining sojourn on this earth. However, I concluded that, as our Pirkei Avot teaching wisely says, I should not desist, because its importance is larger than just myself or my family.
*He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say: “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it; If you have studied much Torah, you shall be given much reward. Faithful is your employer to pay you the reward of your labor; And know that the grant of reward unto the righteous is in the age to come.”