How to write a legacy letter to your children and grandchildren

A legacy letter can be written at any age. Some people write one when a grandchild is born or after a hard diagnosis, and many simply because they want their children to have something in their own words. It needs no special form, and most people can draft one in an afternoon.

This guide explains what goes into a legacy letter, with a template and two short examples, then the older Jewish form of the same letter, the ethical will or tzava'ah, and how to give and keep it.

What a legacy letter is

A legacy letter is a personal letter to the people who come after you, to be read now or kept for later, telling them what you want them to know. It is also called an ethical will, and My Jewish Learning quotes Barry Baines, a writer on the subject, on the difference: legal wills leave valuables, and ethical wills leave values.

To leave a legacy, in the sense families use the word, is to leave something of yourself that outlasts you, such as the stories and habits your grandchildren carry without always knowing where they came from. A legacy letter puts part of that into words, and keeps the names and details that children forget. A legacy journal is a longer record kept over months, often in a printed book of questions; legacy books for parents compares the kinds.

A father's letter, and a challenge

Many readers know the form from the Legacy Letter Challenge of Blake Brewer, of Bixby, Oklahoma. He was nineteen when his father drowned, and hours later his mother found a letter his father had written to his children. His project aims to help a million fathers write one such letter, and has a program for mothers too.

What to put in a legacy letter

Most good letters hold some of the following, and few hold all of them. Choose what you would most regret leaving unsaid.

• Where the family came from. Your parents' and grandparents' full names and towns. Your grandchildren may have no other source for them.
• A story from your life. A moment that shaped you, told with its details, such as the street and what someone said.
• What you learned. Lessons from work, marriage, money or hard years, each tied to something that happened.
• What you hope the family will keep. Faith and the customs of the home.
• A line for each person. Something for each child or grandchild by name, saying what you see in them.
• Thanks, and anything owed. Gratitude and, where one is due, an apology. End with a blessing.

A letter to grandchildren needs more of the family's story, because they know less of it. Tell them who your parents were and what the family did on Shabbos or on holidays when you were their age, and write for the age they will be when they read it closely.

How to write a legacy letter, step by step

1. Decide who the letter is for, and whether it is to be read now or later.
2. List everything you want them to know, without sorting it.
3. Choose one or two stories that show what you mean, with their details.
4. Write a first draft as you would speak, without stopping to correct it.
5. Put it away for a few days, then read it aloud and cut whatever does not sound like you.
6. Add a line for each person by name, and check every name and date.
7. Write the final copy in your own handwriting if you can, and sign and date it.
8. Decide when to give it, and tell someone where the original is kept.

A legacy letter template

Use this as a frame and change anything that does not fit. Each part can be a single sentence, with your own words in place of the brackets.

One to three pages is enough. Many people write a short letter first and add a dated page every few years.

Two short examples

Both letters are invented, and so are the people in them: a grandmother in a frum family, writing for her birthday, and a mother who is ill, writing to be read after her death.

From a grandmother to her grandchildren

To my grandchildren, all nineteen of you, and to the ones still to come,
I am writing this on my eighty-fourth birthday, at the kitchen table where most of you learned your first brachos.

My father, Hirsh Levin, came from Minsk in 1912, and my mother, Pesha, came a year later. They had a candy store on Rivington Street, and I grew up behind its counter. My mother lit candles every Friday in a kitchen with no window, and she always set one more plate than we needed. "Someone will come," she said, and someone always did. Your Zeidy and I kept her rule for sixty years.

Keep Shabbos together when you can, around one table, and speak well of each other when you are apart. Each of you will find a card in this envelope with your own name on it. May your homes always have one more plate than you need, and someone to sit at it. With all my love,
Bubby (Esther Weiss), Brooklyn, March 2026

What makes it work. It gives her parents' names and the year they came from Minsk, and one story carries the lesson that becomes the blessing at the end.

From a mother to her children, to be read later

Dear Katie and Sam,
If you are reading this, I have died, and you are probably at my kitchen table going through papers. Make some coffee first.

My mother, your Grandma June, worked nights at the hospital in Dayton for thirty years so that I could go to college. I understood what it cost her only when I was raising the two of you on my own. Katie, you were the bravest six-year-old I ever knew. Sam, you make people laugh when they need it most, and you did it for me all this year. I am sorry for the year after your father left, when I was angry most of the time.

The photo albums are in the hall closet, with the names written on the backs. Please keep the recipe box, and call each other on your birthdays. Being your mother was the best thing I ever did. All my love,
Mom (Linda Marsh)

What makes it work. It is short and says the hard thing plainly. Telling the children where the albums are, with the names on the backs, keeps the photographs from becoming a box of strangers.

The Jewish ethical will, the tzava'ah

Jewish families have written letters like these for centuries. The Hebrew word tzava'ah, plural tzava'os, means a will or an instruction, and an ethical will is a parent's letter of guidance to the children on how to live and what to keep, often closing with a blessing.

The tradition looks back to Yaakov, who gathered his sons before his death and spoke to each of them in turn (Bereishis 49), and to Mishlei, which gives its advice as a father speaking to his son. The written form grew in the Middle Ages. Around 1190 Yehudah ibn Tibbon, a physician from Spain who lived in southern France, wrote a long letter to his son Samuel, later called Musar Av, with advice on study and on keeping a library. In about 1267 the Ramban wrote from Acre in the Land of Israel to his son in Catalonia, urging humility, and asked him to read the letter once a week and teach it to his own children; many still read it weekly. The Vilna Gaon wrote to his family when he set out for the Land of Israel, which he never reached.

In 1926 Israel Abrahams gathered the older wills in two volumes, Hebrew Ethical Wills. My Jewish Learning notes that older tzava'os often asked for debts to be paid and gave instructions for the burial, beside requests to keep the mitzvos and blessings for the family, while modern ones are mostly letters of memory and hope, with no set form.

Letters to be read later, and in illness

Some people write letters to be opened after their death, or on a day still to come, such as a wedding or a bar or bat mitzvah. Seal each one, write on the envelope who it is for and when it is to be opened, keep the envelopes with the family's papers, and tell one person where they are.

A letter written during a serious illness can be short. My Jewish Learning notes that hospice workers and palliative care doctors often encourage patients to write one, and questions to ask a parent before they die covers other legacy projects hospice teams help with. Many people also write one when they make a will. Keep the two separate, and ask your lawyer whether the will should mention the letter.

When and how to give it

A letter given in life lets the family answer it. Some people read it aloud at a birthday, and some give a grandchild their letter with a bar or bat mitzvah gift. A letter sealed for later is read with great care, and many people do both. Keep a typed copy with the original for the great-grandchildren.

Keeping it with the family's papers

Keep the original with the family's other papers, such as the certificates and the ketubah. The Library of Congress advises acid- and lignin-free folders and boxes in a cool, dry room, away from attics and basements, without paper clips or tape. Give each child a copy, and tell more than one person where the original is. What to do with old family photos and papers explains how to keep the whole collection together.

Sources: My Jewish Learning on ethical wills; the Encyclopaedia Judaica article "Wills, Ethical"; Chabad.org on the meaning of the word tzava'ah; the Ramban's letter to his son, in English translation; KJRH, Tulsa, on Blake Brewer's Legacy Letter Challenge; the Library of Congress on the care of works on paper. Checked October 2026.

A letter, and the history behind it

A legacy letter often raises questions it cannot answer, such as where exactly the town was, or what became of a brother who stayed behind. Its names, towns and dates are what the archives need. A researched family history can start from them, and can print the letter in full, in the writer's own handwriting, beside the history it points to.

Zichronos researches a family in the archives that hold its records, then publishes its history as a finished hardcover book. Family history book examples and Inside a book show finished pages, what a family history book costs compares the options, and How we work sets out the steps. For a parent who would rather tell the whole story, legacy books for parents and how to write your mother's or father's life story go further.