God Becomes a Merciful Parent

Rabbi Mishael Zion | Text and the City | Ki Tisa 2014

Three years ago, when Amy Chua’s “Tiger Mom” came out, my friend Dasee Berkowitz and I wrote a counter-piece about “The Spiritual Life of Parents”. It was an aspirational piece, to say the least. This week, as I was trying to recover from a high-strung parenting miscalculation involving a pinched piece of gum, a clenched fist and a busy school parking lot, I saw that Chua has a new book out. I decided to go back and read what we had written and see if I’ve been able to fulfill some of those aspirations, three years and with a third daughter now in the equation.

I mercifully gave myself a passing grade. But I was also reminded that this week’s Torah portion can be read as God confronting his own Parenthood, with a special recipe for maintaining one’s parenting hidden within:

Ki Tisa: The Sin of the Golden Calf. After the great wedding at Sinai, the Israelites have been adulterous (with a cow, no less). God wants to annul the marriage, offering to Moses that He destroy the Jewish people and restart the project with Moses as the new Abraham. Moses heroically confronts God and reframes the covenant: This is not just a Sinai marriage, he reminds God. It is also a covenant you made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – and their offspring. The Jewish project is not an opt-in faith community, but a born-into People, with God as the parent. You can divorce your wife – but you cannot divorce your kids, claims Moses, and God submits. Or as Rabbi Meir puts it in the Talmud: בין כך ובין כך קרויים אתם בנים – “No matter what you do, you are forever called my children” (Kiddushin 36a).

Yet given the tendency of these children to test and anger their parent, given their affinity for rebellion, their ignoring and blocking out their parents pleas, their messiness and their premature desire for autonomy and independence… how will the parent master their emotions, manage love, patience and discipline in the child’s long journey to maturity?

It is here that God reveals to Moses the 13 attributes of Mercy:

And God passed before his face And called out: God, God, Showing-mercy, showing-favor, Long-suffering in anger, Abundant in loyalty and faithfulness, Keeping loyalty to the thousandth generation, Shouldering iniquity, rebellion and sin, And clearing - not clearing the guilty – (rather) calling-to-account the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons and upon sons’ sons, to the third and fourth generation! (Exodus 34:6-7)

וַיַּעֲבֹר ה' עַל פָּנָיו וַיִּקְרָא: ה' ה' אֵל רַחוּם וְחַנּוּן אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם וְרַב חֶסֶד וֶאֱמֶת נֹצֵר חֶסֶד לָאֲלָפִים נֹשֵׂא עָו‍ֹן וָפֶשַׁע וְחַטָּאָה וְנַקֵּה לֹא יְנַקֶּה פֹּקֵד עֲו‍ֹן אָבוֹת עַל בָּנִים וְעַל בְּנֵי בָנִים עַל שִׁלֵּשִׁים וְעַל רִבֵּעִים. (שמות לד:ו-ז)

Reading these passages in recent years, reciting them again and again on Yom Kippur, I’ve come to realize that God is asking Moses – and his descendants – to remind God of who He really is, or who He aspires to be. The Midrash has long since turned this list from a theological plea into an ethical creed: “Just as God is called showing-of-mercy – you too strive to be showing-of-mercy” (see Maimonides Deot 1:6). God’s thirteen attributes are our aspirational list to follow in God’s paths in our encounter with every person (indeed, Moshe Cordovero’s Palm of Deborah goes through each Divine attribute and translates it into a quality in interpersonal relations).

For me, God’s thirteen attributes of mercy are a powerful guide to Parenthood – not just God’s, but my own. I recite them to remind myself to be merciful, compassionate, slow to anger, truthful, abundant in loyalty… The real trick is to figure out which qualities to use at which moment: when “shouldering mistakes and iniquities” is best – and when “not clearing the guilty” is required (in hindsight, the incident with the gum and the clenched fist seems to have been the first). It is an ongoing internal rollercoaster – and it is undoubtedly the most rewarding one at that. And I am at my best when I remember that my struggle to be there for my child in the best way is the same struggle as being in the world in God’s image. I just might sometimes need a Moses to remind me of them.

As Dasee and I wrote in that piece three years ago:

During an average day of parenting we encounter our entire emotional range: from love and compassion to worry, impatience and even anger. Our kids know how to get under our skin - often because they present a mirror of our own behavior.  Viewing our parenting encounters as opportunities for inner growth can turn an emotionally messy day into a source of self-understanding and self-improvement.  This is not just psychologically sound – it is spiritual work in itself. As we use our daily encounters to become better parents, we find ourselves walking in the ways of the Divine.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mishael

P.S. If the ending of those verses sounds harsh, know that Rabbinic liturgical tradition cut the list short, dropping the stuff about “calling-to-account the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons,” thus leaving only the “13 Attributes of Mercy”. Even more chutzpadik, in prayer to this day we recite the list only until the word “clearing” ונקה, turning the verses’ question mark into an exclamation point: “Keeping loyalty to the thousandth generation, bearing iniquity, rebellion and sin, and clearing!”

Yet – not to end on too optimistic a note – here’s a different interpretation to those verses:

“Calling-to-account the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons” – why? Why should one person have to suffer on account of the sins of another? Perhaps the intent here is that God calls-to-account upon the parents the sins which they performed in educating their children. For the children’s sins are because of the iniquities of the parents – and it is the parents who are held responsible. (Iturei Torah pg. 269)

The Art of Parenting: Being the Mother of both Yaakov and Esav

Parashat Toldot | Heshvan 5772 | November 2011

It is rare to gain insight into who our parents are as parents. A holiday visit after a long period apart might raise that moment of realization: Oh, so that’s the kind of parent my mother is! Observing how my parents act with my children has raised the same understanding: So that’s what my dad was like… The insights about our parents often become insights about ourselves: I guess that’s why I am so… Of all the mothers of Bereishit, I find Rivkah to be the most fascinating, as a person and as a parent. Ambitious, tough, smarter than you, Rivkah is unique in the bible: she is a real go-getter. We are introduced to her watering a stranger’s ten camels, in an act that will land her a wealthy husband. After years of barrenness, when she experiences a severely painful and debilitating pregnancy with twins, she becomes the first seeker of existential meaning:
Rivkah became pregnant. But the children almost crushed one another inside her, so she said: If this be so, why do I exist? And she went to demand God. (Genesis 25:22)		וַיִּתְרֹצְצוּ הַבָּנִים, בְּקִרְבָּהּ, וַתֹּאמֶר: אִם-כֵּן, לָמָּה זֶּה אָנֹכִי?! וַתֵּלֶךְ, לִדְרֹשׁ אֶת  ה'.  (בראשית כה:כב)
Rivka’s strategic thinking comes to the fore in this week’s parsha when she pushes her preferred son, Yaakov, to steal his brother’s blessing. It is a troubling ethical moment, but also a fascinating parental moment. Rivka is not only favoring one son over the other, but she is pushing her chosen son beyond his comfort zone. She is so certain in her acts that she takes responsibility for any consequences as she ignores his strong objections:
Yaakov said to Rivka his mother: … I will be like a trickster in his eyes, and I will bring a curse and not a blessing on myself! His mother said to him: Let your curse be on me, my son! Only: listen to my voice and go… (Genesis 27:11-13)	וַיֹּאמֶר יַעֲקֹב, אֶל-רִבְקָה אִמּוֹ: ... וְהָיִיתִי בְעֵינָיו כִּמְתַעְתֵּעַ; וְהֵבֵאתִי עָלַי קְלָלָה, וְלֹא בְרָכָה.  וַתֹּאמֶר לוֹ אִמּוֹ: עָלַי קִלְלָתְךָ בְּנִי; אַךְ שְׁמַע בְּקֹלִי, וְלֵךְ קַח-לִי. (בראשית כז:יא-יג)
In trying to imagine how Rivka convinced Yaakov to do this (and how she convinced herself of the legitimacy of her actions), I hear a different mother’s voice. Langston Hughes’ 1922 poem, of a Harlem mom prodding her son to keep climbing up the social ladder, could easily be put into Rivka’s mouth:
Mother to Son | Langston Hughes Well, son, I’ll tell you: Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. It’s had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor— Bare. But all the time I’se been a-climbin’ on, And reachin’ landin’s, And turnin’ corners, And sometimes goin’ in the dark Where there ain’t been no light. So boy, don’t you turn back. Don’t you set down on the steps ’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard. Don’t you fall now— For I’se still goin’, honey, I’se still climbin’, And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
Rivkah has worked hard to get to this moment. She walked through splinters to get out of Lavan’s house, out of the darkness of Avimelech’s grasp, and out of the clasp of barrenness. She will not see her life’s destiny (“why do I exist?”) become lost to an older son who has chosen the wrong path in her eyes, or a younger son who does not grab his destiny like his mother did. She wants her travails to be about something, and the way she’s going to make that happen is through her son Yaakov, even at the cost of thrusting him into a dark corner of his own. Rivkah is a tribute to those many parents who pushed their children to demand more from life, sometimes even at the risk of losing their own authenticity, but hopefully to the benefit of the world at large. Allow me one more twist: In the last mention of Rivka in the parsha, the Torah gives a tiny hint that opens up an entirely untold episode of Rivka’s parenting. As Yaakov leaves for Lavan’s house, the text describes Rivkah in unique terms:
[Yaakov] went to the country of Aram, to Lavan the son of Betuel the Aramean, the brother of Rivka, the mother of Yaakov and Esav. (Genesis 28:5)			וַיֵּלֶךְ פַּדֶּנָה אֲרָם אֶל-לָבָן בֶּן-בְּתוּאֵל, הָאֲרַמִּי, אֲחִי רִבְקָה, אֵם יַעֲקֹב וְעֵשָׂו. (בראשית כח:ה)
This last description, “Rivkah, mother of Yaakov and Esav” throws all the close bible readers off. Who needs this extra piece of biographical information here? As Rashi puts it, in a rare moment of interpretive befuddlement: איני יודע מה מלמדנו – ”I do not know what it teaches us.” Nechama Leibovitz, in her ever inspiring essays on the parsha, answers Rashi’s query by suggesting that the text is opening up a window to Rivka as the parent of Esav as well, not just Yaakov’s doting mom. One wonders – what are the missing episodes of Rivka’s parenting that this verse is alluding to? How many pep talks did Rivka offer to Esav, how often did she give him a Langston Hughes’ style motivational? Perhaps even at the very moment when she is preferring one son over the other, she is doing that as a parent of both, not only one. Rivkah reminds us that choosing to throw your lot in with one destiny does not mean that your complex ties with the alternative destiny must necessarily be severed (as my teacher Rav David Bigman once said, about a different parenting dilemma: “The tragedy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that God’s two children are warring with eachother. What is he going to do?”). Even when faced with the toughest of choices, we are also at some level the mother of both options, Yaakov and Esav … The story of Rivka shines a light on the complicated art of parenting: How much we push our own agendas and stories onto our children’s lives, and how much we are living the lives our parents have pushed us to live. It is easy to call for authenticity above all else, but the truth is that there are times when shoving a hairy coat in your child’s face is exactly the right move, and then there are times when living your parents’ dreams would be an act of tragic blindness. Perhaps Yaakov would have been best served if Rivka would have taught him to ask for himself her question: “If this be so, why do I exist?” But then again maybe he needed to be pushed into his brother’s blessing and out to his uncle’s home in order to reach the point where he could start his own existential journey. Through those dilemmas, there’s an element of thankfulness to those people who walked the tightrope of those decisions, raising us and being parents to both the Yaakov and the Esav within us. Shabbat Shalom, Mishael

A special thank you to Rachel Cohen (’05) who helped me sharpen the ideas here, and in many previous divrei torah.