Covenant In The Family Way

by David M. Elcott and Shira I. Milgrom

Peering into a one-way mirror, the therapist observes an intense and violent family therapy session. The father is filled with unresolved anger from his own childhood, bereft as it was of paternal respect and love. He is consumed with terrible guilt from the death of his former wife, a loss he still mourns. In compensation, he indulges his favorite child, the somewhat insufferable product of that original love. His present wife rages over the emotional emptiness of their marriage.

The other children feel their father's prejudices and reflect the expected responses in such a family circumstance: they both vie for papa's affection and fester hostility toward the beloved child. So furious is their anger that they actually have attempted to murder the boy. Although this pains the father, they refuse to apologize and gain perverse satisfaction in his anguish.

Readers of the Bible recognize these individuals who sit together in therapy. They are the children of Jacob, the twelve tribes of Israel. Their passions, conflicts and reconciliations are the stuff of generations of exegesis, midrash and contemporary theater.

The family of Jacob is the first intact family of the Jewish memory. His own brother and his father's brother were pushed out of their inheritance. He fled his wives’ family with his father-in-law in murderous pursuit. The Torah records all these voices and allows the reader to relate with each of the family members. One can be a son as well as a father, loving one brother and hating another. There is jealousy and neediness and unfulfilled expectations that the family should soothe loneliness and pain.

In the same way that people dream at night and realize that they can be everyone in the dream because they own that dream – it belongs to them – so one is allowed to recognize and empathize with everyone in the biblical family. This is a great gift to one who treasures the Torah, for it provides many problematic family scenes. People today can identify with all the characters and with their relationships because, like the family of the patriarch, Jacob, families today seem in pain and in trouble.

Biblical families excepted, the Jewish family of history has always prided itself as having an exceptional reputation. Respect for parents, those who gave birth, is meant to expand the terrain of mitzvot. The Ten Commandments instruct children to honor their mothers and fathers, a tradition continued elsewhere in the Torah with the admonition to honor and to fear one's parents. The Talmud clarifies what this means:

What is "fear"? A child should not stand in the father's customary place and should not sit in his place. He should not contradict or support him in public (as if the father needed the child's support). What is honor? Feed your parent and provide drink and clothing and covering; accompany your parent when going in and out (all assuming the parent needs such assistance) (BT Qiddushin 31b).

The Talmud also insures that parents provide their children with more than room and board. Not only are they to bring him or her into the covenant of Abraham and Sarah, but:

Teach the child Torah and find for the child a spouse, teach a trade (profession), and there are those who even say to teach the child to swim. (Kiddushin 29a)

In Jewish texts dealing with family relations there is honor, respect and responsibility for the continuity of the family. There is ample evidence today that it is within the family that healthy human beings are formed. Studies of family dynamics make convincing claims that the functional family plays a crucial role in personality formation and in community building. Family is meant to designate both biological connection and aspiration for meaningfulness. Within the crucible of a caring home, children learn to live in relationship through family interactions and begin to explore ways to see the world as a good place. The web of relationships that family entails grounds us in a self-identity while developing a sense of personal responsibility. It is within that environment of relationship that people begin to take on obligations for other human beings. Within the Jewish framework, family should provide the genesis of embracing a Jewish way to live life.

As has often been said, Jewish traditions and American culture share a great deal. But in the arena of the family, Judaism championed the home with all its inadequacies as the primary pedagogue, the most reliable source of covenantal transmission. Harold Schulweis isolates Jewish pedagogy on the essentials of human development when he quotes the response of a young child to the question, "Why do you believe in God (or in doing mitzvot, or in seeking kedushah, or pursuing justice and righteousness)? Her response is swift and clear: "I don't know," she replies, "I guess it runs in the family."

The Jewish home established by Abraham and Sarah, with all its complexity, understood that there is no conflict over nurture and nature: both are critical and work in symbiotic union. One is in a relationship because of flesh and blood and because that person shares a core of values, behaviors and beliefs with those people with whom a home is shared.

Just For Fun

My young grandson called the other day to wish me Happy Birthday. He asked me how old I was, and I told him, "62." He was quiet for a moment, and then he asked, "Did you start at 1?"

A little girl was diligently pounding away on her father's computer. She told him she was writing a story. "What's it about?" he asked. "I don't know," she replied. "I can't read."

A nursery school teacher was delivering a station wagon full of kids home one day when a fire truck zoomed past. Sitting in the front seat of the truck was a Dalmatian dog. The children started discussing the dog's duties.

"They use him to keep crowds back," said one child.

"No," said another, "he's just for good luck."

A third child brought the argument to a close. "They use the dogs," she said firmly, "to find the fire hydrants...