I
imagine you have heard the joke I’m about to share, but please bear with me
since I’m sharing it for a higher purpose...
Joan
lives at home and has been looking for the right man to marry, but time after
time it doesn’t work out because her parents don’t approve of whomever she
brings home. She goes to her
friend for advice, the friend says – “Joan, find someone just like your father
and bring him home for dinner.” Which
Joan does.
The
next day, Joan’s friend asks how it went and Joan says, “It was terrible.” “What happened?” “Well,” Joan says, “My father loved him.” “So what was the problem?” her friend
wonders. And Joan says, “Unfortunately,
my mother couldn’t stand him.”
In
case you were wondering what happens when you Google “marrying someone like you
father,” now you know...
To
a large extent, for a host of reasons, we tend to maintain the same
patterns of behavior, generation after generation. Even when we want to act differently, even when we are convinced
that we should make changes, we tend to replicate certain patterns.
Suppose
we truly want to make progress?
Suppose we recognize that we absolutely must address areas that are
problematic?
The
extended narrative we’ve been reading in the Book of Genesis about several
generations in the life of a family may be instructive. This is a family has had its share of
tsorres, its share of aggravation.
Murillo, "Joseph and his Brethren," c. 1670
And
it also has an array of interesting personality traits and patterns.
This
is a family that keeps secrets, where people aren’t always truthful to one
another, where people keep animosity inside until it ruptures and causes them
to act in treacherous ways, where siblings compete with one another with
results that are often tragic.
That’s
certainly true of the generation of Jacob. And what about the children, Joseph and company? Perhaps not surprisingly, you see some
of the same traits.
But
the book of Genesis offers the possibility that the current generation can
break free of some of the negative patterns of the previous generation and also
maintain the positive.
After
all – the generation of Jacob is also dedicated, creative, interested in
fulfilling a larger destiny.
Joseph
and his brothers will transcend some of the negative patterns of behavior –
they will learn to take responsibility for each other, to be more direct and
less manipulative.
And
they will preserve the sense of dedication and creativity.
Of
course, some things don’t change.
Joseph tells his brothers to bring their father down to Egypt and to
tell him about כל כבודי במצרים kol k’vodi b’mitzrayim – about the honorary status I’ve achieved
in Egypt. His ego is still very much in tact!
But
there is movement forward, there is a sense that the children have refined the
legacy of the parents.
I
want to pan the camera out for a few minutes, and then I’m going to ask us to
focus on ourselves and our families.
However
much time you spend on social media, you realize how polarized we are as a
nation. The right and the left
tend to intone their own ideological perspectives to their own echo chambers. Some say that it’s worse now than ever
and maybe it is, though I find it curious to discover, for example how some of
our founding fathers complained about the same exact problem over 200 years ago.
“If a Federalist sees a Republican,” wrote Thomas Jefferson, "he crosses the
street rather than tip his hat out of graciousness."
So
ideological polarization is not a new thing.
Shai
Held, co-founder of Hadar, an independent minyan and yeshiva in New York City,
wrote what I thought was a well-considered piece in the Forward about how our
polarization when it comes to the relationship between Islam and terror is preventing
the possibility of a productive conversation.
He wrote
as follows:
“In facing the current
moment, there are four pitfalls we must avoid. The first two, the mistakes of
misguided liberals, are (1) denying that Islam has anything to do with ISIS,
and (2) refusing to admit that Islam is in unique crisis. The latter two, the
mistakes of reactionary conservatives, are (3) declaring that Islam is
irredeemably evil, and (4) painting all Muslims with the same brush. All four
of these illusions are appealing to some, but all are false, and ultimately
noxious.”
He went on to indicate the problematic
dynamic that emerges from these two polarized views:
“The more the voices of
enmity and antagonism cast suspicion on all Muslims, the more tempted moderate
Muslims and their allies will be to insist that ISIS and Islam are utterly
unconnected. Conversely, the more moderate Muslims and their supporters insist,
implausibly, that ISIS and Islam are totally separable, the more the radical
haters will dig in their heels. And so the conversation we most need — about
Islamist radicalism and possible paths to its defeat — is precisely the one we
rarely end up having.” (Forward, November 30, 2015)
But it will take a commitment to serious
dialogue, which requires a foundation of trust, to get us to the point where we
can have such honest and important conversations. If we keep crossing the street, in real space and in cyber
space, to avoid these conversations, then we won’t make much progress.
It takes so much effort to change such a
firmly entrenched pattern, in this case the polarization that rarely allows for
effective, nuanced, strategic thinking.
Are we prepared to make the effort to change these patterns? For the sake of real progress, I hope
we are.
So now I want to focus the camera back
on each of us. And to avoid making
it uncomfortable for you, I’ll focus it on myself. My sisters and I were together last weekend and as we often
do, we spoke about the years we were growing up together and we spoke about our
parents, may they rest in peace.
At one point my sisters and I were
saying, you know – they were wonderful parents, they sacrificed, they cared for
us, they had high expectations and they also supported us as we chose three
different career paths.
But we also said that we identified
certain things that we felt we would try to do differently. For example, my parents worried a lot
about us and about things in general and some of that anxiety rubbed off on us
and made things a bit less carefree than they might have been at times.
And so my sisters and I said to
ourselves, and to each other, as our own children were younger, that we would
try hard not to be as overtly anxious, to be a little more laid back.
Has it been easy? Has it been entirely successful? I’ll tell you at the Kiddush…
So, with the international questions
hovering above us, I want to ask you some questions that are far more localized.
What are the family traits that you’ve
observed in your parents’ generation and your grandparents’ generation, the
traits that were part and parcel of your own childhood – that you appreciated,
that you embrace and want to emulate?
And are there traits and if so, what are
they, that you observe that cause you to say, I’m going to try it a little
differently.
The trajectory from Cain and Abel to
Joseph and Judah, from brothers who literally cannot co-exist to brothers who
truly can, suggests that growth is possible, over time, with effort, from one
generation to the next.
When we say, לדור ודור נגיד גדלך l’dor vador nagid godlecha
– from one generation to the next we declare God’s greatness, we should ask ourselves – what progress have we made from one generation to another? Have we brought the best with us and
tried to make appropriate changes, when called for, even to firmly entrenched
patterns? If the answer is no to
any of these questions, then what are we waiting for?
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