Patriarchs and Matriarchs, Mistakes and Merit

Rabbi Joel Fleekop

Rosh HaShanah - Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Like the formation of the first human beings – the last act of Divine creation before Shabbat, my daughter Yael was born late on a Friday afternoon.  And like God’s creation of humanity – late on that mystical and perhaps mythical sixth day – Yael’s birth changed the world, at least for Andrea and me.

A few hours after she was born the chaos swirling around us subsided long enough for Andrea and I to recognize that it was Shabbat. 

Without candles or challah, we marked Shabbat with a blessing neither of us had ever been able to truly offer before. 

Yisimech Elohim K’Sarah, Rivka Rachel, vLeah.  May God make you like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah.

The traditional blessing parents offer daughter’s on Shabbat, a blessing for the future, is also a link to the past – to the matriarchs.  So too is the blessing for a son, connecting our sons to those of Joseph – Ephraim and Mensasseh.

Our theological ancestors, but particularly the matriarchs and patriarchs, play a prominent and honored role in Jewish prayer.  It is with their names that we begin our prayers for healing.  So too the Mi Sheberachs offered at an aufruf and baby-naming. And three times a day we begin our central prayer – the Amidah with the words, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob – and in more recent years – the God of Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah.

The liturgy creates a connection between our selves and these individuals from the beginning of Jewish time.  We identify God as being their God.  At the same time -- just like I might introduce myself as Jackie’s son or Andrea’s husband -- we identify ourselves to God by saying these are our ancestors.

This identification puts us in context -- as part of the covenant of Israel -- but it is intended to provide more than just a frame of reference.  As my former professor, Dr. Marc Brettler teaches, it is met to also gain us an advantage.  We hope that when hearing our prayers, God will consider z’chut avot – the merit of our ancestors.  We ask God to consider and remember for our favor the merit of Judaism’s patriarchs and matriarchs.   Merit they possess despite their many faults and failings.

Unlike George Washington who never told a lie, the founding fathers and mothers of Judaism aren’t infallible.  Nor, like characters in Greek mythology who struggle with hubris and other lofty imperfections, do their faults point to exceptionality.  Rather, as Erik Auerback writes in his essay, Odysseus’ Scar, “in the Old Testament stories, the sublime, tragic, and problematic take shape precisely in the domestic and commonplace.”

Ironically, the area where the patriarchs and matriarchs struggle the most is as parents:  Isaac, Rebekah, and Jacob are all guilty of playing favorites, Sarah is jealous of her step-son, and Rachel and Leah use their children as pawns in their ongoing clash.  But no parent in the Bible’s behavior is more questionable, more troubling than that of Abraham -- the father of Judaism -- A reality we wrestle with each time we encounter this morning’s Torah reading.

Even though he is stopped before actually sacrificing his son, the Akedah -- the binding of Isaac -- left a permanent scar on Abraham’s family.  The midrash teaches that after the events on Mount Moriah Abraham and Isaac parted -- never to speak again. 

Abraham’s behavior and the resulting estrangement between father and son seem foreign and unimaginable.  But in truth, Abraham struggled with many of the same things as our parents, the same thing that many of us struggle with today. 

The story is often told of several blind men touching and describing an elephant.  One experiences the elephant as a tree, another as a snake, a hose, and so on.  It is often told as a story about perception.  But what if we turned the story around? What if after hearing the descriptions the elephant was then asked to fill all those roles?  It would be impossible.

But that is what is asked of each of us.  To our parents we are a son or daughter, to others a sibling, friend, co-worker, classmate, partner, lover.  And of course there are all the roles we have chosen for ourselves – our professions, our hobbies, and so on.  With the birth or adoption of a child, one is given a new title, a new role -- that of mother or father.  But all the other roles remain.

Abraham filled many roles as well:  clan chieftain, warrior, husband, God’s servant and partner, and -- with the birth of Ishmael and later Isaac -- that of father.  Dr. Norman Cohen, a rabbi and professor at Hebrew Union College sees in Abraham a man struggling to find the right balance.  He so wants to prove to God, and perhaps to himself, that he can be a perfect servant, that he ignores his other roles and responsibilities.  Commenting on the binding of Isaac, Cohen writes, “All that we see is Abraham, the knight of faith, whose mission it was to fulfill what he perceived to be God’s wish; Abraham the father, who was given a gift of life in his old age, is not to be found on the mountaintop.”

Abraham, for at least a short period of time, failed to be the father Isaac needed, the father we expected him to be.  With forces pulling in different directions, Abraham lost his balance. 

Like Abraham, our parents, and all those who came before, we too struggle to find the right balance in our lives; to be the parent we expect of ourselves while also being so many things to so many people:  to support a son in his many endeavors while also playing a role in improving our community, to help a daughter plan a wedding while caring for an ailing parent, to be a child’s source of stability while remaining true to the adventurous person who you’ve always seen in the mirror.

Finding the balance between being an involved parent and breadwinner is especially difficult – after all providing for one’s family is part of what it means to be a parent.  While many of us wish our own parents were more present when we were young, today we find ourselves struggling to balance the pressure to excel at work and provide for our families with the desire and the need to spend time with our children.  The truth is late meetings, deadlines, and the expected long hours often trump soccer games, dance recitals, and taking time to play catch in the yard.   As a senior colleague and father of three shared with me a few months ago, our children are sacrificed time and time again for our vocations.  A point that hit home as I -- fully aware of the irony -- prepared this sermon while listening to my daughter cry.

In addition to maintaining the right balance or equilibrium in life, parents also grapple with truly communicating and being present for their children, a challenge to which Abraham was not immune.

The Israeli poet, T. Carmi imagines the parting of Abraham and Isaac after the Akedah as emotional rather than physical.  In his poem, “The Actions of the Fathers” Carmi paints for us an image of life in Abraham’s family.  Carmi begins,

And after the Akedah?
Then the most difficult test began. 
Abraham took his son to the camel races
Hiked with him from the Euphrates to the Nile,
Swam by his side, watching him like a hawk
In the waters of Eilat.  And when they returned home,
He slaughtered flocks and herds aplenty,
All tender and good,
Sweet scent of songs and of muscle and meat
And guests in good graces come in from afar.
Isaac ate and ate, ate—
And was silent.

But in truth the silence Carmi describes existed long before father and son reached the peak of Mount Moriah. 

The Bible records only one conversation between Abraham and Isaac, the brief dialogue they share in this morning’s Torah reading.  As Erich Auerback observes, “The conversation between Abraham and Isaac on the way to the place of sacrifice is only an interruption of the heavy silence and makes it all the more burdensome. . . Everything remains unexpressed.”

That so much remains unsaid isn’t for lack of love or desire.  Abraham responds to Isaac’s call, Avi – father with Hineini Beni, Hineini my son.  Hineini is a powerful word.  Often functioning as a response to God’s call – as it does twice in this morning’s Torah reading – it means “here I am.”  The eighteenth century commentary, Or HaHayim, renders Hineini as, “Behold I am ready for anything you ask of me.”

In saying Hineini, Abraham asserts a desire to be present for his son, to answer all of his questions, and assuage all his fears.  But he can’t.  Whether consumed by his own thoughts, or simply because he doesn’t know how, Abraham doesn’t address all the questions and fears that lie behind Isaac’s query about the lamb.  As Dr. Cohen suggests, “Perhaps Abraham . . . can only say to his son, ‘Here I am,’ and nothing more.” 

As parents we are quick to respond to our child’s call.  Like Abraham and our parents before us, we say Hineini, here I am.  Hineini, I am ready to help, to comfort, and support.  But in truth we are not always ready.  Sometimes we are distracted.  As Rabbi Laura Geller asks, “Do we not frequently act like Abraham, thinking that we are really there for those whom we love . . . while our thoughts are a million miles away?”

Other times we simply don’t have the right information to help.  We might understand the story: who pushed who on the playground, why calculus is impossible, that a long term relationship came to an end and how much that hurts.  But if we don’t know what fears keep them awake at night and what dreams motivate them, we cannot fully respond to our loved ones, especially our children.

As he prayed for a child those many years, surely Abraham had an image in his mind of what type of dad he would like to be.  But when God answered Abraham’s prayers with the births of Ishmael and later Isaac, the father of Judaism struggled as a parent.  He made mistakes:  some common, others unthinkable.

Prompted by the example of our own parents, both positive and negative, many of us made promises to ourselves about what type of mother or father we’d be.  But as Abraham learned, when prayers for children are answered, keeping those promises is difficult.  

At the start of Yom Kippur we ask God to excuse and forgive all the times that – despite the best of intentions – promises, vows, and oaths will go unfulfilled.  Let God not be the only one moved by the message of Kol Nidre.  Let us forgive ourselves for not always keeping the promises we make to ourselves.  Let us excuse ourselves, just as we have our own parents, from the obligation of being a perfect mom or dad.  There are no perfect moms or dads.

But there are good parents, parents who in the spirit of the High Holy Day season, strive each year to do better:  to be more fully present, to ask more of the right questions, and most of all -- to better convey love to their children.

Though it didn’t always show, Abraham always loved Isaac.  God’s instructions to Abraham -- take your son, your only son, the one you love -- tells us that much.  Maybe love is what gave Abraham the courage to keep going.  As he returned to his tent from Mt. Moriah, it would have been easy for Abraham, now estranged from his two sons, to simply resign himself to being a failed parent.  But instead of being paralyzed by past mistakes, Abraham set out to do better. 

The Torah describes how he spares no expense in sending his servant, Eliezer, to find Isaac a beautiful and kind wife, a woman who will bring to his son the love and blessing Isaac so desperately needs.  And, according to the midrash, Abraham finds a way to reconnect and reunite with his first son, Ishmael.

Tradition teaches that despite his many failings and shortcomings, Abraham is ultimately remembered for the good.  He is buried by his sons, Isaac and Ishmael, who join together to honor their flawed but beloved father.  And we, his distant progeny, proudly point to Abraham as one of the Avot, one of the ancestors of our faith whose merit we hope God will count for our favor.

On this Rosh Hashanah and on every day of the year, we address in our prayers, Elohai Avraham – the God of Abraham:  the God who loved an imperfect Abraham, and blessed him despite Abraham’s many missteps as a father.  Elohai Avraham, the God who is with us and blesses us though we too struggle as parents. 

As the last act of creation, God formed human beings knowing that while people would make mistakes, they would also be a source of merit and blessing.  In this New Year, may our example, though imperfect, be a source of merit for future generations.  And may we, on each day of this year -- and every year -- whether through words, or actions, or simply our presence, be a blessing for our children and loved ones. 

Shanah Tovah – Happy New Year