Giving Room to Grow

There is one family relationship so prickly, that I can only discuss it openly while my wife and children are away spending the weekend with my father-in-law, namely, the relationship between a man… and his father-in-law – that delicate and raw and charged relationship you have with the man who, prior to your arrival on the scene, was the primary male figure in the life of that woman who is now called your wife. For better or for worse, there is an inescapable and disorienting mirroring effect that man has on you, because in your wife’s eyes, the standard he set is the default measure of your own personal, professional and domestic worth. Spending time with kids (or not), washing the dishes (or not), professional expectations. Depending on you, depending on your father-in-law – most of all, depending on the woman that binds you – you may rank higher, you may rank lower, but make no mistake about it, ranked you are. It is a condition that, to the best of my knowledge, can be ameliorated only if and when you and your father-in-law are rendered irrelevant by the merciful arrival of a far superior male, a son born to your wife. To quote my wife, “Finally, a man in this universe who really understands me.” Those father-in-law visits, those “check ins” on how work is going, how the kids are doing. Does he really care about me? Is he checking “in” or checking “up” – on me? Even if you have achieved some success in your life, even if you are successfully supporting his daughter and grandchildren, you are never totally secure. I remember what the Cardinal said to my father-in-law as they sat next to each other listening to me speak at my installation here at Park Avenue Synagogue. He whispered, “Behind every successful son-in-law is a shocked father-in-law.” Which, when you stop to think about, is a really interesting thing to hear from the mouth of a Cardinal.

All this serves as background as to why this week’s parashah, Yitro, is one of my favorites. With the Israelites’ enslavement and the Exodus behind them, and Mount Sinai yet to happen, the Torah reading describes the arrival of Moses’ father-in-law Yitro with his daughter, Moses’ wife Zipporah, and the kids – Gershon and Eliezer. They embrace, they order in dinner (just like I do when my father-in-law visits) and Moses tells his father-in-law about the exciting deliverance from Egypt. Monday morning arrives, Moses heads into the office to sit as magistrate for all the people. He comes home late that night having left his wife, kids and father-in-law together all day. He is tired, he is exhausted, he puts his bag down, and all of a sudden (and I suspect many of us have been in this exact position), the guy starts laying into him. “Why you working so hard? You are wearing yourself thin! Is this what every Monday looks like?” Yitro is the one guy in the world who doesn’t care who Moses is! Pharaoh/Shmaraoh! Yitro could care less about the parting of the sea. Yitro is a father and a grandfather, and Yitro has what to say about how his son-in-law runs his front office.

This year I have a new, slightly more subtle take on Yitro’s advice to Moses. Traditionally, Yitro’s criticism of Moses is understood to be that Moses has too much on his plate. Moses needs to set up a judicial system because otherwise he will wear himself out. I always understood Yitro’s advice to be coming from a place of concern for his daughter and his grandsons – that Moses should be doing homework with the kids, having a date night with Zipporah. This year I read the text a little more slowly to understand exactly what else was at issue. When asked why he does what he does, Moses responds to Yitro, “It is because the people come to me to inquire of God. When they have a dispute, it comes before me, and I decide between one person and another, and I make known the laws and teachings of God.” (Ex 18:15-16) The response gives a fascinating and troubling insight into Moses’ understanding of his role in the community. From his answer to his father-in-law, it would seem that Moses believes that he has the ability – like an oracle – to communicate the laws, will and truth of God. Moses thinks that his job is to give people up/down answers so that they can function. Yitro hears his son-in-law and tells him outright, “It is not good what you are doing.” Remember, Yitro has stature of his own. He is, after all, a priest of Midian, and he knows something that Moses has yet to learn and needs to learn about leadership. When people come to you with a concern, dispute or question, it is not necessary, prudent, nor perhaps even desirable to respond by telling them what they should or shouldn’t do. Whether or not Moses had a direct line to the heavens is beside the point. True leadership, as Yitro relays to Moses, lies in realizing that even when you know – or think you know – exactly what should happen, your role is actually to let the other person arrive at a decision, law, or conclusion on their own.

This week has been, hands down, one of the fullest weeks I can recall since I arrived as Rabbi in this community. Thank God there here have been many happy occasions, including our double simcha this morning. But if you have followed the community emails then you know that there have also been so many members of our community who have lost family members. And beyond the passings, there are countless happenings under the radar – marriages tearing apart at the seams, fractures emerging between generations in families and far too many quiet heartaches. The most difficult part for me is not the volume, not the painful but unavoidable reality of death or loss. The difficult part is learning to practice what Yitro knew all along, that sometimes – even when you have an opinion, even when you have seen the exact circumstance before, even when you know exactly what Jewish law does or doesn’t say – your role is not to force a person’s hand, or even worse, to be perceived as having tried to force someone’s hand towards making a decision not their own.

A quick example. On several occasions these past few weeks, I have sat with families as they have made difficult end-of-life decisions for loved ones. As you may know, Jewish law is actually rather clear in this area. If the possibility exists of recovery, you choose life. But if the interventional steps you may take are not about giving life, but rather prolonging the inevitable onset of death, then according to the tradition, such an act is not considered “choosing life,” and one is permitted if not obligated to let a loved one die in peace and dignity. While I can sit in a hospital room and tell that to a family, I learned this week that my role is not to tell them what to do, but rather to answer their questions and give them the tools to arrive at the decision that will ultimately be theirs to live with. I could give a million examples: parents and children arguing over matters of either petty or great consequence; siblings negotiating how to mourn a parent; families caught between celebration and loss. No matter how varied the situations may be, they all share two elements. First, in every case, I definitely had an opinion of what I thought should happen. And second, I tried my darndest not to tell the person or family what to do. They may or may not have done what I thought they should do, but by providing guidance and setting out choices at critical moments and by insisting that grownups make their own decisions, I would like to think that at the very least, people were able to arrive at and own the decisions that will be theirs to live with in the years to come.

Yitro knew, and Moses came to know, that as important as it is provide a forceful leadership presence, so too is it important to believe in people’s capacity for self assertion and the need for every person to cultivate confidence in making his or her choices. Telling someone what they should or shouldn’t do or did or didn’t do right has its place, don’t get me wrong – I am a father of four; I do it all the time. But I also know that the whole point of parenting is to prepare my child for the day when he or she will have to make the right choices without me in the room. I have to believe that it is only by giving people the space to articulate their own voice in the safety of trusted loved ones around, that they will be able to do so with confidence later on. It should not be lost on us that at every major pivot point of moral development in the Bible, from Genesis to Jonah, God shapes human character not by way of do’s and don’ts but rather through a series of well placed interrogatives. “Where are you?” God asks Adam as he hid in the Garden. “Where is your brother Abel?” God asks Cain as his brother lay slain on the ground. Did God not know what was going on? Did God not have an opinion on the matter? Of course God did. But God knew that moral development, character and a sense of self were only going to happen if humanity was given a chance to respond to God and to arrive at their own stance.

One of the most provocative insights on our Torah reading today regarding the giving of the law at Mount Sinai is the suggestion that in actual fact only the first word, anokhi, “I am” was spoken by God at Mount Sinai. The rest – all the subsequent legislation, as Rosenzweig famously explained – was the human response to God’s presence. If there was ever a “top down” moment of God’s will being made known – it was at Mount Sinai. But even here the rabbis bristled, for they knew that in order for Revelation to “stick” it would have to come upwards from the people themselves.

And if this is the case for God, that even God recognizes the need to withdraw presence in order for humanity to assert presence – then how much more so for us?! We all need to allow for the rather counterintuitive possibility that our best and most active influence may be by way of active, engaged and empathetic listening. When dealing with the people we care for most, cautious and thoughtful and self-censoring counsel builds trust, empowers our loved ones – and in that inevitable moment when we do need our voice to be heard and heeded – increases the odds that the other person will believe what is actually the case, that what we are saying is in his or her best interests. We are too quick to impose our own judgments on others, transferring our own rights and wrongs to people who, at the end of the day, are not us and who will have to live with their decisions for a long time after we have left the scene. Far too often we instinctively barrel down the field like a running back into the end zone forgetting that the point is actually to down the ball at the goal line. It is a risky business, but sometimes in life, the goal is not to score. Sometimes, the goal is to fall just a little short in order to nervously see what will happen on the next play.

The great 18th century philosopher Lessing once wrote, “Not the truth which someone possesses or believes he possesses, but the honest effort he has made to get at the truth, constitutes a human being’s worth.” The most telling thing Yitro does in the entire parashah is neither his counseling, nor the establishment of a judiciary. His most instructive act is that he knows when it is time to leave, Va-yelekh lo el artzo, “And he went on his way to his land.” Yitro gave his son-in-law the tools and advice, but he also knew that it was only through Moses’ own efforts that Moses would find his self worth, that Moses would become his own man, that Moses would become Moses. So too, may each of us learn that our loved one’s self worth comes only by way of their own efforts, and may we have the wisdom and self-discipline to withdraw just enough that others can grow into their own.