The Sons of the Fathers

Thirty-six years strikes me as well beyond the statute of limitations on spoiler alerts, but if it isn’t, then this would be a good time to get up and leave the room. Because while it would definitely be in bad taste to tell you how the new Star Wars movie ends, I have to believe that at this point it is safe to speak publicly about the original trilogy, specifically, the pivotal scene in "The Empire Strikes Back" when Luke Skywalker discovers the truth about his father. Having seen the new movie right when it came out, over vacation I resolved to do what any self-respecting parent would do: Download all the original Star Wars movies so I could experience them with my children. As I watched them and watched my children watch them, and I saw their reaction when Darth Vader informed Luke that he was in fact his father, it became clear to me, in a way that I never realized way-back-when, what this movie was really about. The central drama of this epic space opera is not good guys vs. bad guys, or Han and Leah, or even a mysterious “force” that pervades the universe. At the core of Star Wars is the most classic mythological trope of all, the tale of father and son. Hidden as a child in order to shield his life from his father, our protagonist, Luke, grows up unaware of his true identity. Luke’s redemption, we come to learn, will only arrive by way of his discovering his true identity. Our hero has a greater purpose, a calling to liberate his people. His path, however, is not straightforward; there is a complication. In order for him to realize his personal and national destiny, he will have to confront the very person who not only gave him life, but is also the oppressor of his newfound kin, and – perversely – seeks his destruction. In the dying words of Yoda: “You must confront Vader. Then, only then, a Jedi you will be.” From the beginning of the trilogy until its final scene, this tale will be one of how the son discovers, confronts, and eventually transcends the truth of his paterfamilias, redeems his people, and, most importantly, resolves the conflicts embedded in the cornerstone of his identity.

The final book Sigmund Freud wrote, as his health was declining and he and his family escaped the Nazis to London, was Moses and Monotheism. It is unquestionably a strange and difficult book to read. In a very peculiar fashion, Freud seeks to recapitulate, expand, and explain the biography of Moses in a manner that, according to the late great scholar of Freud and beloved congregant of Park Avenue Synagogue, Dr. Emmanuel Rice, reflects Freud’s own journey home to the Jewish identity from which he had long been estranged. (E. Rice, Freud and Moses: The Long Journey Home) In all the book’s complexities, there is one observation that Freud makes, both simple and significant, that for me sheds new light onto the tale of Moses and his confrontation with Pharaoh, and that is the insight that Moses was an Egyptian. His name was an Egyptian name. He grew up not as a Hebrew, but in the comforts of Egyptian society. In the eyes of the daughters of Midian, Moses was perceived to be an Egyptian, (Exodus 2:19). Freud wrote that for three weeks in Rome he visited Michelangelo’s sculpture of Moses, studying it, measuring it, and sketching it. (Rice, p. 124) One need not be a trained psychoanalyst to speculate as to why the assimilated Freud was so drawn to the Egyptian dimension of Moses, always, but especially at the end of his life.

While not every aspect of Freud’s book rings true to the biblical text, it is through the prism of Freud’s insights on Moses’s “Egyptian-ness,” and, to be sure, our 1980 cinematic classic, that I found a new insight into the drama which we read this morning. Moses, after all, wasn’t just any Egyptian. He was, depending on how you look at it, a son, grandson, or adopted child in the house of Pharaoh. Freud reasons that Moses’s life follows classic mythological structures: A child filled with great promise is born into a dangerous circumstance; saved from death, he will rediscover his parentage, wreak vengeance on his father and, recognized by his people, attain fame and greatness. (Moses and Monotheism, pp. 2-3) The parallels, though not exact, are close enough to bring into relief a critical aspect of Moses’s story that – although it is in plain sight under our very noses – is often missed or dismissed. The story of the Exodus is not just the story of the liberation of a people, or the fulfillment of a long-standing divine promise. It is the story of one man, Moses, who, in order to fulfill his personal and national destiny, in order to resolve the complexities of his personal identity, has to confront the dominant father figure of his life: Pharaoh.

If you read our tale as a story of father and son, so many other things come into focus. We all know Moses resists when called on by God. No doubt his speech impediment played a part in this demurral. But the more simple reason, which is in fact both the first and final reason he provides, is Pharaoh! Mi anokhi? Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?” (3:11) God could have chosen a born slave as the liberator of the Hebrews, an Israelite with no connection to the Egyptians. The poetry and pathos of our tale is that God didn’t. God picked that one person who long before our present-day hyphenated identities, had the most hyphenated identity of all, as an Egyptian and as a Hebrew. Moses is rejected by the Israelites for being Egyptian, rejected by the Egyptians for being a Hebrew, and is alive only because he survived the edict of the very father figure in whose household, ironically, he would be raised. Moses doesn’t have an answer to the most basic question of all: Mi anokhi? “Who am I?” It is the journey to that answer, as much as the one to the Promised Land, which underpins his biography. So many inner psychic conflicts, so many unresolved ambivalences. And the only way for Moses to resolve it all is through the cathartic and altogether Oedipal act (minus the bit about the mother) of participating in his father’s downfall. I can only hope that Moses’s medical insurance covered the therapy bills he would incur over his lifetime.

As far-fetched as this reading may sound, a passing knowledge of the biblical text reveals that this pattern, with some modification, not only underlies the biography of Moses, but is a discernable trope throughout the Bible. Think about it. In order for Abraham to become Abraham, he had to smash his father’s idols, leave home, and go to the land that God would show him. Isaac, we know, would emerge from his near death experience at the hands of Abraham with a forever-ruptured relationship, father and son never to speak again. Jacob needed to flee the house of his father and mother in order to develop into his own person – in order that he could become Israel. So too, Joseph would only achieve his eventual and intended purpose by being cast out of his father’s home into Egypt. Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Ruth – all of them rebel, leave, or are sent away from their households of origin. Even Adam and Eve, one could argue, would only achieve their humanity by leaving the Garden of their divine parent. None of these heroes and heroines are who they are because they stayed put and toed the line of the prior generation. As Freud explained, “A hero is someone who has the courage to rebel against his father and has in the end victoriously overcome him.” (Moses and Monotheism, p. 12) The Moses-Pharaoh story is more complicated than most, but it is entirely consistent with the broader biblical pattern. Like those who preceded him, like those who would follow, Moses fulfills his destiny and arrives at the fullness of his humanity by differentiating himself from the very household that gave him life in the first place.

One of my life’s greatest joys, second only to the love of my wife and children, is the bond I share with my parents. And yet when I think about the choices I have made and the person I have become, I can say with absolute surety that as important as the influence of my parents has been, and continues to be, it has also been those moments when my choices differed from or ran counter to their counsel that has made me who I am. In the successes I have enjoyed, in the mistakes I have made (and continue to make), it is only by differentiating myself from my household of origin, that my identity – or anyone’s identity – actually takes shape. There is, according to Jewish law, no mitzvah more important than honoring one’s parents, but it is a mitzvah that exists alongside our shared search for autonomy, and our need and right to become our own person and live lives of our own choosing. Moments of individuation, dramatic and traumatic as they may be, are natural, healthy, and ultimately, important opportunities for personal growth. We reflect back on them, knowing that it was those moments, not the moments we acquiesced, that have made us who we are. It is not a bad thing, explains Freud, it is a cycle that can yield a soft landing. The rebellions of adolescence in which a person seeks to be everything a parent is not are often followed by an adulthood in which a person manifests the very characteristics of the parent that had been previously condemned and rejected (Rice, p. 178). It is not just Moses, or for that matter, Luke Skywalker, who needs to confront his household of origin in order to arrive at his true self. It is each and every one of us who need to understand and embrace our identities as both “extensions of” and “reactions to” that which came before. L’dor va-dor does not mean that one generation parrots the behaviors of the one that came before. L’dor va-dor means that each generation learns from the prior one and is extended the opportunity to establish its identity on its own terms.

All of which, when taken to its logical conclusion, is both thrilling and very, very sobering. Because if this is the case, if this is how I understand not just the formation of my own identity, but identity formation writ large, then I must strap on the proverbial seatbelt for what is in store for my relationship with my own children. It is a realization both frightening and not a little bit depressing to think that if I want my children – the objects of my affection, influence, and dedication – to fulfill my highest wish, namely, to become the fullest and most authentic expression of their truest selves, to be able to confidently answer the question Mi anokhi, “Who am I?” then I must be willing to concede that their journeys may be achieved only by way of their reacting, confronting, and perhaps rejecting the very life that I spend so much time seeking to impress upon them. And while I will hope that one day they will return to the proverbial nest, there are no guarantees, not for me and not for anyone.

And so I savored every moment watching those old movies with my children, scratching their backs as I did, hoping then, as always, that through some mystical process of osmosis they would come to share my enthusiasm for the things I love. Every parent understands the impossible wish to freeze time. I was then, and remain today, well aware that one day in the not too distant future, the distance between me and my child may grow to be far greater than what the length of one father’s outstretched arm can traverse. One day they too will need to differentiate themselves, to establish their space and autonomy. I can tell you right now, I won’t like it, not one bit, and the knowledge that I am not the first to experience this process doesn’t make it any easier. What I will do, I suppose, is what I have to do, what everyone has to do. Let my grip loosen, bite down hard and hope and pray that our bond will prove sufficiently supple, elastic and suffused with love so as to spring back to form in due time. It is, after all, their right and my highest hope that my children walk this earth with a full-throated answer to the question Mi anokhi, “Who am I?” Should the answer to that question come at my expense, then so be it. it will be well worth the journey.