Rabbi Janet Marder

February 9, 2007

The Narrow Bridge

When a rabbi disappears for three months, I’m sure there are lots of wild rumors and speculation about what she’s up to. First of all I thought I should clear those up so I could set your minds at ease. So it is NOT true that I spent this sabbatical exploring a run for the 2008 presidential election, with Barack Obama as my running mate. And it is NOT true that I spent my sabbatical watching 25 years’ worth of “Law and Order” episodes.  And it is NOT true that I had a thing going with Gavin Newsome.

It IS true that I did sleep for seven or eight hours, just about every night. And it’s true that I read a lot of books, and did some studying, and did a little traveling, and some cooking and bread-baking, and played the piano to my heart’s content, and took long walks and exercised every single day. I also spent time with my family, including babysitting for my two-year old twin nephews in Los Angeles – an experience that taught me that Rabbis Micah and Karen are in for some interesting times. I went to Israel . I went hiking with three of my four sisters. I visited with my parents in Southern California . I spent lots of time with my husband. I went to Gold’s Gym and pumped iron with the Schwarzenegger wannabees for four days – but I did NOT become a member.

Before I say anything else I want to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for giving me this opportunity for rest and renewal. Not every congregation understands why sabbaticals are important, and I do not take this rich experience for granted. I can tell you that I needed it more than I had realized, and that it will help me continue to do my work here in the way that I want to do it – with energy and creativity and compassion.

And by the way, this was just the first half of my sabbatical, so I’ll be away for another three months next year – just in time for the 2008 presidential election. If Barack should call, you can give him my cell phone number.

One of the loveliest parts of my sabbatical was a short trip I took with our younger daughter, Rachel, down to Carmel , on the coast near Monterey . It was the first time that we’d ever gone away together, just the two of us, and we went during her winter break from college.

Now, for me, car trips with my children had always fallen into three categories: there was traveling with little kids, which meant that someone in the back seat was sooner or later going to throw up. There was traveling with school-age kids, which meant that sooner or later someone in the front seat would threaten to stop the car and throw those in the back seat out. And there was traveling with teenagers, which meant that the ones in the back seat were either sealed off from the world by their headphones or complaining about the music that was playing on the radio in the front seat.

But I learned that traveling with my now-adult child was a different and wonderful experience. We saw the wonders of the sea at the Monterey Aquarium. We took the amazing 17-mile drive, passing through quiet pine forests and spectacular ocean views. We bundled up against the cold and watched the sunset on Carmel Beach . We ate and walked and talked with no pressure to do anything or be anywhere else. We spent three perfect days.

In some ways this trip felt like a turning point to me. Rachel is still counted as a dependent on our income-tax return, but she won’t be for long. She lives on her own. She works and studies and manages her social life on her own. When Rachel comes to Palo Alto on breaks now, it is for a visit. Her real life is in Boston , and before long Palo Alto will not be “home” any more. I know what is coming: I saw it happen with her older sister, Betsy, who is 23. and also in Boston.

We are finding our way, my daughters and I, on that narrow bridge that leads to the next chapter of our lives; groping our way towards a new relationship in which they are independent adults and I am a different kind of parent.

I still look at pictures of them and wonder where they went: the sturdy four year old with brown hair that she chopped off herself one day, with scissors, sitting proudly on a pony. The sunny two year old in her nightgown with curly red hair and a plastic stethoscope around her neck. I still want to protect them, even though I know they are strong. I want them to find, someday, someone to whom they are as precious as they are to their dad and me. I pray for their happiness.

I wonder what Betsy and Rachel will do with their lives and where they will end up, and how many questions it’s ok to ask so that you seem interested but not intrusive, available but not overbearing. I think about all the parents of adult children I know who feel alienated from their kids by distance or a difference in values or maybe the person their child chose to marry. I think of all the people I’ve known who find their parents difficult to be with – demanding, critical, judgmental, guilt-provoking, so hard to please. Is it inevitable that I’m going to annoy my daughters, despite my best intentions, just because I’m their mom?

This  week Jews around the world read the quintessential Jewish story of the journey: the entrance of the Israelites into the silence and peace of the Sinai desert, there to find some powerful truths at the foot of a mountain. The Torah’s description of the revelation, the giving of the Ten Commandments, is replete with drama and sensational special effects: thunder, lightning, blazing fire and the sound of a great horn.

Pehaps the special effects are visual reminders of the shattering power of these words – words which transformed Western civilization, words whose impact continues to reverberate more than three millennia later. Perhaps the words are given from a mountain because they are aspirational ideals – the very highest truths we stretch to reach, and to live by.

Words whose core teaching blazes out as incandescent as fire: life is not all about you. Be present to the other. Be responsive and responsible for the other.

Among the grand pronouncements about idolatry and bearing false witness, the dramatic moral offenses of murder, theft and adultery, is a modest domestic instruction: kabed et avicha v’et imecha. Honor your father and your mother.

It seems strange to find this commandment in the company of others which seem far broader in social and theological reach. Yet a passage in the Talmud [Yerushalmi, Peah 1:1] calls this mitzvah of honoring parents the most difficult in all of Jewish tradition.

Our Sages, unsentimental and hard-headed, knew exactly how hard it is for two generations to co-exist in close quarters and how easy it is for parents and children to hurt one another. So they explicated the Torah’s commandment with exquisite precision, spelling out the details of what it means for children to honor their parents in a way that is balanced and fair to both parties. Never forcing children to pretend to feelings they do not have, our Sages instead taught that children must ensure that their parents’ basic physical needs are provided and that their dignity and self-respect are not violated.

It becomes clear, in reading the halacha, the Jewish legal discussion of this mitzvah, that our Sages were not picturing a curly-headed two year old and her mommy and daddy. The teachings are clearly meant for an adult child in relationship to aging parents. They are given precisely because when children become adults they no longer need their parents and are no longer dependent on them for sustenance. Parents have outlived their biological necessity; they have reproduced, and their offspring have grown into maturity.

There is every reason, biologically speaking, for the old folks to get offstage and let the next generation take over. And so the Torah comes to say something that is quite contrary to the simple laws of nature: your elders, those who gave you life, may not be callously cast aside. The same care they gave to us as a child – feeding, giving to drink, providing clothing, shoes and transportation – five acts without which no one survives infancy – we owe to our parents  when they become too frail to take care of themselves. 

We’re taught to do it in a way that maintains their dignity as much as possible, and to show them honor and respect in the way we speak to them and about them. We’re not expected to endure parental behavior which is abusive and disrespectful of us, nor are we expected to provide services to our parents personally if it makes more sense to employ others to provide them.

This idea of honoring parents is a complicated subject – books have been written about it – and tonight I am thinking mostly about the flip side of the subject. Now that I am on my way to being the aging parent of an adult child, how can I do my best to ensure that I’m worthy of honor?

The tradition has something to say about this, as well. Parents are forbidden to burden their children excessively or to be overly concerned about the respect due to them. These burdens include the psychological weight we lay on our kids, which can induce such powerful feelings of guilt, stress and resentment.

Kabed, which means “honor,” comes from the Hebrew word for “weight.” When we honor someone we accord weight and significance to them. But tradition teaches those who are parents to wear those words lightly and to step lightly, as well, respectful of our children’s autonomy, understanding of their challenges and of their sacred responsibility to the families they have created.

I learn this lesson best from watching older people I admire. I think of a wonderful man in our congregation, almost a hundred years old, who passed away not long ago, as gently and graciously as he had lived. He was a remarkably smart and accomplished man, but he wore his koved, his status, lightly. He was easy to please. He was appreciative of whatever was done for him. He was loving and thoughtful and kind to his daughter and her husband and his grandchildren. And so they surrounded him with love, treating him with tenderness , attentiveness and respect until he left this world.

Maimonides teaches that the mitzvah of kibud av va’em goes on even after our parents are gone. My task as a mother, now that my biological role has ended, is to live in such a way that my children will remember me with honor when I am gone, through their learning, prayers, thoughts and deeds.

My daughter Rachel went back to school a few days after we returned from Carmel . When I hugged and kissed her goodbye at the airport it was hard to let go. I imagine it will always be hard, and maybe I will always get choked up when we go our separate ways. I know that when I was a young adult, I never thought about what these leave-takings were like for my parents. That is not what young adults are supposed to be thinking about; they’re supposed to be living their lives and figuring out who and what they will be. That is more than enough for them to do.

And so we let go, because we know it’s the right thing to do, and we set forth, each of us, on the narrow bridge that leads to the future. We walk  carefully, we parents and children, knowing there are bound to be missteps by both of us, both of us doing the best we can. We cherish our memories, we pray for their happiness, we rejoice in our times together and try to make them wonderful and memorable. And we hope that love will span the distance between us, no matter how far apart we are.