Parshat Vayera: What Do We Owe Our Children?

Boy of mine
As your fortune comes to carry you down the line
And you watch as the changes unfold
And you sort among the stories you’ve been told
-Jackson Browne

There are two parent-child interactions in this week’s parsha. Both of them are disturbing. Firstly we have the Torah’s narration of Lot, Avraham’s nephew, after he moved to Sodom. Angels, in the guise of humans, had just left Avraham after informing him that Sara would give birth, and were now on their way to destroy Sodom and get Lot and his family out of there. 

Sodom was a pretty immoral place and was the antithesis of Avraham in its world view. They did everything in their power to avoid offering help and assistance to others. Whereas Avraham was famous for his kindness and Hachnasat Orchim – aiding strangers and travelers, Sodom, as a policy, was against any such overtures. They purposefully mistreated strangers to keep the poor, who might be looking to better their lives, far far away. 

Lot, being not only a relative but a disciple of Avraham, learned about kindness to others and readily invites the men into his home. But when word gets out about this, he soon finds his house surrounded by the Sodomites who are literally banging down the door to get at the guests to violate them (hence the word, Sodomy). To fend them off, Lot goes outside and pleads with them to back off. “I beg you my brothers, don’t do this evil. Look, I have two daughters who have never been intimate with a man. I will bring them out to you, and do to them as you see fit. Only to these men do nothing, because they have come under the shelter of my roof.”

Yeah, to protect the dignity and security of these complete strangers, Lot offers his own daughters to the mob to placate them. We can all agree that it’s pretty sick to pimp one’s own daughters to protect his standing in the community, which apparently was the case since he had risen to being a judge in Sodom and he didn’t want to lose his position by going against the customs of the locale.

After reading about Lot’s willingness to sacrifice his daughters, we have another parent-child event where a father is willing to sacrifice his son. The dramatic Akeida – Binding of Isaac – where God tells Avraham to “please take your son, your only one, that you love, Isaac” and offer him up as a sacrifice. The Akeida is perhaps one of the most difficult passages to understand in all of Torah. Reams and reams of commentary have been penned to try to comprehend this request by God of Avraham that is ultimately withdrawn. 

The test for Avraham is an enormous one. He had been promised that he will give rise to progeny which will dot the globe like sand on the sea and stars in the sky. But it was only through a miracle that his wife, Sara finally gave birth to Yitzchak at an advanced age of their lives. The future rested solely on Yitzchak, especially after Hagar and Ishmael were expelled from the home. And now it was all being jeopardized through a request that seemed so opposite of everything Avraham stood for and preached about. As noted, Avraham was known for Chessed – kindness and helping those in need. There is no greater chessed than a parent to a child by constantly providing for their good and welfare. And now God was telling him to do something diametrically opposed to all of that. 

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z”l focuses on the radical departure that the Torah introduces into the parent-child relationship that the Akeida addresses, and contrasts it with how most historical societies viewed their children: 

The authority of the head of the family, the paterfamilias, was absolute. He had power of life and death over his wife and children. Authority invariably passed, on the death of the father, to his firstborn son. Meanwhile, as long as the father lived, children had the status of property rather than persons in their own right. This idea persisted even beyond the biblical era in the Roman law principle of patria potestas.

Fathers basically owned their children and whatever they would decide for them would be their fate. The Akeida came to dispel this notion, as Sacks goes on to explain:

What God was doing when He asked Abraham to offer up his son was not requesting a child sacrifice but something quite different. He wanted Abraham to renounce ownership of his son. He wanted to establish as a non-negotiable principle of Jewish law that children are not the property of their parents.

By commanding Avraham to be willing to give up his son, He was driving home the point that, all the Godly promises notwithstanding, you don’t own Isaac. His future, his independence, his very life is not in your hands but in God’s and, eventually and ultimately, in Isaac’s own hands.

Lot saw his children as chattel. They are things that belong to him and he has the power to do with them as he so wishes. And if he wishes to have them abused to further his goals, so be it. God was telling Avraham the exact opposite. That Isaac doesn’t belong to you, and if I, God, call him home, then that is what must be done.  

The Akeida teaches that your kids are ultimately not yours. They are not there to fulfill your unfulfilled dreams. They are not there to provide you with nachas (even though that might be a by-product when things go well). As a parent, it’s your job to raise them with values, morals and skills to become independent men and women, and contributing members of society in their own right.

As much as we would like to control our children’s destiny and future, we need to let go and let them make their own way. We need to put our trust in the values we give them, their ability to make sound decisions from those values, and the knowledge that they will be able to pick up the pieces when they do not.

The more control you try to enforce on your children, the more likelihood that they will up and walk away from the smothering and suffocating attention being heaped upon them. But the more you cut them some slack and keep your distance after you provide them with the good and necessary tools to life, the better chance they will wish to be with you and shower you with appreciation and respect for all that you have done in raising them. 

There always has to be a little bit of an Akeida when raising kids. The symbolic death of ownership of children, and a willingness to let them roll off that alter and make their own way in life.

And when you’ve found another soul
Who sees into your own
Take good care of each other