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Today's Torah
Shabbat Parashat Vayehi
December 29, 2012
/ 16 Tevet 5773
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By:
Rabbi
Elliot Dorff,
Rector and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy
at American Jewish University
The
Importance of Grandparents
"Joseph
lived to see children of the third generation of Ephraim; the children of
Machir, son of Menasseh were likewise born upon Joseph's knees...Joseph died
at the age of one hundred and ten years...." (Genesis
50:23, 26)
We
do not really know what to do with the Torah's claims that many of the people
in Genesis lived extraordinarily long lives. Once in a while in our times we
hear of people living to 110, as Joseph is said to do in our Torah reading this
week, but we cannot be faulted if we are skeptical about the numbers the
Torah claims our Patriarchs and Matriarchs lived, let alone the lifetimes of
hundreds of years for those who preceded them in the genealogies of Genesis 5
and 11. These numbers may simply be the Torah's way of indicating that they
were mythical figures, larger than life, as it were.
Indeed,
the Psalmist indicates that "the span of our life is seventy years, or,
given the strength, eighty years" (Psalms 90:10), and it is considered a
great blessing to see your grandchildren - "May the Lord bless you from
Zion; may you share the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life and
live to see your children's children. May all be well with Israel!"
(Psalms 128:5-6).
This is closer to what was probably the reality in
antiquity. Many died in childbirth - women and children - and those who
survived birth often succumbed to infections and other diseases, but if you
made it to age twenty and did not have to go to war, the chances were good
that you would make it to sixty, seventy, or even eighty. This was true well
into modern times, for life expectancy in the United States in 1900 was
around 45 years of age, but that figure reflected many deaths in childbirth
and childhood.
Thus some of us who are now grandparents remember our own
grandparents. (In my case, all four were alive when I was born, but three of
the four died before I was Bar Mitzvah.) Now that life expectancy in the
United States is about 78, more and more of us will see our grandchildren,
and some of us will be lucky enough to see our great-grandchildren.
What
is the role of grandparents? The Talmud is very specific about that. Not only
do parents have the duty to teach Torah (and the skills to earn a living) to
their children; grandparents do too (B. Kiddushin
30a), based on Deuteronomy 4:9: "Make them known to your children and to
your children's children!" In our day, that might include helping
parents pay tuition for Jewish schools, camps, and youth groups for their
grandchildren. Grandparents can feel good about doing that, but not too good
because it is not an especially generous act on their part; it is their
Jewish legal duty!
Grandparents,
though, can and should have a much more direct and personal influence on
their grandchildren. I have been a member of admissions committees for
rabbinical school for over forty years, and time and time again applicants
mention their grandparents as a major Jewish influence on their lives. Not
every Jew should become a rabbi, of course, but this illustrates the immense
affect that grandparents can have on the Jewish character of their
grandchildren's lives.
Following the lead of my friend, Dr. Alvin Mars, I now
Skype with my nine-year-old grandson who lives across the country in New Jersey
each week. We study D'varim (Deuteronomy) together for fifteen or twenty
minutes, and then we talk about all kinds of other things. This not only
deepens our personal relationships; it also communicates my own commitment to
Judaism, and it helps him think about his own Jewish life. Aside from that,
it is a sheer delight!
This
becomes even more important when your children have married people of other
faiths. How do you model your own Jewish commitments to your grandchildren so
that they know about them and seek to figure out their own Jewish identity as
they grow? Rabbi Charles Simon, Executive Director of the Federation of
Jewish Men's Clubs, and a number of people working with him have produced
wonderful materials to help grandparents do that, including Let's Talk About It - A Book of Support
and Guidance (on talking with your members of your family who are
intermarried) and Intermarriage
Concepts and Strategies. Check out the FJMC website to order
those materials here.
May
we all grow to be grandparents and, if we are lucky enough to be as Joseph
was, even great-grandparents, and may we take that role seriously by
fulfilling our duties as Jewish educators for our grandchildren and
great-grandchildren.
Shabbat
Shalom.
Those
interested in more on this may be interested in Elliot N. Dorff, Love Your Neighbor and Yourself: A
Jewish Approach to Modern Personal Ethics (Philadelphia: Jewish
Publication Society, 2003), especially Chapter Four, "Parents and
Children."
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Elliot N. Dorff, Rabbi, Ph.D.,
is Rector and Anne and Sol Dorff Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at
the American Jewish University, Visiting Professor at UCLA School of Law,
and Chair of the Conservative Movement's Committee on Jewish Law and
Standards. Author of over 200 articles and 12 books on Jewish thought, law,
and ethics, and editor of 14 more books on those topics, his most recent
book is For the Love of God and People: A Philosophy of Jewish Law.
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