BUILDING STRONG CHILDREN, A LESSON FROM JACOB AND JOSEPH
As parents, all we want is the very best for our children. We want them to get a great education, do well in extracurricular activities, experience good camps, and eventually become successful adults as they move on to begin their own lives. In the process of this journey, we hope that they will incorporate the values and ethics we raise them with and become good and upright people.
Yet life as we know it is not always the smooth sailing that we anticipate and often bumps and challenges are thrown our way which can mess up our plans and send us down unknown paths. Children become teenagers who then become college kids before they become responsible and mature adults. During that time frame, social influences as well as circumstances and events that are beyond our control will impact and influence their own journey of life in subtle and sometimes dramatic ways.
A parent’s greatest dream and pleasure is to see their child do well in all of the above and grow up to become a person with the values and morals that are so dear to the parents as well as someone who knows how to be true to themselves and their identity.
In the course of Jewish history there are many examples of success stories with perhaps one of the most moving one’s taking place in this week’s Torah Portion.
Joseph who had been sold into slavery by his brothers, and then risen to become the second in command of Egypt is finally going to be reunified with his father after being separated for twenty two years. During this time Joseph had been a slave, served time in jail for crimes he never committed, been appointed to a very powerful political position and had married and started raising his own family.
Jacob on his end, had endured twenty two years of suffering assuming that his beloved son was killed and now the news needed to be broken to him gently due to his age and his delicate physical condition. Joseph’s niece plays a song on a harp and begins breaking the news that Joseph is still alive, but Jacob remains in a state of absolute disbelief and is still struggling with wondering how is his son doing after all these years of suffering, difficulties, slavery, and being alone in a very foreign land.
Suddenly, the Torah tells us that Jacob sees the wagons that Joseph had sent from Egypt. They were laden with gifts and were going to help transport Jacob and his family down to Egypt, and yet it is then when Jacob sees these wagons that he truly begins to rejoice and become revitalized.
The Midrash tells us that the reason why specifically seeing the wagons caused Jacob to finally rejoice, was due to a subtle message that Joseph had sent to his father in the form of the wagons (the specifics of which are for another time). With this subtle message Joseph was telling his father that thanks to the spiritual tools that Jacob hard armed him with before his life went haywire and thanks to all of the study and spiritual values that Jacob had invested in him, he was not only physically alive but also spiritually alive and the person Jacob had raised him to be.
Joseph then adds and says not only was I able to survive and be the person with the spiritual and moral values that are so important, but I am also doing my best to influence and help others and this includes the entire nation of Egypt.
Thus when Jacob hears the news of his son’s physical survival and then perhaps even more importantly, his son’s spiritual survival (and growth) and this being despite all of the crazy hardships that he had been through, it is then that he begins to rejoice and become revitalized.
It’s a great story, but stories in the Torah are always there for the lessons that they teach.
Simply put, the more we invest in the personal and individual attention that we give our children coupled with providing them with spiritual and emotional nourishment, the stronger and more durable people they will become.
When it comes to their Jewish identity and values, their strength comes not just from what they get out of Synagogue and Hebrew School, but perhaps even more so, from what they get out of the reinforcement and spiritual nourishment they get at home. By finding opportunities to have meaningful discussions about our identity and values and at the same time matching that with creating enjoyable Jewish family experiences, we will be going a long way in giving them the tools to own their Jewish Identity for the long term. Doing so will ensure that the Judaism that is so dear to us will also be so dear to our children as they begin to chart their own course in life.
Good Shabbos
Yisroel