After years of infertility, Isaac prays to G-d for a child and miraculously, Rebecca becomes pregnant—with twins. Finally, their lives will be filled with the joys of parenthood as Rebecca and Isaac lavish unconditional love on their perfect miracles of life, Esau and Jacob.

Pre-children, I imagined my life with perfect babies who would grow into perfectly mannered children and perfectly brilliant (Ivy League) students. My husband and I would love them unconditionally and this would be easy because our children would be…perfect.

I suspect many parents share the bubble-bursting experience of their expectations colliding with the realities of raising children. We forget that G-d gave humans the gift of free will, so everyone possesses the ability to make choices that ultimately shape their destiny. I will never forget the first time my son shocked me with his “opinion” instead of doing whatever I told him. Admittedly, I was torn between the frustration of no longer being in full control of my child and the reality that he is exercising his G-d-given right to choose what HE wants to do. 

Thus begins a life of parenting; sometimes painfully frustrating and other times, immensely joyous. As parents, we feel a need to protect our children from potential harm and guide them in a way that makes them aware of the dangers and pitfalls along life’s path.  In guiding and protecting our children, we come face to face with the imminent dilemma of walking that fine line between guiding them and crossing over into manipulating them. 

To me, raising children has been like spending an entire bar mitzvah party on the dance floor. You start with something everyone can do (“YMCA”), followed by a slightly faster-paced hit (DeBarge’s “Rhythm of the Night”) and then a few rap songs (ala 50 Cent) with words you weren’t really sure you wanted to understand. Eventually, the DJ acknowledges the parents of the bar/bat mitzvah and plays a trio of fond memories from their school days: Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl,” The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout” and The Temptations’ “My Girl.”  Life is good. After another group of loud songs with the same beat and different artists, the grandparents are invited to the dance floor for their kind of music, with Frank Sinatra singing “Fly Me to the Moon.” I find this blissfully calming.

What is Rebecca and Isaac’s experience of raising Esau and Jacob? Do they have moments when their expectations collided with reality? Esau and Jacob are two very different children: “When the boys grew up, Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the outdoors; but Jacob was a mild man who stayed in the camp” (Gen. 25:27). Given the dissimilar natures of Esau and Jacob, how do Rebecca and Isaac guide their sons down the path they feel is best for each? And how do their parenting styles impact the lives of their sons? Looking at parenting through the lens of modern psychology, do Rebecca and Isaac embrace the individual natures of their sons and “nurture the nature” of each?

The positive and negative impact parents can have on their children is shocking. But so is the recognition that free will can change the direction a child’s life. We all know of someone, whether famous and infamous, whose childhood appears to have been 180 degrees from what we would imagine. In other words, free will can trump a parent’s most carefully orchestrated manipulation of their child’s destiny.

Gen. 25:28 gives us a stunning glimpse into parents whose children’s natures are very different: “And Isaac loved Esau because [his] game was in his mouth, and Rebecca loved Jacob.” This verse can be interpreted as a parent literally loving one child to the exclusion of the other or simply favoring one child over another. Another interpretation could be that as parents, it is not unusual to gravitate to one child because of their nature—just not necessarily to the exclusion of other children. What has changed regarding how parents feel about the diversity of their children’s natures? How does this translate into the ways in which we guide our children and what can we learn from Toldot?

A pivotal moment for me in parenting was acknowledging our children’s different natures and realizing that there is no right or perfect way to accomplish the daunting task of making sure each child receives an equal amount of attention and guidance every day. Possibly due to their different natures and not unlike parents today, Rebecca and Isaac each gravitate to a different one of their two sons. In their case, what happens as a result of this may just be the mother of all lessons in parenting. Does the end justify the means and what is the moral of this story?

In her role as parent, Rebecca exerts a certain unilateral power over the destiny of her sons, guiding Jacob down the path of deception on her quest to secure Isaac’s blessing of the firstborn in order to ensure Jacob’s position as future leader of the Jewish People. Though the blessing should go to Esau as the firstborn, Rebecca believes Jacob possesses attributes of leadership that Esau lacks and decides that the ends do justify the means. The emotional impact of this parenting decision on Esau is revealed in Gen. 27:34: “When Esau heard his father's words, he cried out a great and bitter cry, and he said to his father, ‘Bless me too, O my father!’"

By virtue of her (manipulative) decision to usurp the blessing that is rightfully Esau’s and ensure Jacob’s destiny as leader, Rebecca is revered as the visionary responsible for saving the Jewish People. But does parenting always have to be so black and white, with our actions of supporting one child potentially resulting in exceedingly damaging emotional losses for one or more of our other children? When studying Toldot, I wondered if Rebecca could have handled this delicate and epic decision any differently in order to ease the devastating emotional impact of her actions on Esau.

Toldot has moved me to think about the consequences of my actions and words, and their impact of both on my children. It also reveals the difficulty of walking this fine line between guiding our children and manipulating their lives in the name of securing a “better destiny” for them. Free will gives us the right to choose, but as parents, we need to choose wisely and be willing to take responsibility for our mistakes. We must also allow our children to explore their world through the choices they make and not try to manipulate them to ensure their choices mirror ours.

The next song on this metaphoric dance floor of my life as a parent is approaching “Fly Me to the Moon,” and the lessons learned from Toldot have provided me with this invaluable guidance as a parent: G-d gave our children free will to seek their own destinies, and our role as parents is to embrace each child’s unique nature, nurture all the goodness they possess and guide them toward realizing their full potential as the future of our Jewish People. 

This is particularly poignant in light of the GA, from which many of us returned this week. As parents, our guidance is based on lessons we learned from our life’s experiences, which may not resonate with our children. The traditional concept of everyone plugging into a Jewish organization is not necessarily what the Millennial generation is seeking. With a significant focus on individualism, some Millennials want to choose a specific area of involvement instead of joining a group or community. So what does it mean to be a leader at this time in the Jewish world?  In the words of Rabbi Aaron Weininger, “We need to link the spark of the individual with the flame of a community.” By doing this, we can hopefully ‘co-create’ something together for all of us.

Shabbat Shalom,

Marcia